Opinion | Have you heard the one about 50 Asian comics walking into a club?
- A comedy festival in New York encouraged Asians to gather, vent and celebrate, after hate incidents increased during the pandemic
- To the festival’s 50 or so comics, making irreverent light of sensitive topics is a way of coming to terms with everyday indignities
During six shows over eight days in Manhattan’s East Village, dozens of Asian comics gathered to poke, insult, confess and strut their stuff at what was billed as the city’s largest and longest-running AAPI-focused comedy festival.
Edward Pokropski, the ethnically Korean co-founder of the festival, says it encourages Asians to gather, vent and celebrate, something that became even more important as verbal and physical abuse increased during the pandemic. Now in its fifth year, the well-run festival supports Asian-owned businesses, with proceeds going to community groups such as Welcome to Chinatown.
For the comics, one advantage of performing before the largely Asian audience was being able to skip the long set-ups often needed for mainstream Americans to understand their punchlines.
Dang sees comedy as a way to bridge the two cultures. One of his jokes, for instance, riffs on how Pizza Hut is considered a high-end restaurant in China, leading to a disastrous date he had in the US when he took someone to the chain restaurant.
