Standing up on her own

comic caper

From Edinburgh to Stockholm, Paris to London, San Francisco to Pakistan, Shazia Mirza is every bit the global star. “Humour is universal in itself,” states the confident comedian.

She maybe a new voice among the many who have gone around the comedy circuit a few times, but that doesn’t make Shazia a newbie by any means. Her humour is raw, direct, and at the least, wickedly funny.

As a Birmingham-born Asian, Shazia Mirza started with writing comedy and part of the course was to perform what she had written. “I found that I loved performing what I’d written, it was even more thrilling to express what I’d written, and once I started, I couldn’t stop.”

In case she hasn’t already made it abundantly clear with her jokes, she’s a female Muslim stand-up, credentials which she seems to think, “imbue everything I utter with a shock value that negates the need to add anything more.”

She swears. She talks about sex. But while it may be highly unusual for a Muslim woman, it’s pretty standard fare for a comic, isn’t it?

Much of Shazia’s material draws on her experiences as a British, Muslim Asian, who, she jokes, Muslim men “don’t like” because “I...speak!”

This 34-year-old comedian began her comedy career just after the 9/11 attacks and has opened many a show with the line, “Hi, my name is Shazia Mirza, at least that’s what it says on my pilot’s license.”

It was a shocking opener that won the rookie comic a lot of headlines. Evidently, she’s not one to stay away from speaking her mind or making fun of everything that’s considered “taboo”.

“I was born in England, which is a democracy where we believe in the freedom of speech. I have never been censored in Europe or America, but I have been in Dubai, Pakistan, and in India, previously, I was told to ‘tone it down’ as the audience were quite conservative apparently.”

Punchy gags

Switch to the present day and her onstage routine is packed with punchy gags that leave the audience in stitches.

Much of her fodder is recycled from her personal life. But unlike popular acts like Russell Brand and Russel Peters, she gives the racism a miss, and handles her lines with directness, something that her peers are yet to try out. She often mixes in a generous dose of self-deprecating jibes about her identity and puns on religion, sexism and more.

“I have never seen myself as a female comedian. Don’t worry, I’m not a transvestite. I just see myself as me — a comedian. I never worry about the audience — what will they think of me? Will they like me or not? Will they laugh? I just worry about being myself, and being funny. I’ve had many struggles and the least of them have been being a woman.”

Shazia likes to jokingly refer to herself as the “white sheep” of her Pakistani, Muslim family. Her columns in The Guardian hold testimony to that. Here, she freely wrote about her upbringing, the culture shock she experienced every time she left the threshold of her home in Birmingham, her parents and their need to get her married off as soon as possible.

“My column in The Guardian was specifically about relationships and family. But I always write with humour. There are always jokes and punch lines. I can’t get things across without humour; I always see the funny side.”

So, to keep her straight-laced parents happy, just like any other average Pakistani child, she unwittingly chose to study Biochemistry and began teaching Science in elementary school but would moonlight as an amateur theatre artist.

She claims that it was drama school that eventually freed the comedian in her, out of the closet. “I never wanted to be a teacher. I did it as an ‘acceptable job’ like being a doctor, dentist or if you’re a woman — a newsreader. I always wanted to be on stage, I wanted to be an actress, but I sort of fell into stand-up comedy, now I realise there’s nothing else I could have possibly done. When I was teaching, they didn’t want to be there and neither did I. So I told them jokes to keep them and myself interested.”

Witty one-liners

Her one-liners are often swung out, in-between a long routine, whipping up the audience into a frenzy. She’s abrasive onstage, one critic wrote, about her style behind the microphone. But there’s always a smile backing every single one of her lines too. “I love comedy.” Her favourite topics are her family, their antics, religion, cultural agendas and George Clooney. “You can’t go wrong with Clooney. He’s universal,” says a beaming Shazia.

This young comedian always attempts to stick to the truth, adding that it never fails to get a roar from the audience. “I can’t write or do comedy about things I don’t care about.”

Is there a difference between the Shazia in real life and the Shazia who performs stand-up? “I’m the same person everywhere. My comedy comes from real life. So I am the same on stage as I am off it.”

Shazia, who is more than familiar with bagging awards now, has also courted some controversy throughout her career while breaking down stereotypes of  women tearing at the fringes of a politically-correct society, or at the expense of producing genuinely hilarious material.

But after having caught her videos on Youtube and scouring her numerous humour pieces on the Internet, I can confidently state that she performs with a distinct comic voice that can put her contemporaries to shame.

Yet, despite her finding money, fame and recognition on her own and living her life on her own terms, Shazia’s Asian parents still hesitate to make noise on her behalf. “They couldn’t give a toss. They couldn’t care less if I was a stripper. They just want me to get married,” she adds nonchalantly.
(Follow Shazia Mirza on Twitter @shaziamirza1.)