Stand-up comic excited by mainland comedy potential
The few Chinese in the audience at Des Bishop's stand-up comedy show in a Melbourne bar are laughing - but whether with amusement or embarrassment as he mimics a Chinese accent isn't clear.
Bishop is convinced they enjoy it. "The Chinese like it because it means something to them and the Australian-born Chinese like it," he says. In fact, while the Melbourne crowd can be "overly concerned about political correctness", the Chinese aren't offended, he adds.
"There have been a couple of nights when the Australian people have said, 'Can you say that?'," Bishop admits of his recent profanity-laden Melbourne Comedy Festival show . Certainly this non-Chinese audience member is squirming as he tells anyone uncomfortable with his performance that "they love that sh** in China, they love us doing sh** versions of them".
The accent is "representative of the person I am talking to", he says, in the same way as he would use an Irish or Australian accent. "I'm not trying to do a fake Chinese accent."
Bishop, 38, who off stage is well-dressed and quietly spoken, grew up in New York until age 14 when his Irish-American parents sent him to school in Ireland. He stayed and, 24 years on, is a full-time comedian with his own small comedy venue in Dublin, The International Comedy Club.
But after spending the past year in China living with a family and learning Putonghua, he is now planning to spend another year in Beijing, where he has his own apartment, excited by the emerging stand-up comedy scene there.
His career has included documentary and television, incorporating stand-up. When making a documentary about minimum-wage workers in Ireland, he met many Chinese and when, in 2004, they went home for a visit, he went too. "Like most people, it was nothing like I had thought."
After making a television series about learning Irish for a year, Bishop realised the new horizons learning a language opened up. So he was commissioned to make a similar series in China about learning Chinese, committing a year to the project.
Entering on a student visa, he combined formal classes with his own off-the-books education, including travelling the mainland. Part of his show features the month he spent in a Heilongjiang town near the Russian border working as a greeter in a restaurant. Throughout, he performed stand-up in English for the camera about his experiences there. On his return to Beijing he will continue his monthly gig at an "expat hideaway", The Bookworm.
Bishop's Putonghua is fluent enough for him to take part in a Shanghai television dating show and talk about himself for almost half an hour - no young woman chose him because he "was too old" - but his stand-up is mostly in English.
"I can just do some bits in Chinese now," he says. "I am quite good at off-the-cuff in Chinese with the crowd and nobody else does it, but I am still not good at the proper bits." Being able to perform in fluent Chinese is a goal for the next year.
Censorship on the mainland means official gigs must be applied for and the script approved. The kind of improvisation that is the lifeblood of stand-up is out of the question. But members of the small underground Beijing comedy scene who call themselves the Beijing Comedy Club are beginning to book venues and apply for official gigs, Bishop says. He foresees exciting times ahead and a more relaxed attitude, perhaps even a comedy club developing.
"People in China know what they can and cannot say, so really there would be nothing to fear," he says. "For example, you can joke about pollution now because it is clearly in the public sphere of what you are allowed to say. You can joke about Bo Xilai because that is a big story. You can joke about elements of the campaign against corruption.
"But as it matures, people will want to explore things creatively. Right now it is not an issue. These guys are all being careful."
Meanwhile, Bishop will continue to do the major Western comedy festivals from his Beijing base and, if the script of this show is to be believed, pursue his goal of marrying a Chinese girl.
