Malaysian-born, US-raised comic Ronny Chieng has hit upon a winning formula with the title of his 2014 festival show, Chieng Reaction. The Music suggests there are dozens of name puns for future years, including Chieng Of Fools, Chieng Lightning, Chieng Gang ... in much the same way as Wil Anderson builds his name into his titles. “I know, that guy's done 20 shows now and he's still finding them!” Chieng says. “This year I'm going with it and I think it's good – but I'm not going to force it.”
Chieng came to Australia to study commerce and law at university, but found it hard to get a job in his chosen field when he graduated in 2009, so he started doing comedy and never stopped. He won Melbourne Comedy Festival's 2012 Best Newcomer award and ends up playing bigger rooms each year. He made a name for himself in the early days by playing a shouty version of himself onstage – which has now mellowed – and is in any case nothing like the charming, humble chap on the other end of the phone. “It took a while to find my [stage] voice, and it's gone through some adjustments; it's still changing,” he says. “At one point it was a normal guy, then it was the hyper-aggressive guy, then it got toned back quite a lot, now it's in the middle a little bit. I'm happy with where it's at. I actually debated whether I should do interviews in that persona – but it comes over as very snarky.”
Chieng describes Chieng Reaction as his “most mature” show so far, drawing most of the humour from stories about his own experiences and interactions with people, as opposed to scripted gags. He says one of his reasons for getting into stand-up in the first place was that Asian people were underrepresented on this country's comedy club stages. “I didn't see any Malaysian, or even Asian perspectives being represented in stand-up, and I don't mean that in a 'social justice' kind of way, it's just that I'd never seen that perspective so I thought 'Oh, I'll do that'. As soon as I get on stage it's obvious that I'm not from around here, that I didn't grow up in Australia. It's unavoidable. So I try to go onstage with the presumption that everyone hates me,” he laughs.
