Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.05.2019, Page 16

16 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 08— 2019
Mic on, mic off
The world of stand-up found its way
to Ari in May 2009, when his friends
Bergur Ebbi and Dóri DNA were putting
on a stand-up show at Prikið. At the
time, there was virtually no comedy
scene in Reykjavík, so putting on shows
was a very DIY, grassroots endeavour.
“I was interested to see how it would
go because I’d always been think-
ing about it since I lived in England
in 2005 and 2006,” he says. “I did go
once or twice to some comedy nights.
I remember watching and being like,
‘Oh, it’s interesting. It’s possible to do
this.’ I always thought it was not possi-
ble. I just thought, ‘Surely there must
be some Karate Kid process. You have
to wax some cars before you can actu-
ally do that.’”
With a backlog of ideas and bits,
he threw himself into the ring to
perform at their next event and, two
weeks later, he was standing in front
of a packed room at the now defunct
bar Karamba. “And I talked really fast,
so fast,” he laughs. “I remember feel-
ing like, ‘My god. One is allowed to do
this. This is possible!’ I think it helped
me immensely that I didn’t try it until I
was 27. So I’d been around the block, so
to speak. I had some experiences.”
That year proved quite busy for
Ari. He did more comedy events with
his friends in the comedy group Mið-
Ísland, received private bookings,
recorded a comedy album, and wrote
the Áramótaskaup for the first time.
“I had a couple of sketches that trav-
elled a lot,” he says about the album.
“One was a sketch about [famous
Icelandic musician] Bubbi Morth-
ens with an impression of him. A
lot of people were telling me, ‘You
have to hear this Bubbi segment
from the radio, it’s really funny! You
should do an impression of that!’ I’d
say, ‘That’s me. That’s the sketch.’”
Heroes and
gong shows
In 2010, he made his next foray into
television writing the short-lived
series Hlemmavídeó with Hugleikur
Dagsson and his comedic hero, Sigur-
jón Kjartansson, from the local cult
series Fóstbræður.
“It didn’t get a great reception,” he
admits matter-of-factly. “It’s pretty
much gone and forgotten today. It was
a really strange and flawed series but it
had some moments of brilliance in it.
And I got to work with Sigurjón, which
was a dream come true for me.”
Ari also began to branch out over-
seas that year, taking his observational
bit comedy to London thanks to the
help of an acquaintance, Snorri Hergill
Kristjánsson, who hooked him up with
open spots and local comedy contest
slots.
“I’d been doing comedy for just
under a year then and I did my first
English material there,” Ari says. “I
remember doing that just to challenge
myself. I wound up at the King Gong
Show at the Comedy Store. It went
really well until I finished my mate-
rial and then I stood onstage while they
booed me for twenty seconds and then
I got gonged three seconds before five
minutes. It was a nasty crowd.”
This public devastation was enough
to keep Ari from venturing back to
the UK for the better part of a decade.
However soon after, he met Finn-
ish comedian André Wickström,
who brought him over to Finland
to perform, which led to subse-
quent shows in Norway, Sweden, and
Denmark.
“I sort of practiced my mate-
rial there, and as a result it became
a lot about Nordic countries but in
English,” he says. “It’s originally just
Nordic material, but I just decided
that I didn’t assume that people knew
all the references. I’m just gonna do a
version where you don’t have to know
anything about the country. It’s fun to
get away with telling a very local joke
and explaining it enough that you don’t
really need to know anything about the
countries.”
The world’s
stage
This style of Nordic observations in
a universal setting gradually became
Ari’s international brand, which over
the years he has refined and developed
into a one-hour show that he took to
the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017.
Almost immediately upon starting this
run, he was spotted and picked up by
the prominent Mick Perrin Worldwide
agency, which led to Ari being invited
to play the Soho Theatre in London and
the Melbourne International Comedy
Festival in 2018.
“It was just fantastic to get an invite
from Australia, because the festival
brings a certain number of interna-
tional acts and produces them them-
selves, whereas in Edinburgh you
produce yourself,” he says. “It was one
of the greatest trips of my life. Just
crazy. I’d never been so far away. And
the jetlag—wow! I used to work as a
flight attendant but I didn’t really know
what jetlag was.”
“You get to meet so many comedi-
ans at these festivals, and you realise
just how many great comedians are out
there that you might have never heard
of otherwise,” he continues. “You hear
so many interesting stories and see
their perspective on gigging. And then
you find out that you know a lot of the
same people. It just evolves from there.”
The craft of
comedy
Although he performs consistently in
English, Ari adamantly writes in his
native Icelandic. “I’m just way quicker
at realising if something is funny in
Icelandic,” he says. “I write in Icelan-
dic, and then I translate it. Very little
of my English stuff has been written in
English only. I don’t have any bits that
are conceived and performed only in
English. Part of my writing process is
just trying to work myself up to find-
ing stuff that’s funny in Icelandic. And
then you kind of have to filter out what
is completely local.”
Developing his writing habits has
also been an ongoing process of fine-
tuning, which he still doesn’t feel he
has truly mastered. “I go through a
period of not writing much and then I
will have a really good run of writing,”
he says. “My preferred or default way of
writing is just talking a lot and at some
point I come up with something clever
and then I just write that down. Then
I start repeating it and fixing it and
adding to it.”
He admits that he is a perfectionist,
to which he attributes much of the lack
of available media of his work online. “I
suffer heavily from that, and as a result
my output tends to suffer,” he says. “I
think maybe the reason that stand-up
proved to be so beneficial for me was
that it’s got such a built-in drive. Like,
you do a gig and there’s adrenaline and
you get instant feedback, and you don’t
have this crushing feeling of deadline
that you get with maybe making scripts
or writing. You don’t really have that if
you just do a shitload of gigs because
you’re always like, ‘I got a new bit, I’m
“I reMeMber watChIng
and beIng LIke, ‘oh, It’s
InterestIng. It’s possIbLe
to do thIs.’ I aLways
thoUght It was not
possIbLe. I jUst thoUght,
‘sUreLy there MUst be
soMe karate kId proCess.
yoU have to wax soMe
Cars before yoU Can
aCtUaLLy do that.’”