Heckle if you dare: Celeste Ntuli & SA's sisters of standup

29 November 2015 - 02:00 By Leigh-Anne Hunter
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Nina Hastie, Celeste Ntuli and Tracey Lee Oliver.
Nina Hastie, Celeste Ntuli and Tracey Lee Oliver.
Image: Raymond Preston

SA's funny women are exploding sexist myths about the art of comedy, one gag at a time. Leigh-Anne Hunter shot the breeze with three of the best - Nina Hastie, Celeste Ntuli and Tracey Lee Oliver

A comedian walks into a bar. "Hi," she says, "I'm Nina Hastie." I must have shown my surprise; Hastie, who is five foot tall, seems smaller up close than she does on stage. "Oh," she says. "So you thought I'd be funny looking?"

Comedians Tracey-Lee Oliver and Celeste Ntuli arrive, and it is all hugs, kisses, You look amazing, No, YOU look amazing.

Are they all friends? Hastie and Oliver chorus "Ja!"

Hastie adds: "What, did everybody think this was going to be a cat show?"

Oliver: "Guys don't get asked: 'Do you get along?'"

Hastie: "And yet they're a bunch of bitches, hey?"

Oliver: "Ja, they're the worst gossips. It's a tollie-swinging contest!"

Hastie: "We're cool with each other."

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Hastie is asked "at least once a day" what it's like being a female comedian. Enough already. "You get on stage and the male MC says: 'And next up, we have one of the best female comedians .'

"Then I take the mic and say, 'Thank you, male comedian. It's amazing how you manage to have balls and a penis and still tell jokes. I'm so impressed"

"We're not shooting anyone," Ntuli says in her booming voice. "We're thinking. It's all up here." She taps her shaved head. "Don't look at my boobs."

At that, the threesome erupt. HAHAHAHA!

Boof! (the sound of the table being whacked).

Clink! (silverware crash-landing).

Hastie leans across the table. "What's the difference between men and women? Women can have multiple orgasms."

Boof! Clink!

I'm caught in a crossfire of one-liners. Ntuli wipes her eyes. "I'm going to ruin this makeup. Nina's always cracking me up."

Hastie chimes in. "Celeste is phenomenal. This is like her third sold-out one-woman show this year."

Ntuli: "Tracey's material is more sexy. Men go, 'Oh my God', before they laugh. I'm rough: I sweat. Tracey comes off the stage after 20 minutes. No sweat. I'm like, how does this work?"

Oliver: "Aaaw. But that's why I love you so much."

So why are there so few women doing standup? Is it because most women aren't funny?

"If your authentic self is funny, then you can be funny," Hastie says, "[but] a lot of women haven't taken the time to be their authentic selves. My guru said an interesting thing." (She's been seeing the same healer for the past 20 years.)

Ntuli interjects: "Your urban sangoma?"

Hastie: "She said we are all doomed to enlightenment, so if I can help somebody by pushing them off the cliff into enlightenment, so be it."

It's turning into a loud game of soundbyte squash. Ntuli's turn to serve. Thwack!

"Society pressures us. You are 35. Where's your husband? People look at you as a comedian and think: 'Who will date you?'"

Hastie takes a swing. Gwa!

"Yeah. Yeah. 'You're full of shit. You talk too much!'"

Ntuli hits it out the court. "Women should stop feeling sorry for themselves. You have to act shy about saying 'I'm funny' because you're a woman. Sometimes there is this double-take from the audience. Is she really going to make us laugh?"

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Parker's Comedy Club, Montecasino, 2014. "Aaand put your hands together for top female comedian." Ntuli takes a last sip of her Red Bull and dances on to the stage in takkies. "I follow Vavi's wife," she tells the crowd. "'Well I've decided to divorce my feelings'. But you must divorce Vavi!"

Ntuli, earnest-faced the whole time, delivers her lines like a mugging in downtown Joburg. You're braced for it, but it still takes you by surprise. At one point in her act it sounds like a woman in the audience is orgasming. "Uh-uh-uuuuuuh!" Behind her is a mosquito in shoulder pads. "Eeeeeeeeeeee!"

Yes. She made us laugh.

"My people say you've got your ancestors with you when you're on stage," Ntuli says back at the bar. Ntuli, who says she's the antithesis to the "timid, Zulu homemaker" stereotype, often dissects sex and gender in her comedy. "I make fun of myself first. I make fun of Zulus. I'm not protecting anyone. If it's funny, I will say it."

She says she can't go to the grocery store without encountering shrieking fans. "People feel I say the things they want to say. It's just comedy man, but people say, 'You healed me', and that's a beautiful thing. That's why on stage I'm always conscious of sharing love. Men nurse their egos. They laugh at the fact that women can't drive. If you cheat, this is how you can hide it. Our comedy is smarter. Because we're coming from a caring space, it lands, even if it's a hard fact. Men are good with cars, women are good with emotional stuff. Humour is emotional."

Do men laugh at her too? "Yes." Pause. "But they can't believe it's butter. They thought it was margarrrine."

"Sometimes I find women can relate so much to the things we're saying that it polarises the audience," Hastie says. "A woman will be falling on the floor and the man doesn't know what to do with himself."

Women often come up to Hastie after a show. "They relate to my story, in that I've just sort of gone: 'Don't you dare come here and slut-shame. It's 2015.' 'Oh, your predilection for black men.' She's such a skank!' Why is my sexuality anybody's business? I can get on stage and talk about commonalities in relationship scenarios that we can all relate to. But that doesn't give you the right to say: 'Show us your tits.'"

That's happened to her while on stage.

"You question yourself. Is that the energy I put out? It's the 'was I raped because I was wearing a short skirt?' debate."

When Oliver gets back (she had to take a call, from Marc Lottering), we get to talking about all-female ensemble shows. Earlier this month, the trio starred with Lihle Lindzy in the show Live From The 13th Floor, and there are more on the horizon.

Hastie admits the unspoken presumption here - that female comedians are so alike that they can be lumped into the same category - is something she "had a problem with initially. But I realised it's such a treat for the audience because we are not the B-team. Banyana Banyana are better soccer players than Bafana Bafana".

She bangs the table. "I'm not a victim. I'm an absolute f***ing hero. I used to be bald for crying out loud."

Ntuli: "With a tattoo on her head. That was the dopest."

Hastie: "Of the Joburg skyline."

Oliver: "That's how I met Nina. I thought, whoa, this chickie is." Hastie smiles. "'n Bietjie rof?"

 

"Today's an auspicious occasion," Hastie said at the start of the interview. "It's my two-years-sober anniversary. I struggled with depression. Alcohol was a catalyst."

That was a different time, a different Nina. And so was her comedy. "I'd get up on stage and say: 'Hi, I'm Nina and I'm an alcoholic. Oh sorry, wrong meeting. I'm not an alcoholic. I'm a lesbian. I just like a little licker in me. Doodum-tchhhhh.'"

Which brings us back to public perceptions of female comedians. "If Trevor Gumbi drinks and goes partying, it's crazy and it's cute and it's celebrated. When I drank, it was looked down upon. She's unreliable - we can't book her. It's the same playing field, but a completely different set of rules."

But, on the other hand: "People don't like watching a crazy person fall apart on stage," says Hastie. "It' just not funny. It's weird. I think if you are behaving from a space of pain, and it's uncomfortable for you, then don't do that. Let's take gender out of it." Retrospective comedy is funnier, she says. "I'm in a space where my comedy reflects the hope, as opposed to the pain. I'd like to manifest positivity."

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Ten years. That's how long it took both Ntuli and Hastie to make names for themselves. In her "long walk to comedy freedom", Hastie experienced "a lot of shitty little comedy rooms" around the country. "People weren't ready for a female voice." And here she was. "This strange white woman from Pretoria with outrageous opinions."

Now Hastie looks out from the swish bar at the view of Joburg. Perhaps there's a metaphor to be found in the fact that we're several storeys up. "I'm doing incredibly well," she says. "Comedy is 99% knowing who you are. I'm funnier because I have more life experience. When I started I was going for this crass thing, for shock value. But I didn't know how to frame information then. I didn't know who I was."

She's taken swearing out of her acts. "It makes me cringe." Then she starts relating a gag by Tig Notaro (an American comedian who has a vagina) that consists solely of pushing a barstool across the stage. "It makes this scraping noise that sounds like a human air emission." A fart? That's her point. "I don't like female comedians who talk about farts."

It's funnier to allude, to poke fun at the things that make us laugh.

It's also a very Hastie thing to parody verkrampte social norms. "If I say I accidentally took a picture of my [she gasps] guava [girlish squeal], it's much funnier than saying 'I took a picture of my pussy'. You've got to play with people because the whole thing is ridiculous. That's what comedy is. Life is ridiculous."

Oliver's been mmm-ing. "Just because I'm in a male-driven industry doesn't mean I'm going to sit with my hands in my pants," she says.

"Tumi Morake laid the foundation for us," Ntuli says. "She made comedy look great and sexy and possible."

In the US, it was comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Schumer who changed the game for women in standup, says Hastie. "They paved the way for us. You no longer have to be a mutant. Aaargh!" She contorts her pretty face.

Oliver giggles. "Ja, what was up with that? You couldn't be an attractive female comedian. I suppose because people wouldn't take you seriously. I feel it is an advantage. I'm sick of apologising for being tall, slim, good-looking."

Hastie: "Ja, no, I want people to think about wanting to have sex with me, and still laugh at my jokes."

They high five each other (there's a lot of that). Oliver: "Totally. I want everybody to love me."

They're standup's answer to Sex and the City. Except, you know. Funny.

"It's totally about owning it," Hastie says. "I was out with Lazola Gola one night and I said: 'Gosh, look at that woman. She just walked in with a hot water bottle. Oh no wait. It's just an ugly handbag.' And he's like: 'That's so blazing. I could never say that on stage.' I said: 'You're right. You couldn't. I could.' So we need to use those opportunities. There's a comedian who often talks about how drunk and stoned he was. And he's never had a drink in his life. The reason your jokes aren't funny is because you're lying to people, and nobody likes being lied to."

Just because it is funny doesn't mean you're the comedian who should say it. "I think men should stop talking about weaves. That's not their prerogative. I remember when Kim Engelbrecht was trying to do standup and she was doing jokes about weaves, and she's this girl with beautiful hair."

Oliver: "Ja, you have to be careful ..."

Hastie: "I talk about weaves but with the premise that I lost my hair and that I didn't have a choice." (She had alopecia.) "If you are authentic it will land, regardless of whether you are a woman or man, short or tall, dark or light. If there isn't authenticity in your message and congruency between your messaging and your performance, there's going to be something unsettling about it for the audience, and they won't know what it is."

Hastie's been called a black Jackie Chan. "Because I'm a little ninja comedian. I've harnessed the wild woman voice."

Oliver: "Yeah, she's so black."

Ntuli: "She balanced the equation because we've got a lot of coconuts."

"I'm academic about comedy, which is ironic because I don't enjoy watching standup," Hastie says.

Oliver: "I suppose it's like me watching someone sing. You can't enjoy it because you pick it apart so much."

She'd been singing for 10 years when another comedian said: "You sing nicely. Let's make that funny." That first night, says Oliver, "I felt like I wanted to puke and then pass out".

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"It's tough," Hastie says. "You are naked. It's just you and your imagination and your delivery. If boys want to mock each other on stage, for example at the SA Comics' Choice Awards, we can't say: 'Don't tear into me because I'm a girl.' If you want to play in the big boy world of comedy, you must be able to roll with the punches."

Hastie is single. "I find it difficult to find a partner because my male energy is strong. As much as I like to talk about feminism, if I'm honest, I'm patriarchal and sexist. I think I'm a man. I think it's a product of having to survive in this space."

When I ask why she does it at all, her face changes. She looks serene. "There is no drug in the world like the immediate validation of strangers. It makes you feel that you belong and that your opinion matters. You're real. The light shining on that stage is like being in a womb. I feel safer on the stage than I do in a group of people."

She's got to dash. Ntuli: "Me too. I've got a voiceover." Oliver: "Corporate season has started. My head's spinning." There are gigs aplenty, a TV series, radio show... "Things are falling into place for us," Ntuli says. Hastie agrees. "It's just a really beautiful space."

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Will a woman host The Daily Show one day? Hastie gives me one of her unblinking direct stares. "When I get my show worldwide, it's not going to be called The Daily Show with Nina Hastie. It's going to be called The Nina Hastie Show. We are not afraid of our own success anymore. Trevor is that flea that jumped out of the jar. Now we all know we can too. We have that to thank him for."

"People can say plagiarism this, plagiarism that," Ntuli says. "Everyone loves beef." Hastie interjects: "I prefer lamb."

Ntuli continues: "Rest assured, people who steal jokes never last more than five years."

What makes them laugh? Ntuli: "Honesty kills me." Hastie: "When people fall, it's he-laarious."

Oliver: "Justice makes me laugh."

Hastie, this dainty bokkie, says: "Sometimes, when people fall it's justice as well." Then again, a Venus Flytrap's also innocuous-looking.

HAHAHAHA. Boof! Clink! Ntuli's halfway to the floor. "We don't have a mic," she says.

"Drop the knife, Tracey, drop the knife!"

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