Nazeem Hussain has been performing at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for nearly a decade, initially alongside his Fear of a Brown Planet sidekick Aamer Rahman, before debuting the solo show Legally Brown in 2015. He’s back in 2016 with Hussain in the Membrane, which has a more personal tone than the hotly politically stand-up that brought him fame. The Melbourne comedian has had a busy 12 months, performing in other capital cities as well as venturing to Europe, and he’s looking forward to his MICF return.
“I feel most comfortable performing in Melbourne,” Hussain says. “I feel like I’m amongst friends, sometimes I literally am, and Melburnians are comedy connoisseurs. They love their comedy and they’re just excited, they like the quirkier bits – it’s a treat to perform in Melbourne. I think sometimes you go to smaller towns and you just don’t know what their sensibilities are, but you know in Melbourne if it’s funny they’re going to laugh.”
Hussain is of Sri Lankan heritage and he identifies as Muslim. Throughout his career, his comedy has predominantly addressed race and religion, and associated prejudice and discrimination. This subject matter is by no means losing relevance, but Hussain in the Membrane shines a light onto his personal life.
“The last show I did was very political and I got to touch on some dangerous [topics],” he says. “This time I didn’t sit down and go, ‘This is the theme I want to write about.’ I just started coming up with funny things that I thought were interesting to talk about. Whether that’s boxing or becoming a homeowner or travelling around, to politics. And the stuff that is political, I get to unpack those ideas a little bit more, and what it means to be religious.
“Sometimes I just talk about my religious identity as if it’s a given, but this show I get to deconstruct what it means to be religious in 2016 in Australia and the preconceived ideas around that, and how it almost is a radical thing to affirmatively have a belief in God when to be an atheist is to be rational. It’s looking at those sort of things from a different perspective.”
Hussain is now 30 years old, and his views have inevitably expanded in recent years. Although the trajectory of this show wasn’t strenuously mapped out, he views it as a reflection of how his thinking has developed.
“I guess that just does come with becoming a little bit older and having some different questions pop into your mind and you’re grappling with these things a little bit differently. My comedy career has been pretty race and politics focused. I think now I’m a little bit more comfortable about being honest and open, and about my own questions that I have about these things too. And I guess maybe my politics has shifted a little bit.
“I don’t think I’ll stop being political in my shows. If you are a brown or a Muslim person in Australia, those are things you’re probably going to end up talking about at some point because it’s so centrally connected to who you are.”
Regardless of race or religious views, anyone living in an organised society has a role in politics, which manifests itself in some way or another.
“You’re political whether you say something that sounds political or not,” says Hussain. “Whatever you do is political. But this show I think is definitely a lot more personal, probably a little more honest, and maybe more critical or my own ideas. At the same time, I’m still very angry about the same sorts of things and there’s a lot of rants.”
By Augustus Welby
Venue: ACMI – BEYOND, Federation Square, CBD
Dates: March 24 – April 17 (except Mondays)
Times: 7pm (Sundays 6pm)
Tickets: $25 – $35
