Perth Voice Interactive

PERTH expat Andrew Gannon is off to explore the ancient world of Chinese comedy.

A lawyer by day, he’s spent many a night onstage at the Charles Hotel comedy nights or Lazy Susan’s comedy den.

In western comedy it’s often a race to the bottom among comedians to find the newest, edgiest, most perverted jokes, but in China it’s a different story.

Rather than coming up with novel jokes, Chinese comedians will sometimes re-enact funny, historic tales of old.

“We’re still performing jokes from 500 years ago,” Mr Gannon says. “You’re not going to get into any trouble, it’s light.”

While making fun of John Howard’s eyebrows has provided fully half the material of all Australian comics in the past decade, in China it’s safer to retread classic tales than tell a joke at the expense of government officials.

“No-one would dare,” he says.

He’s now been chosen for a Churchill fellowship, which sends high achievers abroad for international study (worth about $22,000). He’ll travel to China, Japan and Taiwan to explore using comedy for cultural exchange. Mr Gannon says a joke is a good way to open people up to further conversations.

He’s always wanted to be a comic: Even at five he was entertaining older kids with bawdy tales (that he didn’t understand at that point).

He progressed to comedic songs and taking on the character of “Viktor,” inspired by an utterly stern Russian violin teacher he’d had when he was seven. “He was the most intense person I ever met,” Mr Gannon says quietly, maybe still a little nervous.

But China fascinated him, at least more than doing another set at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow while a rowdy drunk who “looks like a shrivelled Willy Nelson” interjected with “hilarious” heckling.

Working in Beijing now, he’s done some comedy in ex-pat bars in China, and that’s generally where most foreign comedians stay. In bars and clubs that look like they could be in downtown Northbridge, westerners want to be comforted by a slice of home, and comedians perform the same jokes they’d do here.

“It’s not a very experimental scene,” he says, with a lot of people retreading the old “white guy in China” act.

But performing to local audiences is a whole other deal. It’s hard to perform comedy in English to crowds that speak it as a second language: A lot of the subtlety and emphasis can be lost if just a couple of words aren’t understood.

“So much of it is culturally specific and they just don’t get the social cues,” Mr Gannon says. “Laughter is international, but humour is not.”

So he’s also done parts of his performance in Mandarin. Locals love to hear even short jokes told in their own language, appreciating that he’s gone to the effort to learn the tongue.

Sometimes, though, a crowd might be quietly chuckling away, but it’s not because the jokes are funny. It’s because the Loawai is trying to speak Chinese, badly.

But at least there’s no mouthy hecklers like you’d find at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow. “No,” Mr Gannon laughs. “They’re too polite.”

For now he’s heading back to Beijing to brush up on his Mandarin before embarking on the tour.

by DAVID BELL