Shimmy’s punchlines pack clout
THERE is nothing funny about how Shimmy Isaacs pulled herself up by her bootstraps to become one of the most sought-after acts on the local comedy circuit. But she channels her life story as the source of endless punchlines that belie her difficult journey.
Shimmy was born and grew up in Worcester. She was just 17 when life threw her a wicked curveball. She draws deep from her own story to come up with the most hilarious and refreshing comedy you’ve heard in a while.
“Something really intense hit our family when our house was taken from us in an eviction. My mom was at that time divorced, a single parent and was left with a few choices, not a lot, because she had two teenage daughters (my sister and I) and another six-year-old daughter.
“So my younger teenage sister went with my gran and my mom took my baby sister. I was kind of left to my own devices.
“There’s that thing in Worcester: if you’re done with school, then you go work at Pick n Pay or Shoprite. That was not going to be me. I knew, and I still know today, there’s more to me. I’m smart enough, I did well at school, I wasn’t interested in boys, I wasn’t interested in clubs or drinking. I was interested in travelling, exploring and learning.
“That’s really what kept me going and I made a decision to leave because I kind of felt lost.
“I didn’t feel like I belonged because the kind of conversations I wanted to have wasn’t there. I made a decision to leave with no money. I called my white friend,” she says while laughing her head off, “and said, ‘girl, I’m here, man’!”
The friend lived in Vredehoek and took her in. As Shimmy explains, it was “just a place for me to put my head down”.
But there was little time to rest. Shimmy worked as a waitress while picking up whatever workshop opportunities she could get to chase her dream career as a performing artist.
Even before the eviction, Shimmy knew she needed to leave Worcester. But Worcester remains in her heart and mind.
“Worcester is not a place known for the arts. Worcester is known for its factory workers, its farmworkers and its agriculture. I needed to leave Worcester to follow my passion in arts, primarily in storytelling in whichever medium or genre that came to me.
“Comedy, right now, is the genre that I find myself in, telling my stories and at the same time celebrating the people of Worcester, celebrating those colourful, unique characters that we find on the Riverview Flats.
“I’m very proud to say that I come from such a variety of cultural lifestyles, growing up in the Riverview Flats, then moving into the suburbs and going to a Model C school. I really had my hand in all walks of life, especially as a young coloured girl because there’s a perception that we need to be one way. We need to sound one way. And I’m not one way.
“I sometimes find it difficult to put my hand on what my accent is today,” says Shimmy, with that trademark laugh again.
“It’s fantastic. People find it really hard to box us. For me, what is important is that it gets highlighted. I’m not a political comic, my focus is to bring people together, getting people to understand one another. And comedy lends itself to breaking down those kinds of barriers.”
Shimmy, 33, draws material from the difficult subjects from her home town.
“I have an aunt who drinks a little bit too much, man. Aunty Senna… it’s Sandra but we call her Senna. She’s one of those family members who every year at Christmas, when you see her walking down the road, you get nervous and say to yourself: ‘ Hier kom dievrou, wat gaan nou weer gebeur?’
“You see her slingering down the road and you know she’s had one too many. Then she gets to the Christmas table, and all year she drinks Black Label but now she wants JC le Roux. And JC le Roux doesn’t go with her system!
“After two glasses of JC le Roux, there I find her in my mommy’s kitchen washing the paper plates!
“Yes, she has a problem, we all know that. Alcoholism is a big problem in our communities but I’ve never come across a mean drunk in my family.
“I don’t drink. But it is a big problem in the community, especially in the Boland district. I have an entire skit just around alcohol and just how it affects people.
“Nowadays you get your black UCT student who gets drunk like a white person. You go to places like Tiger Tiger (a club called Tiger Tiger? I’m already sceptical! I’m suspect!) and you find black kids from UCT going, ‘Oh my Gaawd, I’m sooo drunk! You won’t believe it. Like, my mom is going to be totally, totally pissed off man’.
“Then you realise all they had was Brutal Fruit – mango flavour!”
So Shimmy found herself as a 17-yearold in the Mother City. Four years later she was earning a living in retail but her dream was still alive.
“All I needed was just someone to believe in me. I got myself an agent but I wasn’t qualified and I wasn’t experienced enough. So they were going to take a chance on me.
“Then I discovered that the film school, AFDA, was giving out bursaries to kids less fortunate. Ooh, and I played on that, hey! But I was less fortunate. I didn’t have my family in my life during that time, financially or in any other way.
“I needed to educate myself about the craft of performance, the psychology of performance, the emotional intelligence that comes with this craft.
“I set up a meeting with Garth Holmes – one of the directors of the AFDA film school. He denied me the first time around. I left heartbroken and in that moment I surrendered. I said: ‘God, if this is the way it has to be, then it’s the way it has to be’.
“Something happens when one surrenders. I got a call back from Garth Holmes, wanting to see me. It turned out he never looked at my file. He saw that I had accumulated all these workshops and certificates at CAP (Community Arts Project), which was in Woodstock at the time. He was really impressed and asked what I wanted to do. I said acting and he showed me into my classroom.
“It took me three months to tell anybody what I was doing because I was asking myself, ‘Is this real? This is crazy!’
“But at the same time I was at a private institution with rich kids. My challenge and focus shifted to becoming the best.”
Shimmy became one of the top students at AFDA and was invited back to do her Master’s. She then took her savings and travelled to the US. On her return she lectured at AFDA for 18 months before taking a shot at being an actor.
“I became an A student because that is what I prided myself in. Everybody else was pulling up in a Mercedes-Benz. I was still taking the train. I was running to be on time, I was waitressing to pay my rent. I didn’t sleep for pretty much five years of studying.”
Her break into comedy happened when Shimmy bumped into the late Rustum August, an old high school friend from Worcester, who had started the Long Street Comedy Strip.
“I told him I wanted to do a onewoman show – that would be the best platform to rehearse and find out if I’ve got it. I didn’t even think about comedy but after the first five-minute routine I was shocked when people stood up and clapped.
“But I wasn’t afraid because I’m an actress. When I’m on stage, I’m home, I love it, I know how to deliver, I know how to hit my mark.
“After that I was like, this is it! I can create work for myself by just doing comedy. Out of that came my one-woman showAl Die PadV annie Worcester, which Rob van Vuuren directed. Later on, I wrote another show, HowzitMyBra?, which became a two-time award winning show at KykNET Fiesta and the KKNK.
“Both shows used comedy to talk about serious issues. AlDiePad was a biographical piece and HowzitMyBra? was dedicated to women with breast cancer. I could relate to both stories.”
Shimmy is one of the top draws at this year’s Jive Cape Town Funny Festival at the Baxter Theatre, which starts on July 20 and runs for a month.
She has already made her mark abroad and performed to standing ovations in Amsterdam, Glasgow and parts of the UK.
But the Jive Cape Town Funny Festival feels like home.
“People’s perceptions are still that what we do is a hobby. It’s not, it’s a skill. When you can perform in a festival of such a big magnitude, then your skill, timing, delivery and what you have to say are recognised. I like to be funny, but with purpose. This is a festival with purpose.
“I definitely do well abroad. With somebody like Trevor Noah, it’s wonderful and fantastic. Suddenly – and I remember the moment it hit the news – you think it is possible. We are funny, we are really funny. In the last few months of performing on the Long Street comedy strip, most of my audiences were Americans and most of them were really shocked to see a female headline act, who executes really well.
“I definitely have an international market. I can say that with conviction because I’ve done it and seen the responses. But the trick and skill is to take your material and take what works and make that universal to everyone across the world.”
Shimmy regards Eddy Cassar, the man behind the Jive Cape Town Funny Festival, as a second dad. “Sometimes it’s difficult for someone like me, from where I come from. We are not taught to sit with our success, or to deal with fame or achievements. All we know is struggle and chaos.
“In my mind, Eddy is like my second dad. He is constantly letting me know I’m a star and I just want to say ‘thank you’. It hasn’t been an easy ride, even when I’ve been at the top of my game. There were moments when I just felt like running away and Eddy reminded me where I’d come from and what I had done.”
These days Shimmy makes it her business to uplift the young people of the Boland. She regularly visits to host workshops.
Her proudest moment has been putting her baby sister through university to study acting.
“When something happens to us, it’s not a curse. Sometimes what happens in life, happens too fast. So I’m speaking to young kids and giving them guidance. I have to do this.
“We have many role models in Worcester. I was one of the first people who wasn’t afraid, shy or embarrassed to say I am from Worcester, especially when my career started taking off.
“I think when the Worcester community saw a girl who was like, ‘I’m from Worcester’, they were just like, wow!
“There was a time when people went, ‘No, we’re from Paarl’. There was this stigma to being from a small town that I didn’t understand. I have no reason to deny my identity and heritage because that is what makes me who I am today.
“By me celebrating that, it just gives other Worcesterians that courage to stand up and say this is who I am, this is where I’m from.
“I’ve never sugar-coated my circumstances but I’ve also not pity-partied myself on it.”