Photo: RNZ
When Summer Xia and Annie Guo came to New Zealand, performing in front of a crowd was certainly nowhere in their 'model minority' dreams, but not taking themselves too seriously helped with their Kiwi orientation experience. Roasting friends, family and their new immigrant selves eventually led them to the world of standup comedy.
In this second part to Accidental Comics, Annie Guo and Summer Xia speak to Kadambari Raghukumar about what humour is to them; how it manifests in their bilingual brains and question when jokes on our collective immigrant experience run out of steam.
"This immigrant experience is probably one-third or more than one-third of my life experience. So later on, when I questioned myself probably more than 100 times, I decided to just embrace it. You exhaust the material, and you make yourself more familiar with your audience," said Summer.
Photo: Supplied
"I asked that question to myself too in the beginning. It's like, oh, I'm talking about being Chinese, being female again. But then I asked myself, what else can I be? Do I talk about being, I don't know, South Waikato white Kiwi dude? No, that's not me, right?" said Annie Guo about finding the funny in her NZ experience.
"I think the more I do stand up, I feel like I'm more genuine with my jokes. I turn all my experiences into jokes on the stage because I love talking about it."
Photo: Elisa Bonnafous
"Because my work and my family environment here in New Zealand is all in English, it's just natural to write and to express in English. But we had this, bilingual stand up comedy club and we are asked to emcee and sometimes to tell jokes in Chinese. That was a huge challenge for me," said Summer.
They both take to the stage at the NZ International Comedy Festival this May, to share their jokes on navigating life as first-gen Chinese immigrants in New Zealand.
"I think it's amazing, the fact of both of us here talking about our shows and talking about our experience, we see similarities, we see differences. I think it's just a chance and opportunity to show the population of New Zealand itself is getting more diverse every day and art and the culture should reflect the the population," said Summer about the NZ International Comedy Festival.
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