Standup comedy in Kosovo

(By Sputnik Kilambi)

Shazia Mirza: My name is Shazia Mirza, at least that’s what it says on my pilot’s license (laugh)

A controversial line in some places but British Muslim stand-up comedian Shazia Mirza never fails to elicit a bellyful of laughs. She performed in front of a wildly appreciative crowd in Prishtina last week and is certain to be welcomed back to Kosovo. An attractive and wickedly funny woman, Shazia is a rare species in the traditionally male dominated world of stand-up comedy. A second generation British Muslim, she has had to fight hard to make her way in the world of comedy. Her parents, traditional, orthodox Muslims who came to Britain from Pakistan in the 60s were totally opposed to their daughter going on stage. Shazia almost didn’t but when after years of working in a tough London East End school, she found that she could get across to the kids better through humour, she decided to go for it and that come what may, stand-up comedy would be her thing.

Shazia Mirza: I always wanted to be on the stage, but my parents wouldn’t let me because they were very strict orthodox Muslims; it would be unacceptable for a Muslim woman to be on stage. So I started to do it in secret while I was still teaching, I paid for myself to go to drama school. There were gigs in London which were underground, under pub and clubs, every evening I would go there and try out some jokes; I never told anybody I was doing it, it was all done in secret, my parents didn’t know, my family didn’t know.

Today, Shazia Mirza is in great demand; she’s performed the world over and has more performance requests she can handle. But the road to the top was long and hard.

Shazia Mirza: In England, most of the comedians are white and they are male, and they talk about the same things, sex, drugs and why the trains are late, nothing new, nothing groundbreaking, but those comedians get booked all the time, they get paid more money, at first, I was a novelty, because I was a woman and I was Muslim and then people saw me doing well and they got jealous, they stopped booking me, some Jewish bookers, they said we are not booking her, she is Muslim, others wouldn’t book me because they were white, male and they were jealous that I was becoming more successful than them, it takes courage to do something different.

More so when you go up on stage wearing the hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf. But Shazia has also rubbed Muslims up the wrong way, in Denmark, she recalls, she had to go on stage with two armed bodyguards after receiving death threats.

That being a Muslim in the post 9/11 world is difficult is probably one of the understatements of the day, but with comedy says Shazia, one has an advantage.

Shazia Mirza: As you can tell from my headdress, my hair is greasy but you know what, sometimes people say to me, why do you always dress like that, why do you wear that thing on your head, and it’s apparently because men are meant to be sexually attracted to hair but I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work, I’ve got hairy legs and no one goes near them

Shazia Mirza: I’ve got a website and sometimes I get some emails, and I had an email last week from a Muslim man, it said you do comedy, you’re a prostitute, well that was true, and I had to point out to him, prostitutes earn more money but what he doesn’t realize is I’m now using him as material so effectively he’s my pimp.

Shazia Mirza: People become very intimidated when I wear it, they become frightened, they have their perceptions, sometimes I want to say look I’m normal, I’m like everyone else, I wear it most of the time in England, and I’ve been wearing it here in Kosova as well I when I’ve been in Kosovo I haven’t seen one woman with a head scarf on but generally when you meet someone and they don’t anything about Muslims or about you, and they feel, oh my god, she must be really religious, she must be a fanatic and I just think oh god, this is ridiculous, I’m just normal.

Not surprisingly, she is outraged by the recent French decision to ban headscarves in schools.

Shazia Mirza: I think it’s ridiculous, what are you going to do now, stop all men from shaving their chests, it’s a personal choice, women should be able to do whatever they want, and so what if they’re wearing a head scarf, what does that mean, if you’re stopping women from wearing the head scarf what are going you to do with the Sikhs, stop them from wearing a turban, it’s real racism, discrimination and ignorance I think we need to put Jacques Chirac in a headscarf for a month and see how oppressed he is.

So where she does get her material from, how does she find the lines to provoke people into laughter from life she says, from her own life and experiences and there’s always someone in the audience who can relate to that

Shazia Mirza: My parents, you know, they want me to get married, and I’m quite looking forward to my wedding day, I cant wait to meet my husband my friend Julie says, how can you sleep with someone you don’t know, but she does it all the time.

Shazia Mirza: I want to push their buttons, I want to make them think, I want them to know a bit about my culture, my life, that they wouldn’t normally know about, sometimes people are shocked, like last night when I was doing the show, I could see men going, “ooh”, and I thought, this is men, 40 year old men in Kosova going ooh, they’ve never seen a Muslim woman, any woman doing comedy on stage and people laughing where the audience is predominantly male, Kosova is behind the times in terms of entertainment and culture and life and living the way they will move forward is through entertainment, and when they see entertainers coming from different countries, women, men, people of different cultures and religions and colour, that’s how they’ll learn a bit more.

Shazia Mirza’s now plans a trip to Pakistan, an experience that will probably give her even more material for comedy. She has also been a hit in the US, her dream she says is to work in Hollywood, make action films with George Clooney. Performing in the US was another kind of challenge especially in the wake of September 11, but Shazia is rarely fazed her take on customs control in the US of A:

Shazia Mirza: He said to me, I’ve got to ask you a series of questions, he said have you ever grown a beard I said I’m an Asian woman, of course I’ve grown a beard, he said how often do you have negative thoughts about the USA, I said everytime they attack someone, which is quite often he said are you affiliated with oil or money, well I said I’ve got a car and I’m not poor, does that make me a terrorist? my grandma, she’s in a wheelchair, she got stopped at customs and they looked at the wheelchair and they said, did you do that yourself, she said no, it was Allah’s will.

Standup comedian Shazia Mirza our guest on UNMIK ON AIR thanks for listening and a very happy 2004 to all our listeners.