“Funny is funny everywhere,” Ashwyn Singh says.
And he would know. The comic and UW alum is currently on his international tour Wrong Singh to Say, which has tour dates planned across Canada, the United Kingdom, and India, with Singh due to perform in Waterloo on Oct. 19. His current goal is for the tour to be recorded during its Bangalore stop and posted (likely to YouTube) next year.
“At the center of my comedy is a desire to be understood,” Singh says. “You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to agree with it. But you have to accept that a point of view other than yours exists in the world, and the people that have it are not inferior to you.”
Singh’s comedy covers a wide range of topics, from friendships to global politics, parents to religion. When asked whether the differing cultural contexts affect his sets in each location, Singh acknowledges that certain audiences are more receptive to certain topics, joking that fat-shaming is far less of a thing in India “because your family will tell you exactly how much weight you’ve gained” since last seeing them.
But while Singh may edit certain jokes so that they are received better in countries more sensitive to those topics, he says the material generally revolves around similar ideas. “I never really was restricted… all of my material is about very heady things like all of the racism, sexism, all of the isms,” he says, “and then with usually a minor ode to freedom of speech and crumbling democracies.”
Though his comedy has “truly no end goal,” he enjoys expressing his observations on different, at times uncomfortable subjects. “I want to talk about reality, not escape it.”
Such a drive is visible in his sets today. In one of his most viral reels, garnering over three million views, Singh quips that “America being afraid of terrorism is like the British being afraid they’re going to be colonized, or Israel being afraid their land’s gonna be stolen.” Rather than backing down from topics that can make viewers uncomfortable, he views those conversations as ones still important to confront, recalling how he would bring attention at family gatherings to the events of the day that seemingly no one wanted to discuss.
Having grown up in India, Singh chose to come to Canada to study computer science at UW, a decision motivated by his desire to meet new people “with different worldviews, different cultures, and different philosophies.” Singh’s time at UW took him to Apple, where during his first internship there, he attended a standup show. After this, he began performing monthly, eventually working his way up to comedy as a full-time occupation.
“People ask how I convinced my parents,” he laughs, explaining that he’s never really been one to ask permission first. Instead, he kept doing shows before presenting his parents with a plan for how his comedy occupation would cover his expenses. Now, Singh’s parents have attended many of his shows, though he says their presence in the audience doesn’t necessarily impact the jokes he makes in his set. “In comedy you’re in the moment, you’re not thinking about how people receive you.”
Singh refers to the time he came to UW as the “safe space” generation, something he feels exists less and less. He recalls his time at UW as one where he learned to “stand up and fight for [himself] when [he] felt like something wasn’t right.”
“If the truth makes you uncomfortable, perhaps it is supposed to,” he says, joking that he’s become “less annoying” now that he has an outlet to address those conversations.
To Singh, that work is a key part of his effect. He notes the difference between art and entertainment: the latter being a form of escapism, the former an emphasis on self-expression. Singh views his work as veering closer to art, which he says changes based on the artist. “So an audience at a comedy show is not always right — you might be there to escape your life, but I am still trying to live mine… In this way, every show is a negotiation between what I want to say, and what the audience wants to hear. The objective is to say enough of what they want to hear, that they’ll let me say what I want to say.”
