Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Comedy in Berlin 2
Comedy in Berlin 2
Most Germans I spoke to have great shame about the Holocaust. The Jewish Museum was filled with school tours. It seems to me that young Germans are fully aware of the atrocities that happened. However, I couldn’t find one person who heard what happened during World War 2 first hand from their grandparents. “They just don’t talk about it.”
I did my “Let’s REALLY talk about what happened” set at a local comedy club on English-speaking night. The evening started with Kim who is a cabaret singer from Australia who was very charming. Then Tamara Augustin-Ingram, a black American comic did a great set about being black in Germany. It was interesting as Germans don’t have a “Ghetto Rap” culture, but they know all about it from TV. Turn on German TV and there is everything from Chris Rock to the Nanny duped in German. And if you thought “The Nanny” was annoying in English…But they loved Tamara who I met when she attended the California Comedy Conference in Palm Springs.(And some of you think it’s too far to go from the Valley.) Also, performing was another American comic Robert Lyons who is from Kansas and came to Germany to become a soap opera star. He did a great five minute set. Next it was my turn.
When Germans find out someone is Jewish, they usually make a point of being very nice and will pick up the check at a restaurant. I guess it’s sort of an apology. "Sorry about killing six million of your relatives let me pay for your schnitzel."
It was a shocker to them when I opened the show with this routine: “I’ve had a wonderful uplifting time in Berlin. I went to the Jewish museum, then to the holocaust tower, and on to a tour of a concentration camp. Then I when to a Brecht play about Waiting for Death. I’m thinking that a perfect end to this holiday will be a suicide. That’s the last time I book my travels via Kafka.com.”
There was a silence as if no one wanted to be the first to laugh at a joke containing the word “concentration camp,” and then they fell on the floor in laughter. I had to explain to the audience that being Jewish, it was “OK for me to joke” about my experience and I gave them permission to laugh. Once I explained the rules (Germans love rules), not speaking modestly, I tore the place apart.
All comics should travel. It gave me a new perceptive on being an American. So much we do, we don’t realize it, but we are being “American.” And that isn’t normal to other people. Being in another country, I finally truly understood the meaning of a comic’s “Point of View.”
More on Point of View and Premises in the next blog.
Most Germans I spoke to have great shame about the Holocaust. The Jewish Museum was filled with school tours. It seems to me that young Germans are fully aware of the atrocities that happened. However, I couldn’t find one person who heard what happened during World War 2 first hand from their grandparents. “They just don’t talk about it.”
I did my “Let’s REALLY talk about what happened” set at a local comedy club on English-speaking night. The evening started with Kim who is a cabaret singer from Australia who was very charming. Then Tamara Augustin-Ingram, a black American comic did a great set about being black in Germany. It was interesting as Germans don’t have a “Ghetto Rap” culture, but they know all about it from TV. Turn on German TV and there is everything from Chris Rock to the Nanny duped in German. And if you thought “The Nanny” was annoying in English…But they loved Tamara who I met when she attended the California Comedy Conference in Palm Springs.(And some of you think it’s too far to go from the Valley.) Also, performing was another American comic Robert Lyons who is from Kansas and came to Germany to become a soap opera star. He did a great five minute set. Next it was my turn.
When Germans find out someone is Jewish, they usually make a point of being very nice and will pick up the check at a restaurant. I guess it’s sort of an apology. "Sorry about killing six million of your relatives let me pay for your schnitzel."
It was a shocker to them when I opened the show with this routine: “I’ve had a wonderful uplifting time in Berlin. I went to the Jewish museum, then to the holocaust tower, and on to a tour of a concentration camp. Then I when to a Brecht play about Waiting for Death. I’m thinking that a perfect end to this holiday will be a suicide. That’s the last time I book my travels via Kafka.com.”
There was a silence as if no one wanted to be the first to laugh at a joke containing the word “concentration camp,” and then they fell on the floor in laughter. I had to explain to the audience that being Jewish, it was “OK for me to joke” about my experience and I gave them permission to laugh. Once I explained the rules (Germans love rules), not speaking modestly, I tore the place apart.
All comics should travel. It gave me a new perceptive on being an American. So much we do, we don’t realize it, but we are being “American.” And that isn’t normal to other people. Being in another country, I finally truly understood the meaning of a comic’s “Point of View.”
More on Point of View and Premises in the next blog.
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Judy I hear you peform comedy because you have a very disfunctional family life that you never came to terms with......keep up the good work hiding behind your worthlessness with comedy and keep on abusing those young boys! They will only suffer for life!
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