Three Texas comedians joined Arts Access reporter Michelle Aslam to discuss how social norms have changed in the comedy world. Local Dallas-area comics Hector Sifuentes and Paul Varghese, along with Austin-based comic Yola Lu, shared their thoughts on doing accents on stage, trying out material at open-mics, and embracing the consequences.
We are going to start off with a question about where you think your sense of humor comes from. You guys all have different experiences and backgrounds, so I'm curious what your origin stories are.
Paul: Well, I'm not the funniest one in my family. But everybody else in my family kind of got, like, real jobs. And so by default, I kind of ended up doing it. My sense of humor is from them, it’s from being an outsider, really. I wasn't bullied or anything, but I definitely didn't fit in and still don't kind of fit in anywhere. And I just figured out that I'm able to see things from the perspective that most people probably don't, or at least admit to. And that's kind of where I got it from, I realized pretty early on that what it was I talking about onstage wasn't really being said on stage, and I just stuck with it.
Yola: For me, I would say I got it from a young age, seeing my dad. He was always really funny with people that he was around. Also, my mom has a pretty good sense of humor, too. I really got it from my parents.
Hector: The beginning of it, when I first, like, laughed at the TV screen, was when I was like nine. It was La Hora Derbez, Eugenio Derbez, a Mexican comic. He had a show kinda like the Chappelle show, Mexican skits. I remember I'd stay up on Fridays to watch these things. My big brother, we shared a room, so I watched what he watched, you know? I’d stay up late watching that and Otro Rollo, you know Mexican comedy on TV was elite in the early 2000s.
I imagine comedy is kind of similar to songwriting in that everyone has a different process and different sources of inspiration. I'm wondering if you guys can walk me through what your process looks like and how that ends up on the stage?
Paul: Specifically when I started, it was like, I'm Indian, let me talk about this. I just had like an open book about everything. But the older I get, the more I get into it, everything is kind of ridiculous to me. I'm not bitter, I think I'm more cynical than anything else. Like, anything anybody says is kind of ridiculous. And so for me, it's like inspiration is kind of nonstop. It's kind of overwhelming at certain points. But I write everything down. I used to carry notebooks with me, but that looks kind of really creepy walking in public and taking notes everywhere. It just looks kind of odd. So I'm just on my phone all the time.
Do you test your material with your friends and family? What does that look like?
Paul: I don't do that. I just do it in front of audiences.
Hector: That’s a rule, it’s like a personal rule, it’s weird.
Oh, is it?
Paul: Yeah, it's up to the audience, honestly. And that's why open mics are necessary and evil and humiliating and humbling.
Hector: I’m still learning, you know. I feel like I'm young in the game, I have a ways to go. I keep evolving the way that I write stuff. Like when I first started, I was like, Who am I? Where do I come from? What's going on with me? Why am I different or what’s funny? But I just think I come from storytellers. No one in my family's ever done, like, performance or, like, music or art that I know. But we have storytellers.
Yola: I kind of switched gears and was like, OK, I only wanted to talk about, like, my actual life now so that nobody had something, like, super similar to me. So I started talking about real experiences. Like in 2019, I experienced a miscarriage and I talk about that in my set. I just got divorced a few weeks ago, finalized it, and I also had to write that in my stand-up sets, too. So sometimes it's a little dark, but also at the same time it's, like, I don't see a lot of people with the same type of humor out there.
I remember when I was growing up, I'd watch like Hasan Minaj or Mindy Kaling talk about their own experiences on TV. I remember finding so much of their stuff hilarious because it was kind of rare for me to see people who, outside of my family, had experiences that were similar to mine. Whom did you look up to while you were growing up and why do you think you were drawn to them?
Paul: The one I identify with the most growing up was George Lopez, just because he was brown and talking about the immigrant experience. I'm sure if I started years later, it might be Russell Peters or Hasan. But back then, the closest I had was George Lopez. You know, a Hispanic guy talking about going to Mexico as a Chicano, as being born and raised in America. But like, my biggest influences ended up being the people that I started doing stand-up with. Those guys ended up influencing more than anything I ever saw on TV.
Yola: I actually didn't get into comedy until I was late in college and I never, like, my friends and I, never watched stand-up. English is my second language, and I would go to ESL and I would go home and my parents didn't speak English. But it wasn't until I watched Demetri Martin for the first time when I was in college, that I was like, “Oh my gosh, what is this? Like, how is this so funny?” And then I was just like, I want to try to do what this guy does. But I don’t know how.
Hector: Some of my inspirations, you know George Lopez, Bill Burr, Louis C.K., Dave Chappelle, of course. Just keep it 100, Ralph Barbosa. You know, he’s from Dallas, he’s young, and he's killing it. What a lot of people don’t realize is a lot of these comedians are hard workers, man. He's an inspiration to me. Just people on the scene, local comics are inspiring to me.
You'll hear younger people say that they find accents a little bit stereotypical and demeaning. But then you'll also hear people argue that, you know, these are features of people in our community. Of our family and our loved ones. And it's not something we should shy away from, because then we imply that there's something wrong with having one. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that.
Yola: I think accents, they’re not a bad thing. I do think that if you don't actually have an accent you shouldn't be putting one up just to make yourself more interesting. I personally don't do it because I don't know how. Because I'm just very terrible at it. But it is very hard to do an accent. I will say, like a respectable accent, it's very hard to do.
Paul: I think that's the key. If you're going to do it, it should be authentic. When I talk about my parents, the accent is very specific to that part of India. The accent should never be the butt of the joke. To say that an Indian accent is hacky is to say that the culture is hacky. Most of the time when non-Indian comics do the accent, they’re making fun of how Indians talk, that's disrespectful. But if you do an accent, it should be authentic. I mean, I think that's why Russell Peters connected so well when he was doing his East Asian accent. It was like an authentic Mandarin accent and it was respectful to the culture. Russell kind of brought, like, a depth to it.
Hector: I feel like if it’s funny, it’s funny. I mean, for example, in the U.S., we have different accents. I mean, we’re Texan and like, we don't realize we have an accent. There's accents all over the world. Like Paul said, there’s a way to do it. That’s why open-mics are important, that’s where you’ll find out if it’s funny or not.
So that's just one example of some of the generational conversations we're having. Younger people might not resonate with what older people think is funny. I'm curious if you guys have noticed any of those generational divides?
Paul: I'll say, I've had an argument with other Indian comics who feel like you shouldn't even talk about being Indian. They feel like just the concept of being Indian is kind of hack. I mean, it’s the culture. It's not like you chose to be Indian. The reason I think a lot of comedians are against accents is because they've only seen bad jokes that are just kind of like making fun of accents and belittling the culture. But there is a way to make it sincere if you really care enough about it.
Yola: Yeah, I agree with everything Paul said. I think at least in Austin, there has been this wave of people starting to do anti-woke comedy. And then especially with certain clubs that open up and things like that. And then a lot of people are just kind of jumping in, and they want to not be PC. You see a lot of comics that are like punching down, like they're always talking about, “Oh, I hate trans people or homeless people are gross.” And just like these really bad takes.
Hector: I hate commenting on other people’s material and saying if they’re funny or not. I feel like my favorite comics, you don’t even know where they stand politically. At the end of the day, who am I to judge? I feel like at the end of the day you have to respect everyone’s hustle, but that doesn’t mean you have to support them.
You’ll hear a lot of people say, “You can’t joke about anything these days.” I’m wondering if you’ve ever felt any kind of constraints on what you can and can’t joke about. Or maybe the opposite is true, are there things you can say now that you couldn’t at the beginning of your career?
Hector: Open-mics man, you gotta find out. Because sometimes you think something is funny, and someone wants to run you over after the show, you gotta figure out what happened. You can say anything you want, but you have no right to tell someone how they should feel. You just gotta deal with what comes with it.
Paul: People think freedom of speech is like freedom of consequence. You can say what you want, but they’re allowed to get mad, just like they’re allowed to laugh. I think there are a lot of comics that purposefully try to offend people, and it’s not genuine. They know they’re going to get likes or clicks or attention.
Yola: I would say the same thing. You can say whatever you want, but if you’re not getting booked you might need to look at what you’re talking about. You could just not be funny.
Finally, I’m curious, if you could go back in time to when you first started out and give yourself any piece of advice, what would it be?
Yola: Don’t sleep with comics.
Paul: For me, realize why you’re doing it. It’s easy to get caught up in narcissism. Stand-up kind of ruined me for a while, but I would have told myself early on that it’s not about me, it's about the audience.
Hector: I was timid, scared, you know. I was too fearful to find myself on stage. I feel like the day I realized just have fun with this, don’t take this too seriously, everything changed.
This interview has been edited down for clarity.
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