Riaad Moosa
Comedy And Culture

It was my grandfather that alerted me or made me conscious of the healing power of laughter because he constantly relieved tension around the house and within many different settings.

Comedy is interesting because comedy is essentially about survival. The spirit of comedy is about survivors taking traumatic experiences and, generally, difficulties within life or things that show your weakness and your imperfections and things that, under other circumstances, would be a great source of anxiety and celebrating that within a joke.

I always use this example because Wile Coyote is just trying to get the Road Runner and the Road Runner always outsmarts him. But the 'funny' comes from the fact that he's just continuously going out and trying to get the Road Runner and still, also, surviving that sort of heavy pain. That's how people laugh at pain, because it's about survival. 

It's about managing the pain and healing from it. A lot of people speak about the therapeutic nature of laughter.

First of all, you've got laughter - that's my base medicine. I mean standup comedy, and I need to somehow find ways to do that again, but there are so many other things. For example, breathing. You spoke about breathing. I don't know if you do cold therapy? Do you know Wim Hof? "Fall in. Let it go. Fall in. Let it go". This guy's breathing techniques are very beneficial to me.

Comedy is scary because it's a very humbling art form. You have to come from a very low place and understand that you're making yourself extremely vulnerable. There is nothing worse than getting a joke and not getting a response. It's horrible. Musicians are protected from this - you do get a response from the audience, but it's not as hard-hitting to your soul and your ego as not getting a laugh when you're trying to get one. It's extremely horrible and that's why it's scary.

For me, nobody can steal my material about a Muslim, former doctor with four kids. I mean, I talk about daily personal things, personal experiences that I don't think a lot of other people necessarily have. But at the same time, within that, there's a big framework that people can identify with. I talk about family dynamics a lot.

As human beings, we have all these guidance systems right within us that conflict. For example, you have your animal self, which says one thing, then you have your intellectual self that says something else and your heart, which tells you something else. And then you have your spirit or your 'rucha', as we put it, which is just something else, some other form of consciousness that also exists.

You have to have much more self-assurance and confidence because I was used to laughter but now it's 'LOL'. It's not the same. The problem is people type LOL but they don't even have the decency to laugh out loud. Like I know - I do it.

The main thing I find difficult now is not getting feedback, because that's how you learn to do comedy and I don't have a solution for that. So my solution for that is may be going to a little comedy club, trying out the new material there and then doing it in the virtual show.