Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.04.2015, Síða 19

was strange having to be so attentive at
a show. I couldn’t understand the lan-
guage so I needed to try and absorb as
much as I could: intonation, body lan-
guage, timing, and facial expressions.
You start to pick up nouns, places, and
verbal ticks, but if you really watch it
doesn’t matter too much. You can feel
comedy.
The next big event featured famous
cartoonist turned stand-up comic Hu-
gleikur Dagsson at Húrra, a hip night-
spot. Also on the show was Þórdís Nadia
Semichat, a founder of the girls’ scene.
Her plunge into stand-up was the usual
tale of a belly-dancer-turned-comedian.
“I started belly-dancing when I was
around 20,” said Nadia. “I’m shy and
when I was younger I was even worse.
I found myself through dancing. It made
being on stage a lot easier. I discovered I
had charisma on stage that I didn’t have
in real life.”
At the Húrra show, Nadia comes onto
stage dancing—bursting with charisma.
Once she starts speaking, the pace is
slowed, controlled. She shifts from a still
motionless face to a large smile in time
with her jokes. I can see the belly-danc-
ing influence in her stage presence and
body control—everything seems finely
tuned.
“Mið-Ísland was something so
fresh,” said Nadia. “It was young guys
doing comedy rather than middle-aged
actors. I was just disappointed there
were no women, so I started recruiting
some girls to do stand-up. I planned a fe-
male stand-up show, and everyone was
like ‘yeah!’ but then no one wanted to do
it. They wanted someone else to do it. I
never considered myself to be funny, but
I decided fuck it, somebody has to do it.”
The show at Húrra was Nadia’s re-
turn to stand-up after a two-year break.
She had been doing corporate shows
(company parties and dinners), but they
left her feeling uninspired. However, in
the last six months, stand-up in Iceland
has started another boom: more shows,
more comedians, more interest.
The founders may have started the new
scene, but it’s snowballing into some-
thing even bigger.
The Alternative Scene:
Hugleikur Dagsson and
Anna Svava
In such a new and relatively small scene,
it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek to talk
about a couple people as the “Alterna-
tive Scene”—especially when Hugleikur
Dagsson is Ari’s cousin. The shows are
different, though. Still polished, still
affecting, but a different vibe, slower
paced and unapologetically personal.
Hugleikur, a regular Grapevine contrib-
utor, has a big following as a cartoonist
and Über-nerd. He knows himself. He
wears a suit with Converse All-Stars. He
has messy black hair and dark-rimmed
glasses. His laugh is infectious and his
smile stretches across his face like the
If you are reading this, and you don’t
speak Icelandic, you probably don’t
believe that it could be enjoyable
to watch something in a language
you don’t understand. I’ve invited
English-speaking friends to comedy
shows and many times they can’t
focus or they give up and leave. It
is definitely a different experience,
and requires a way more active ap-
proach to watching the show. At first
it’s overwhelming, or underwhelm-
ing, you’re not sure exactly what to
focus on or what’s happening. You’ll
always be slower and laugh less—you
don’t get the luxury of knowing what
the comedians are saying—but your
awareness shifts and you begin have
a connection with the performer.
The intonations are universal. The
body language. The emotions. Then
it happens, your first guttural non-
controlled laugh. It seems out of
place, like burping underwater. How
did it happen?
“It’s called the ‘Family Guy’ ex-
perience,” said Ari. “I think 90%
of the laughs ‘Family Guy’ gets are
from rhythm and timing and nobody
gets the references—usually obscure
80s television or a country star from
the 60s.”
Eddie Izzard more than any
other comedian would have insight
into comedy in different languages.
He performs stand up in German,
French and English, with plans to
do it in Spanish, Russian, and Arabic.
Izzard doesn’t believe in German
humour or French humour. He be-
lieves humour is at base universal. I
had the opportunity to ask him about
this after his Force Majeure Show at
Harpa on March 28, 2015.
“I found that in English punch-
lines tend to be nouns,” said Izzard.
“I hit him with a kettle. I hit him
with a kipper. It’s all something
that’s at the end of a sentence and it’s
a noun. The example I gave on stage
today was, ‘Caesar, did he ever think
he’d end up as a salad?’ Salad is the
silly item, so salad releases the laugh.
In German it goes, ‘Caesar, hätte nie
gedacht (“did he ever think”), dass er
einmal (“that he one time”), als Salat
enden würde (“as salad end up would
have”).’ The verb comes right behind
the noun and so you don’t have time
to go, ‘well, what are you doing with
that noun then?’ It’s a split second
behind it. I thought there would be
a whole trick to doing different lan-
guages. There isn’t. It’s just timing.”
Izzard did his Martin Luther-
nailing-complaints-on-the-church-
door bit entirely in German, but the
audience, including me, was still
laughing the whole time. His deliv-
ery was flawless.
Dóri does a great joke that is both
in Icelandic and makes a reference
that I don’t get. The timing is the
trick to its effectiveness, though, and
the rhyming triple-noun punchline.
"Ég vil gera sjónvarpsþáttaröð
um tvo sjónvarpsmenn sem fara sa-
man í meðferð. Þátturinn heitir Bógi
og Logi á Vogi.” (“I want to make a
TV series about two news anchors
who go to rehab together. It’ll be
called Bogi and Logi at Vogur”).
If you write this out phonetically
it’s:
Yeahgh wihl gyerah shown-
warpsthauttaruh-th uhm twoh
shownwarps-menn sehm fah-rah
sah-mahn eee methferdh. Thowt-
tuh-rinn hayetir Boh-yi ohg Loh-yi
ow voh-yi.
While you’re reading it out, add
timing to it, which is broken down
like this:
Ég vil gera sjónvarpsþáttaröð
(Duh duh duh da da da), um tvo
sjónvarpsmenn sem fara saman í
meðferð (duh duh dadada da da da
da duh duh), Þátturinn heitir (duh
duh), Bogi og Logi á Vogi (DaDa a
DaDa a DADA *punchline rhythm*).
If you listen to the rhythm, you
can tell it’s meant to be funny. Like
Eddie Izzard said, it’s just timing.
A Note On Watching
Stand-up In A
Different Language
With Advice From
Eddie Izzard
19
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 4 — 2014
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Photo by Gabrielle Motola