Sonny Yang reckons with the personal and the political with new sketch comedy Tales from my Immigrant Father
Stepping off the streets of Perth, and straight onto the Fringe World stage, comedian Sonny Yang will bring his new show Tales from my Immigrant Father to The Laugh Resort from Friday, January 19, to Sunday, January 21. BEC WELDON spoke to Sonny Yang about his most personal show to date, and the stories that inspired it.
Tales from My Immigrant Father sounds like a very personal show. What inspired you to create this show, and how did it come about?
This show was partially inspired by various racial micro-aggressions I’ve experienced over the years, but particularly by this one incident where some weirdo spat at me and kept going on about how COVID was my fault as he followed me up Hay Street, and then a brave passerby took the opportunity to intervene and lecture me on how not all Australians are like this. Actually, it has very little to do with my dad at all.
How did you approach the development of this show? How, if so, was it different from your other shows, and how was your father involved?
I took up a month-long internship at an office and used their company Adobe account to create the multimedia for this show. My dad has no idea of what this show even is, except for the fact that occasionally I need a small loan to help finance it.
This is your third solo show; how has your writing and performance style changed since you first started performing comedy?
I now use 20% more hand gestures.
Do you have a favourite classic joke?
Norm Macdonald’s cheese sandwich/shallow grave bit. RIP Norm.
What sets Tales from My Immigrant Father apart from other comedy shows at this year’s Fringe World?
I’ve learned that, compared to most other comedy shows on offer at Fringe World, this show in particular is extremely difficult to market. People rock up in droves for shows with easily digestible elevator pitches, e.g., ‘Ethnic comedian does ethnic material for an hour’, ‘A show about Harry Potter but everyone is a bogan’, ‘That person whose clips you’ve seen on TikTok but live on stage’, ‘Just a series of jokes’, etc. This show? Vague as hell!
What are you most excited to share with Perth audiences through this show, and what do you hope people take away from it?
This is probably the most personal and political show I’ve written, and, honestly, a good chunk of the content won’t be for everyone. However, I’m hoping audiences will be able to look past the subjectivity—not to mention some questionable creative decisions—and just sit back and enjoy a good bit of weird character sketch comedy.