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Interview: Aravind ‘SA’ (I Was Not Ready Da)
Posted on November 30, 2020
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13 Responses “Interview: Aravind ‘SA’ (I Was Not Ready Da)” →
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Yajiv
November 30, 2020
So this was really interesting. I caught “I was not Ready da” live while SA was on tour (back in early 2018) and found it to be extremely entertaining. There was a lot of audience interaction and every joke landed, it was zinger after zinger. I laughed my butt off for a couple of hours.
Cut to 2 years later and I maybe chuckled twice during this special on Amazon Prime, despite it being the exact same stand-up set. Not sure if it was my personal overfamiliarity with the jokes or the energy getting lost on OTT (vs live performance).
Anyway, I’m looking forward to this interview regardless. Good to see BR doing live interviews again.
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Anonymous Violin
December 1, 2020
@Yajiv
Personally, I think it’s the atmosphere. You’ve got lots of people sitting and laughing around you, which imo ups the chances of you laughing out loud compared to sitting alone in your room. There’s probably also something to be said about the energy of live interaction that doesn’t carry over to recordings or streaming.
I’ve watched an opera live, and I can tell you that it’s far more entertaining that way than watching a recording of it.
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Yajiv
December 1, 2020
@Anonymous Violin:
You’re probably right. Hah yes I’ve watched opera live as well, I found that I really enjoyed the art form (despite making fun of fat old sopranos singing overdramatic arias during my school days). The same could be said about a lot of stage plays as well. They often come off as loud and over-the-top on screen, you don’t feel the direct connect/energy that you do on a live performance.
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brangan
December 1, 2020
The interview is up.
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abishekspeare
December 1, 2020
I think it’s like watching sitcoms like friends where you need someone else laughing to find it funny. Watching this on prime I didn’t like it at all. Same with Baggy’s show. There are some that do work for me though, like Alex(but it’s not really a set of ‘jokes’).
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Anonymous Violin
December 1, 2020
I really liked how he articulated the difference between other forms of comedy in TN vs the nascent stand up comedy industry (the idea of a coherent show and personality vs just a set of jokes).
@Yajiv:
Yes, I agree on both counts. Which opera did you watch btw? I saw Carmen.
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Yajiv
December 2, 2020
@Anonymous Violin:
I saw La Boheme (as an adult) and really loved it. Would love to catch Carmen sometime too. I’ve heard that it has a lot of moral complexity & grey characters. rare in a work of its age.
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Anon
December 3, 2020
Watched the interview, as usual great conversation! I agree with the comments. Check out this review of SA’s special:
https://shruthi-su.medium.com/it-was-just-not-ready-da-aravind-sa-af40356dfbdc
talks exactly about the live vs recorded performance that @Yajiv mentions
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Rambo
December 3, 2020
There is definitely a difference between live and recorded experience when it comes to stand-up shows. Having said that, I saw SA’s first tour live and it was really good because there was a boyish charm to his humour and he hugged his south indian , chennai roots – that really hit home well. This time he has tried to come across more mature (and he has matured) and has strayed from the tamil/chennai roots as he doesn’t want to be pigeon holed as he says early on. Think that persona doesn’t really go as well with the type of jokes/situations he is trying to bring across. Even if it wasn’t as good as his first, still an entertaining watch.
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Jallikattu lover
December 5, 2020
In India, the comedians both North and South, switch to the local language when it comes to delivering the punchline to make sure the audience ‘gets it’ (read: pandering) or use an expletive as an exclamation mark ( read : BC, MC or or Loosu Koo) to get a cheap laugh. SA is NO different from these North Indian comedians.
The same cultural thing that alienates us from watching their comedy, I guess alienates them too. And, the cultural divide (read: the Vindhyas) still stands.
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Dora
December 6, 2020
It is hard to accept that comedy is funny only when you are pressured into laughing because the folks next to you are doing that. If that is the case, why do Senthil/Goundamani/Vadivelu comedies get a bazillion views in YouTube? Even thinking about MMKR or karakattakaran makes me giggle, why? why was Alex in wonderland such a mega hit, to the extent that it was appreciated by even blue sattai Maran?
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shaviswa
December 7, 2020
And why is stand-up comedy a license to use foul words? Alex has been pretty clean and his stand-ups are enjoyable (although becoming a bit repetitive these days). And as Dora said, Alex in Wonderland was pretty enjoyable on OTT.
Stand-up comedy needs to come out of this fixation to use f*** words and sexual innuendos. you can be genuinely funny and entertaining without resorting to it.
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Ravi K
December 9, 2020
There’s nothing inherently wrong with cursing and sexual innuendos. But a lot of the Indian stand-ups I’ve seen curse or use lewdness in a way that doesn’t enhance the jokes, as if they’re being dirty just for the sake of being dirty because they’re allowed to do so. Sometimes a curse word is the best word for a joke, but you don’t want to dilute the impact of it by overusing it.
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