Juliana Heng: Common Ground and Silver Linings

Though Ms. Rona (COVID-19, for those who are not on such famil­iar terms with her) has cre­at­ed a lot of strife in the com­e­dy world, one par­tic­u­lar­ly glow­ing sil­ver lin­ing has been the way that vir­tu­al com­e­dy spaces have risen up, bridg­ing the geo­graph­i­cal dis­tance between cre­ators and audi­ences across the world. I will not thank Ms.Rona for much (though I admit that quar­an­tine free­time led me to my won­der­ful new­found hob­by: bird­ing), but if not for the pan­dem­ic, we per­haps would not have so soon become acquaint­ed with Juliana Heng — an ear­ly but ris­ing tal­ent hail­ing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Watch­ing Heng’s vir­tu­al per­for­mances, there’s a spe­cial charm that imme­di­ate­ly strikes you. They (Heng’s pro­noun, as a non-bina­ry indi­vid­ual) emanate such per­son­al joy in their per­for­mances that it is almost as if they don’t need the audi­ence, but are rather allow­ing the audi­ence in to laugh along with them. And it is indeed a priv­i­lege to laugh along with them.

Of course, start­ing com­e­dy in Kuala Lumpur is quite a dif­fer­ent feat than start­ing in Austin, Texas. As Heng explained, com­e­dy is still nascent in Malaysia, com­pared to many oth­er coun­tries. When Malaysians want to do some­thing enter­tain­ing after a hard week at work, they often turn to movies, the­ater, maybe karaōke. But thanks to fore­moth­ers and fore­fa­thers like Harith Iskan­der and Joanne Kam, the com­e­dy infra­struc­ture in Malaysia today (fea­tur­ing two com­e­dy clubs and a hand­ful of inde­pen­dent show pro­duc­ers) is a vast improve­ment from what it was even fif­teen years ago. ​“We are try­ing to work towards a direc­tion where com­e­dy will become some­thing like, ​‘Hey, let’s go to the cin­e­ma,’” Heng says. ​“You know, we want it to be that common.”

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, com­e­dy was not love at first sight for Heng; it wasn’t even love at sec­ond sight. Though Heng recalls first attend­ing a com­e­dy show in 2011 — a reward from their boss to make up for a stress­ful sea­son of char­tered account­ing — it took a small career cri­sis before Heng was enticed to get up on stage. But, sure enough, as Heng began to resent their increas­ing­ly bor­ing and mean­ing­less job, their eyes start­ed to wan­der for new oppor­tu­ni­ties. For Heng, oppor­tu­ni­ty appeared in the form of a bright orange fly­er at the train sta­tion that read ​“Stand-up com­e­dy, new­bies wel­come!” And with that, their fate was sealed. Plus, Heng couldn’t turn away from the bar­gain: Do three min­utes onstage, get in free? Sign them up!

Always a bit of a lon­er, Heng felt espe­cial­ly drawn to com­e­dy for its pow­er to con­nect peo­ple. ​“The audi­ence are all strangers, they all come from dif­fer­ent walks of life, and they only meet each oth­er in the com­e­dy club,” Heng mus­es, ​“but the moment some­one tells a joke and the audi­ence laughs, by the end of the open mic or even the com­e­dy show, they become friends.”

Not only that, but com­e­dy cre­at­ed new rea­sons to trav­el — tak­ing Heng through­out the regions of Malaysia, as well as to Sin­ga­pore, Thai­land, and the Unit­ed King­dom. Of course, just when Heng thought that 2020 would be anoth­er year for trav­el­ing and doing com­e­dy, Ms. Rona had oth­er ideas. Mer­ci­ful­ly, the vir­tu­al com­e­dy space rose up to cush­ion the blow. Ever the one to find the sil­ver lin­ing, Heng con­tends that vir­tu­al rooms tru­ly make tour­ing acces­si­ble for all walks of come­di­ans, even those with day jobs or tight bud­gets: no flight tick­ets nec­es­sary, just a lap­top and an inter­net con­nec­tion. Being on the autism spec­trum, Heng spec­u­lates that their own neu­ro­di­ver­gence may make it even eas­i­er to embrace Zoom com­e­dy as an alter­na­tive to live shows: ​“I look at the audi­ence and have to assume they are the best audi­ence. I can’t tell if they are hav­ing a bad day. Can’t tell the dif­fer­ence.”

Still, as many come­di­ans even­tu­al­ly do, Heng hit a slump. Fail­ing to get booked like oth­ers around them, they won­dered if com­e­dy was a pipe dream after all. Instead, they decid­ed to return to an old­er hob­by and tal­ent of theirs: poet­ry. With the pres­sure to be fun­ny out of the way, Heng wrote the poem ​“AUsome” — an intro­spec­tive deep dive into their rela­tion­ship with autism. Through this poem — which is fea­tured in Heng’s one-hour med­ley show Walk­ing on Spec­trum — Heng real­ized that these more per­son­al top­ics could be trans­lat­ed into their com­e­dy. ​“The poet­ry [was] like the set­up,” Heng reflects, “ and I just need[ed] to look for the punch­lines.” Of course, though Heng views poet­ry as the cat­a­lyst for their com­e­dy come­back, they also con­tin­ue to val­ue poet­ry in its own right: ​“It’s ther­a­peu­tic. And it allows me to be real. And I don’t need to joke around my cir­cum­stances, if I’m not ready to.”

Heng’s spe­cial has been fea­tured at fes­ti­vals in Aus­tralia, New Zealand, and New York. See­ing the favor­able reac­tion from audi­ences off the spec­trum and from the oth­er side of the globe, Heng dis­cov­ered how much com­mon ground can be found between peo­ple, despite our dif­fer­ences and idio­syn­crasies: ​“Turns out our expe­ri­ences are pret­ty uni­ver­sal, after all,” Heng says. Fea­tur­ing com­e­dy, spo­ken word poet­ry, and sto­ry­telling, the med­ley is what tru­ly makes Heng’s spe­cial, well, spe­cial, but it also allows Heng to bal­ance enter­tain­ment and hon­esty. For the more har­row­ing per­son­al top­ics, Heng relies on the spo­ken word, while the com­e­dy is the ​“spoon­ful of sug­ar,” as Heng puts it.

Cre­at­ing aware­ness through com­e­dy is espe­cial­ly impor­tant to Heng ​“because in Malaysia, men­tal health is pret­ty taboo still … Peo­ple don’t talk open­ly about depres­sion, … ADHD, these are all pret­ty taboo … And then we pre­tend to live a nor­mal life because, as Asians, we usu­al­ly want to por­tray just the pos­i­tive façade of our life.” Heng has grap­pled with this lack of aware­ness first­hand when acknowl­edg­ing their own autism in front of Malaysian audi­ences, find­ing that the audi­ences either refuse to believe, or they tune out, mis­tak­en­ly attribut­ing Heng with the men­tal age of a child. Through their mate­r­i­al, Heng hopes to spark con­ver­sa­tion about these top­ics — from men­tal ill­ness, to autism, to queer­ness — ulti­mate­ly aid­ing in their demys­ti­fi­ca­tion and des­tigma­ti­za­tion.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, at the time of Valerie’s inter­view with Heng, Malaysia was under­go­ing its third lock­down. But, in the theme of find­ing sil­ver lin­ings, Heng choos­es to see the lock­down as a prepa­ra­tion phase — a time to sow seeds and water them. For Heng, that means per­form­ing more vir­tu­al com­e­dy, writ­ing, work­shop­ping mate­r­i­al, read­ing books, and study­ing act­ing (because they love watch­ing Kore­an dra­mas). ​“Although it is hell,” Heng admits, ​“I still want to make a par­adise out of hell.”

And with front row seats (from the com­fort of our liv­ing rooms!) to see tal­ent­ed, farflung comics like Heng, even when we’re oceans apart, we’re find­ing it pret­ty easy to see the bright sides and spoon­fuls of sug­ar, too.

Want to know more about com­e­dy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia?

Heng’s rec­om­men­da­tions for comics to check out from Malaysia include: Shaq Munisamy and Garu Rumon. They also men­tioned the very famous Harith Iskan­der and Joanne Kam who are the god­fa­ther and god­moth­er of Malaysian com­e­dy, respectively. 

Heng wants us to know that Malaysia has a rel­a­tive­ly young com­e­dy scene, but it is begin­ning to hit its stride.

Fol­low Juliana

• Web­site — mxju​liana​heng​.com
• Insta­gram — @mxjulianaheng
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​m​x​j​u​l​i​a​n​aheng
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​m​x​j​u​l​i​a​n​aheng

Juliana can be seen and heard:

• I Laugh KL — In per­son and online show­case pro­duced by Juliana
• Walk­ing On Spec­trum — writ­ten, pro­duced, and fea­tur­ing Juliana com­e­dy and poetry