Last October, Token Artists welcomed Dilruk Jayasinha into their family with the Sri Lankan-born comedian joining a star-studded roster. “A lot of the comedians that have influenced me and a lot of the comedians I watched even before I started doing comedy are all signed with them,” Jayasinha explains. “It’s a weird one to try and explain because I end up sounding like a fanboy, but that’s exactly what I am.”
In fact, a few festivals ago, Jayasinha called in favours to satiate his fandom. “The year before I started doing comedy myself, I remember I spent close to seven hundred dollars on [Comedy Festival] tickets,” he recalls. “I was working with this other guy who is now a fellow comedian as well – Suren Jayemanne, who I worked with as an accountant – and I was really broke, so I had to borrow his credit card to buy all these comedy festival tickets. So I knew the exact amount I transferred to him at the end of the run.”
Jayasinha has since carved out his own career as a stand-up comedian, laying claim to a sold-out season at last year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival. All things considered, he seems to be on the right track. “When you get into this thing, there’s no rulebooks or guidelines to follow, as far as, you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that, then you get this and then you get that,” Jayasinha explains. “It doesn’t really exist, so it was a little bit like driving into darkness and trying to figure out what’s coming up next. So having this come up I guess is a little bit like, ‘Oh okay, I guess I’m actually going down the right direction.’ The flipside is, just because you are signed doesn’t necessarily mean that at the snap of fingers everything gets fixed and your career is sorted. There’s still a lot of grunt work to be done.”
Jayansinha has a massive couple of months ahead with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival season of his show Sri Wanka drawing closer. “It’s a collection of stories of where I’ve done some pretty dumb things and narrowly escaped with my dignity – sometimes not,” chuckles Jayasinha. “It’s also generally about becoming an adult. It’s a collection of funny stories I’m trying to see if I can use to kind of guide me in the right direction… stories that I wished, at the time, no one would ever hear about.”
Funnily enough, Jayasinha finds himself with a few fresh tales for Sri Wanka, thanks to a busy start to the year. “This [show] is off the back of Melbourne Fringe, and since Melbourne Fringe there’s been a huge development, actually – something that happened two weeks ago in Perth. It’s now become almost the central theme of the show, so it’s taken this huge turn,” he reveals. “It’ll be a different experience. There’s a lot that was in the Fringe show that won’t be in this one. It’s a different enough show that if you saw Melbourne Fringe, you wouldn’t feel short-changed if you saw it again.”
One thing that has stuck around, though, is the poster. “It is quite a confronting photo of me without a shirt, in a pool and I’m a very big dude. One of the responses I got from someone when I handed them a flyer with the picture was, ‘It looks like a sumo wrestler.’ Not even ‘he’, not even ‘you’ – it looks like a sumo wrestler. Great. But I think it’s funny. It grabs attention, that’s for sure.”
By Nick Mason
Venue: Victoria Hotel – Acacia Room, 215 Lt Collins St, CBD
Dates: March 24 – April 17 (except Mondays)
Times: 8.30pm (Sundays 7.30pm)
Tickets: $20 – $25
