In Asia, Comedic License May Be Literal

HONG KONG — Every comedian takes the stage wanting to make people laugh. But it is less satisfying when the audience has been ordered to do so before the first joke has been told. Storm Xu, a Chinese comedian, found that out during a surreal experience of performing for the country’s military.

In Asia, where a stand-up comedy scene is still developing, comedians in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia are finding creative ways to tell jokes about sex and politics, while coming up against cultures of censorship and taboos.

Among them is Mr. Xu, 30, who lives in Shanghai and ekes out a fulltime living from stand-up comedy. Mr. Xu said Shanghai’s small comedy scene involves about 20 regulars who could perform at least 10 minutes of material, and most are Western expatriate men, not Chinese like him.

A former automotive engineer for General Motors, Mr. Xu was able to quit his day job because of corporate comedy gigs, many of which come through the government.

Officials require him to submit scripts before his performances, which then gets him a permit to tell jokes. He also has to provide video of someone reading the lines aloud. Government censors have told him to remove jokes not for political content, but for being too rude.

“They’ll decline you if it’s too obscene or dirty; you can’t swear on stage,” he said.

When Mr. Xu travels to Hong Kong to perform, he can put the swear words back in. With its more handsoff local government, Hong Kong has developed into a hub for touring comedians from Asia and further afield, though its scene is fairly new: Its first full-time comedy club wasn’t founded until 2007.

A semiautonomous city, Hong Kong has become something of a beacon for comedians seeking to push boundaries.

Sorabh Pant, a popular Indian comedian, recently tackled the topic of democracy while on tour in Hong Kong.

“That’s so cute!” he joked about Hong Kong’s election, in which a pro-Beijing candidate won from a slate selected by members of the establishment. “You think your vote mattered! Such an amateur mistake!”

Vivek Mahbubani, 34, one of Hong Kong’s longest-serving comedians,said the vigorous local media helps shield the local comedy from scrutiny

Censors review acts and issue permits for the performances.

hat is not the case in Singapore, where Jinx Yeo, 37, performs. Mr. Yeo has made a full-time career in comedy, even without comedy clubs in Singapore. Most of his performances are in bars on weeknights, and he supplements his income with lucrative corporate shows. To get a license to perform in a theater in Singapore, Mr. Yeo had to submit scripts in advance. His work is frequently political; at a recent show in Hong Kong he sang satirical songs to tunes from “Les Misérables.”

Mr. Yeo said censorship is the biggest obstacle in Singapore. And comedians performing in bars had little opportunity to leap to television because their best material was unlikely to be approved.

Mr. Xu has recently started his own comedy club in Shanghai. He has steered away from political humor in his work because he did not see a point in making himself a martyr, or risk destroying his career, just as he was helping to pioneer a new comedy scene.

“I’m not trying to compare myself to Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, but the position they were in the 1960s is perhaps the position people like me are in now,” he said. “When I used to post my videos online, people didn’t understand what standup comedy was and the comments were quite harsh,” he said. But now he predicts “exponential” growth for stand-up in China.

Hannan Azlan, a 22-year- old Malaysian, was the youngest person, and the first woman, to win the Hong Kong International Comedy Festival, and since then gigs have rolled in, including spots at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe festival.

Ms. Azlan said she wasn’t interested in pandering to liberal audiences elsewhere; one of the tests of her success was whether she could perform her edgiest social commentary in more conservative Malaysia.

“Comedy is soft power,” she said. “I’m starting to talk about Malaysian politics more at home, and it’s been received very well.”