Dominica May

If you don’t know me well, or you haven’t known me long, you would probably be unfamiliar with the fact I used to perform a bit of stand up comedy. I got into writing comedy at 15, when I was year 11 in high school, and started performing when I turned 16. My first public performance was for the MICF Raw Comedy competition back in 2000. I then went on to perform on and off for the next 2 years, until I finish decided to quit after entering Raw Comedy again when I was 18. After that, I sort of dropped out of the comedy scene. Sure I attended the Melbourne Comedy Festival for the third time that year, but it wasn’t the same as I was no longer performing, nor making an effort on my Australian comedy web site, ComedyDownUnder.com.

Since then, I’ve performed stand up twice – once in Ireland in 2004, when my tour group convinced me to do an impromptu 5 minutes in one of the pubs we visited, and then again when I entered Raw Comedy for the 4th time, in Perth in 2006.

However, earlier this year I realised just how much I had been missing comedy from my life. This is why I desperately attended the Melbourne Comedy Festival again, for the first time in six years. I started writing again, but writing for an Australian audience because I didn’t think I’d be able to find stand up comedy in Malaysia.

How wrong I was! When I got back from Melbourne, I ended up finding out about Timeout KL Comedy Thursday, which has been running for a couple years. I attended my first show in June, partly to see what comedy had to offer here, and partly to see if I felt like I could perform for a Malaysian audience.

Since then, I’ve met a good portion of the Young Comedians of Malaysia (YCOM), attended numerous shows, and been welcomed (and encouraged) to take an open mic spot at one of the Timeout KL comedy nights. Other comedy night have also since cropped up, with the biggest one being The Comedy Club KL. This club is pretty significant, as every month they bring in a couple acts from overseas for three nights (the first night at PJ Live Arts, Jaya One, PJ and the latter two at Zouk nightclub in KL). Next month we’ll be getting Jeff Green, which I am pretty excited about.

If you’re interested in regular stand up comedy nights in KL, here’s the general schedule:
First Thursday of every month: Timeout KL Comedy @ Little Havana, Changkat Bukit Bintang
Third week of every month (Wed/Thurs/Fri): The Comedy Club KL

There has also been a couple comedy nights at Urbanattic in KL, but the nights haven’t been consistent so I don’t know when I say the next one might be.

And the big news? Next Thursday, 1st of October, I’ll be hitting the stand up comedy stage again, for the first time in 3 and a half years, and the first time in Malaysia.