Anu Vaidyanathan talks about her show, Blimp, at the Edinburgh Fringe and the many influences on her life and achievements.
I have a lot of voices that speak to me in different time-zones
Anu, you've had many a varied career before hitting the comedy industry - can you tell us about what you've done up to now?
Jim Harrison says in his memoir Off To The Side, ‘Gone are the cornball days when book jackets proclaimed the writer had worked as a truck driver, a proctologist, a stripper, a dishwasher, a furrier, a cowboy, an unlicensed plumber, a Peace Corps worker in five different countries’. While I have had the opportunity to live in five different countries, moonlight as an athlete and work as a dishwasher, a programmer, a professor, an engineer, an entrepreneur, a columnist, a filmmaker, a comedian and mom (which is also a full-time job) I have not had the motivation to slow time down to write it all down. Besides, I will only consider myself to have graduated when I nail the plumbing bit.
Tell us about your time as a film-maker - what has been your highlight so far?
Being an independently produced film-maker has been very interesting because it brings to the fore all the ways in which women are tested before we make out in the world. I have made a cache of a dozen short films once the incarceration of the pandemic was over and the highlight has been in sticking to my guns and not being intimidated while working in an industry which is oversubscribed, with questionable ethics. Another highlight has been to have two films accepted at long-running festivals purely on submission and no other PR from a film school or an influential producer. This has been the highlight of the journey so far.
And what took you to the path of comedy?
Being a woman director is very challenging because you cannot be direct. Your role is more that of a dream-catcher, a tuning fork, a mom herding sugar-high four-year-olds if you are lucky. It is an amphibious profession which demands extreme stubbornness to implement your vision and extreme vulnerability to surrender to the work so, comedy is a halfway house for me to be the person I know how to be. Someone who is direct and yet vulnerable. Comedy has made me a better director too. The rest of it is a work in progress.
Did you find it difficult to break down the doors of the UK comedy industry compared to the US or India?
I think the UK is quite tough for an outsider but the Fringe has levelled that ground very nicely. People do appreciate good work so... I am hopeful. In India the diversity of comics is incredible and people love a good laugh and I am from there so I have always felt loved. That being said, it is not about what is difficult to break into or break out of, I think the question is why one does what we do and whether we sustain it joyfully. That way, I have felt loved and see it in all these countries. My debut hour went off-Broadway twice in the span of six months. For a rank newcomer, that felt fantastic.
Can you tell us about your new show, Blimp?
Blimp is about chutzpah, children and cinema told from the PoV of a South Indian woman who thinks butter chicken is a conspiracy (and it is). It is for every oversubscribed mom or dad out there with aspirations and for everyone without kids who wonder why we do this to ourselves in the first place. There is something in it for everyone and hopefully we make it to the other side, smiling.
You talk about female empowerment. What brought you to this theme?
I don't know. I think I am of the princess disposition. The conversation at home was always about self-reliance, not much more. I believe empowerment begins with the conversation we have in our heads, about ourselves. Thematically someone smart said we only have one good story to tell and I thought that person was full of shit because I have a lot of voices that speak to me in different time-zones but in my life, my greatest influence have been the women in my immediate family - my mom, my grandmom, my aunts. They didn't have to shout, they know how to call bullshit be it from other women or many men and how to get through life with a laugh. I aspire to be 10% of what they already are.
Where has been your favourite place to perform so far?
I honestly don't know. Every room is so different and alive in different dimensions. I think my favourite place to perform so far has been when I sing in my own bathroom. That way, no judgement, no pressure of ticket sales and definitely no bad hair days.
And where would be your 'yes! I've made it' venue to perform?
In my next lifetime, Carnegie Hall. In this one, the venue would be my living room in my 60s, if I know I got one thing right with raising my kids, being the partner my husband deserves and the daughter my parents raised me to be.
Finally, if there is one thing you could do this Fringe that you've never done before, what would it be?
I would attend other shows instead of flyering.
