“You think we’re all perfect, you think we’re all polite, you think we don’t cause trouble, well I’m gonna set you right,” sang Melissa Canciller, a member of an Asian-American comedy team that performed in McCormick Auditorium Wednesday night. “Well, I’m Asian and I got some big news. Because I’m Asian I got those having-to-be-perfect-cause-I’m-Asian blues.”
Swaying to a bluesy piano melody while two women wearing Blues Brothers hats and dark sunglasses danced and sang behind her, Canciller spared no one in her Asian stereotype romp.
“Because I’m Asian I got the white-rice-cooking, Hello-Kitty-buying, karaoke-singing, kung-fu-fighting, Honda-rice-rocket-driving . . . Northwestern-University-attending, always-having-to-be-perfect Asian blues.”
The song was just one of many skits performed by Stir-Friday Night!, an all Asian-American sketch comedy group from Chicago. The three men and four women took on a range of stereotypes, as well as putting on skits unrelated to Asian-American life.
Coco Shiao, a McCormick junior and executive president of the Taiwanese American Students Club, which sponsored the event, said the group brought Stir-Friday to campus because it’s as important to discuss stereotypes as it is to laugh at them.
The audience of about 50 students laughed as Stir-Friday addressed stereotypes head-on. In one skit, a “Grandmaster Chef” trained his apprentice in the art of Chinese cooking, only to later find himself in an exaggerated turf war with a Japanese restaurant.
“Your food is high in fat, and I find myself hungry half an hour later,” said one of the men, his words “dubbed” by another performer in kung-fu movie fashion.
“One thing that we really wanted to do was find something that was entertaining but also that had a meaningful component to it,” said Weinberg sophomore Vivian Shan, the TASC education executive.
“Through its skits and comedy and everything (Stir-Friday) addresses Asian-American stereotypes in a way (both) dispelling those and revealing the meaning behind it all,” she said.
The performance began with a rap about saris — a type of Indian dress — and featured several nonsensical haiku recitations spoken over the PA system by a man with an exaggerated Japanese accent.
Most of the skits mocked stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans, such as when two men in sumo-wrestler suits ran around the stage screaming incoherently at each other, playing hide-and-seek and riding miniature bicycles.
Although the group tried to address serious Asian-American issues, comedy prevailed in the end.
“I remember growing up in the suburbs — Evanston — and being the only Asian in my grade school,” said Stir-Friday member Ron Mok. “I felt a sense of alienation that no other nationalities wanted to mix or associate with my ethnicity.”
“I thought as I grew older that things would change and society would grow more open,” Mok said, before reenacting an outrageous dance he did for a pretend audition.
Standing at the front of the stage after being rejected for the part, a shirtless and disappointed Mok explained why he’d been rejected.
“All because I was Asian,” he said.
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