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Performing Arts

Comedian Abby Govindan: ‘I really am enjoying the ride’

Comedian Abby Govindan will perform at the Durango Arts Center on Feb. 8. (Courtesy)
Stand-up comic bringing her show, ‘How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents,’ to the Durango stage

Comedian Abby Govindan is living the dream.

The 27-year-old, who lives in New York City, is making her way up the stand-up comedy ladder: Since kicking off her career at age 20, she’s enjoyed fame on the internet, opening for other comedians, and her solo show, “How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents,” has found an audience Off-Broadway and on tour around the country.

Govindan will bring “How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents,” to the Durango Arts Center on Feb. 8. The show is hosted by Durango Comedy and will feature opening sets by comedians Andrea Rossi, Andy Mathews and Ann Joli. She will also lead a Q&A and stand-up comedy workshop on Feb. 9.

If you go

WHAT: Durango Comedy presents Abby Govindan’s “How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents,” an Off-Broadway comedy production. With opening sets from Ann Joli, Andy Mathews and Andrea Rossi.

WHEN: 7-9 p.m. Feb. 8 (doors open at 6:30 p.m.).

WHERE: Durango Arts Center, 802 East Second Ave.

TICKETS: $25 presale/$30 at the door. Available online at https://tinyurl.com/j7vdve8m.

MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.durangocomedy.com.

NOTE: Show is 18 and older.

* * *

WHAT: Q&A and Stand-Up Comedy Workshop with Abby Govindan.

WHEN: 2-4 p.m. Feb. 9.

WHERE: Lower Left Studios, 835 Main Ave., Suite 209.

TICKETS: $30.

MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.durangocomedy.com.

We had a chance to chat with Govindan last week. The following has been lightly edited for clarity and space.

Q: Tell us a little about yourself.

Govindan: I grew up in Houston, Texas, for the first 10 years of my life. We moved around quite a bit, but we ended up in Houston. Just today, an article about my solo show got published in the Houston Chronicle, which is the newspaper I grew up reading, so that’s really cool. I’m a stand-up comedian, based in New York City. I’ve been doing stand up – I just surpassed my seven-year anniversary a couple of weeks ago. Two and a half years ago, I wrote the solo show about the story of my pursuit of stand-up comedy and how it almost killed me; my relationship with my parents and what I learned about (them); and my relationship with internet virality and stuff. (I) have been doing it nonstop for two and a half years. Then I hired a director a year and a half ago, and he was like, ‘Hey, I think you should bring this to a theater, namely, Off-Broadway.’ And, the rest is history.

Q: How did you get into stand up?

Govindan: “I went through a really bad breakup in 2017 and I had a very marvelous ‘Mrs. Maisel’ story, is what I always say. I was dating some guy – like, literally, he was just some guy. And as one does when they’re 20 years old and dating just some guy, I was convinced he was the love of my life. He broke up with me, literally out of nowhere, and I was so devastated by it. I started stand up as a way to cope with the devastating loss of that breakup. And that’s my origin story.

Then within a year of starting stand up, I went viral on the internet, so I was able to monetize this fairly quickly. It took me a little while to figure out: I was making money here and there, but figuring out how to do it full time was its own challenge, but I did it.”

Q: Was it hard to get started in comedy?

Govindan: Oh, yeah. I mean, undoubtedly, yeah. I got very lucky – let me say I got extremely lucky. I went viral pretty early in my career. I had this opposite problem of a lot of people. The problem they have is building a name for themselves and selling tickets. I had this opposite problem, where I was selling out these, not humongous venues, like smaller venues, maybe 110 people, before I had the joke-writing prowess to have that large of an audience see me live. And so my first few shows where I was performing to those size of the crowds were very odd compared to what I am now. But stand up, in and of itself, is a very difficult field to get your start in, to be taken seriously and to develop an audience.

I’m really proud of myself for how far I’ve come, the types of jokes that I’ve written, specifically the community that I’ve cultivated. I always do meet and greets after every show, and the people I meet are just the nicest, the coolest. They have the best politics ever. They all do really cool things for work. My favorite is meeting community organizers, mutual aid organizers – a lot of teachers come to my show.

Q: Are there any topics you won’t cover?

Govindan: Donald Trump. Not because I don’t think comedians shouldn’t talk about Trump; it’s just because I feel like I don’t have anything new or interesting to say about him. That’s it. I really think it’s been done to death. And I think, by virtue of being comedians, we have to find fresh new spins on stuff all the time, and there’s so many comedians who have amazing, hilarious, cool stuff to say about politics and Donald Trump. My own rule for myself is, if I can’t reinvent the wheel with what I’m saying on stage, then it’s better to just not tap that well at all.”

Q: Do you ever run out of material? Is it hard to find new stuff?

Govindan: In Washington, D.C., I was working out new material that also had a PowerPoint element. But then, unbeknownst to anyone – unbeknownst to the showrunner, unbeknownst to me – the projector completely malfunctioned; it just wasn’t working. And so I was at the start of this 30-minute set, and I had nothing prepared, everything was on the projector screen. Everything that I had to say had a visual component to it.

So for the first time in my career, this was in October or September of this past year, for the first time in my career, I just risked, for 30 minutes, just talked off the dome about my personal life, things I was going through dating, and it was just so much fun.

The entire time I was talking, it didn’t even feel like performance, really. It just felt like talking to a group of friends at dinner. And the entire time in the back of my head I was like, ‘OK, gotta fill up 30 minutes, gotta fill up 30 minutes, gotta fill up 30 minutes.’ And then finally, at one point, I stopped talking because I was like, ‘OK, I’ve been talking for about 20, maybe 25 minutes.’ I was still on stage, but I turned to the showrunner, I was like, ‘Hey, how much time I have left?’ And she (said), ‘Oh, you’re about 20 minutes over time.’ So even though, in my head I had been talking for 25 minutes, it turns out I had been talking for almost an hour.

That’s when I was like, ‘Damn, I really am doing what I’m supposed to be doing.’ Because I was just having so much fun on that stage. I was talking to the audience; everyone was jiving with what I was saying, which is I think the best feeling. It was the first time that I walked on stage with a bunch of half-baked jokes, unsure of if they’d work or not, but I could tell that that audience and I were on the same wavelength. So no, I never run out of stuff to talk about.

Q: It must be fun – is it fun?

Govindan: It is so much fun. Every day I’m living the dream, and every time I feel exhausted, I just keep reminding myself, this is the dream.

In fact, my dad came to surprise me a couple weeks ago, and I was half asleep, because I am always traveling, and I do this full time, but I don’t make enough money from it to outsource any of work that’s involved in putting these shows together. Every single (thing), save for a few posters for the Off-Broadway, the national preview tour and the official show tour poster, which I hired a very great graphic designer ... I post for every separate city show that I do all myself. Every clip is edited and captioned by me. Every single post promoting the show is made by me. I do all my own interviews. I email venues. My manager and agent do book shows for me, but I would say it’s about half and half: I book half my own shows, they book half of my shows.

I have a large enough following, I know I’ll have a large turnout at most shows, but how many tickets I sell is directly correlated with how much I promote. If I forget one day to promote a show, that really does make the difference between 10 more people being there and 10 less people being there.

I am constantly worried about paying rent. I am constantly traveling half asleep, staying up late, editing graphics, posting on social media, editing videos. And I’m always like, I wish there were more hours in a day. I wish I could get more sleep.

And then my dad, when I was complaining, he was one who reminded me: ‘This was your dream job. For so long, this is your dream job.’ And I’ve only been experiencing upward trajectory the last couple of years, and on my own terms, which is really nice. So I imagine if the career trajectory continues upward in the way that it’s been going, that one day, I hopefully will be famous enough to hire someone to handle social media; hire someone to schedule interviews; hire someone to just full-time book shows for me one day. I hope I can get to a point where my only job is showing up, performing, then going home. And I imagine that that will happen for me one day. And I think that when that happens, I’m gonna miss these days, like these days of being scrappier, of doing everything and giving it 120% so even though I’m constantly sleep deprived, constantly hungry, constantly worrying about paying rent, I really try to tell myself as much as I can to enjoy the process. This was the dream job. The difficult parts of it make the fun parts of it extra worth it, and I hope to one day get to a point where it’s less difficult, but I really am enjoying the ride.

katie@durangoherald.com



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