In just four years, Dinara Kerey has gone from performing at open mics to staging her own stand-up shows across Europe, North America, and Central Asia, including a tour of her solo show Crazy Eurasian. Born in Kazakhstan, she left the country at 17, studied in South Korea and the United States, and now lives in Berlin, where she works in IT and performs comedy in English, Russian, and German.
At a show in Vancouver, she found an immediate connection with Kazakhs living abroad. In other rooms, she says, her first jokes must explain that she is from Kazakhstan. The Times of Central Asia spoke with Kerey about cultural boundaries in comedy, Borat’s portrayal of Kazakhstan, the fear of being seen, and the cost of building a career largely on her own.
TCA: Dinara, you sometimes perform eight or nine shows a month and have appeared in Kazakhstan, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, though you’ve only been doing stand-up for four years. Do you feel popular?
Dinara Kerey: For me, this is just the beginning. My schedule is busy because I want it to be busy. I organize all my shows myself, so it’s entirely up to me. Right now, for example, I’m heading home to Berlin after touring Kazakhstan, where I did an English-language show for 150 people.
TCA: Were most of the people in the audience foreigners or locals?
Kerey: There were a lot of foreigners, but most of the audience was Kazakh. They were well-educated, English-speaking young people. And there was this funny thing; after the show, a lot of them came up to me and we kept speaking English, even though both sides knew perfectly well that we could speak another language. Maybe some of them just wanted the practice.
TCA: What kind of reception do you get back home? And where have you found particularly warm audiences?
Kerey: The reception at home is good, especially in Almaty, which is nice. But I’d also single out Vancouver. More than 90 people came to my show there, and around 40 of them were Kazakhs who had been living there for a long time.
I’ve lived abroad for 14 years myself, so there was an immediate connection with them, this shared relatability. Pretty much all my jokes landed really well. I guess we have similar backgrounds and look at life from the same angles: as immigrants, as Kazakhs, as Asians, and ultimately as post-Soviet people, or Eastern Europeans, as people tend to say now. All those different parts of me matched up with them.
TCA: Did the material resonate with the other Canadians as well?
Kerey: Yes. The people who came to my show had similar experiences. They were very well-traveled and had also moved from country to country before finding a place they could call home.
I think the difference was especially noticeable because in Canada, more than anywhere else I’ve been, people celebrate their differences. They may be Canadian by passport, but nobody demands complete assimilation. They remain immigrants and keep their identities. Indians, Chinese, Italians, Kazakhs. Everyone knows their roots and their own culture. And that’s cool.
TCA: One of the most recognizable images of Kazakhstan abroad is still associated with Borat, the fictional Kazakh journalist created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. The 2006 film was conceived as a satire of prejudices in American society but provoked a strong reaction in Kazakhstan over its caricature of the country. As a comedian, what do you make of that kind of humor? And did you ever experience bullying because of it, as some Kazakhs abroad have?
Kerey: No, I didn’t. I wasn’t offended. Borat came out in 2006, when I was still at school. From 2012 to 2018, I lived in South Korea, so I probably missed the period when people were talking about it the most.
I lived in America in 2016, and sometimes someone would say something about Borat, but it didn’t offend me at all. Nobody bullied me. Maybe the character’s fame had already died down a little, or maybe the fact that I was in a university environment made a difference too.
TCA: Did you actually watch the film? How funny do you find it?
Kerey: I did. It’s not my type of humor. There are a few peculiar jokes that are funny in their own way and work while you’re watching it, but I definitely wouldn’t watch it again. I find it boring to watch American movies about their own stereotypes.
TCA: Are there subjects you would never joke about? Ideas about what is acceptable in comedy vary enormously; the French publication Charlie Hebdo, for example, has deliberately ventured into religion and other extremely sensitive subjects. Do you think humor has boundaries, and do you ever censor yourself?
Kerey: It’s difficult to say because people are constantly changing and evolving, and their boundaries change with them. The answer I give you now could change over time too. But as of today, I think you can joke about anything. And if most people think you’ve crossed a line, then the joke probably just wasn’t funny enough.
TCA: You test material at open mics, where both new and experienced comedians try out jokes in front of an audience. How good is Berlin for that kind of work?
Kerey: That’s what open mics are for. Since I live in Berlin, I mostly test my material here, and all kinds of people come to them. Berlin is a very convenient city in that sense. It’s international, with lots of tourists and people from different countries. So you get a pretty good cross-section of an audience. It’s not like performing in Almaty, for example, in front of a predominantly Kazakh crowd.
TCA: In film, comedy is often considered very local: something that is funny in one cultural environment won’t necessarily work in another. Do you agree?
Kerey: I think it all depends on the subjects you choose. My material is primarily about me. I talk about myself and my life, and I think that if something is genuinely funny, it will be funny to everyone.
I have a lot of jokes about family, relationships, and dating, and those are universal subjects. The country doesn’t matter that much. In America and Canada, people ask you where you’re from once, and after that they basically don’t care whether you’re Latino, Asian, or whatever else. What matters is that what you say onstage is in good English and is funny.
TCA: At the same time, there’s a lot of specifically Kazakh material in your stand-up. For example, there’s the joke about our parents first forbidding us from dating boys and then, once we hit about 25, constantly asking, “Why aren’t you married yet?” I understand it because I come from the same cultural environment, but how well does that kind of thing translate to foreign audiences?
Kerey: They get it very well. The difference is that when I walk onstage, people judge the book by its cover, or, more precisely, by my face. They see an Asian woman and automatically assume I’m Korean, for example.
So my first one or two jokes always have to be about Kazakhstan. I need to explain to the audience who I am. Once I’ve done that, they have some understanding of my cultural context. But I want to get to the point where people already know who I am and I don’t have to do that introduction and explain the context every single time.
TCA: You’ve talked about one of the toughest rooms you performed in the U.S., where the audience was predominantly Black, and said a comedian really has to work to win them over. Why?
Kerey: They’re very honest. Obviously, I’m generalizing here, but if they don’t find you funny, they’ll tell you straight out: “That’s not funny.”
But if they genuinely think you’re funny, they’ll laugh and applaud with everything they’ve got. In Europe, audiences can be much more restrained. Even if they really like something, they might laugh almost silently – like in Estonia, for example. Laughing loudly just isn’t really the norm there.
In the U.S., you immediately know the audience’s real reaction, and that’s incredibly valuable.
TCA: Your favorite stand-up comedian, Ali Wong, is an American comedian and actress of Asian descent. Does that make her particularly inspiring to you, or is it mainly her comedy?
Kerey: It definitely inspires me. She’s Asian, she’s a woman, and she’s incredibly popular. When she walks onstage, she performs in a way that can put anyone to shame.
But I don’t look at her only as a role model. As a comedian, I primarily look at her from a technical perspective: how she structures jokes, how she builds a punchline.
I’ve seen her live, and she’s magnificent. She comes completely prepared – over-prepared, even. She does work-in-progress shows, she knows the entire set by heart, every joke is ready.
I really admire her discipline and her approach, and also the fact that she doesn’t limit herself to comedy and doesn’t see boundaries to her creativity. She’s an actress, she writes scripts, she makes films. She doesn’t just have a career, she has a family and two daughters, and she’s gone through a divorce. She might look like this fragile woman, but there’s so much strength in her, and I find that incredibly inspiring.
TCA: Ali Wong starred in the Netflix series Beef and became the first woman of Asian descent to win an Emmy for a lead role in a limited or anthology series. Are you interested in film yourself?
Kerey: I’m very interested in it, actually. Before stand-up, I was even more interested in film than I was in performing onstage.
I wanted to act. I took acting classes, went to auditions, and things were already beginning to happen for me. Then stand-up came into my life and completely took over.
I don’t know how it works in Kazakhstan, but in Europe, if you want to be a comedian, you basically do everything yourself. You write the jokes, plan the tour, and handle the promotion.
But I would really like to develop a career in film too, and I plan to.
TCA: You’ve said you got into stand-up almost by accident. You trained in finance but now work in IT?
Kerey: Yes. At first I just started watching stand-up – Russian-speaking comedians first, then English-speaking ones – but I absolutely couldn’t imagine myself onstage telling jokes. Just the thought of it terrified me.
I thought: what happens if it isn’t funny and nobody laughs?
At the same time, I knew from the age of five that I wanted to be onstage. I just imagined it in a very abstract way and didn’t really understand what exactly I wanted to do.
When I felt bad, lonely, or bored as a child, I would fantasize about walking onto a stage, winning everyone over, everyone applauding, feeling all that love and giving that love back.
But it had never occurred to me that I would become a stand-up comedian. Then I moved to Berlin, and somehow it all just happened.
TCA: People often joke that every Kazakh seems to have some hidden talent. A railroad worker can win a Grammy; a stand-up comedian can work at a serious IT company. Why do you think that is?
Kerey: We really do have incredibly talented and creative people. But I don’t think that applies only to Kazakhs. Everyone has abilities; some people build careers around them, while for others they remain hobbies.
I don’t know – maybe there are internal limiting beliefs, or maybe society suppresses those abilities. The important thing is not to miss them.
TCA: You mentioned crowd work, which involves improvised interaction with the audience. How do you still have the reactions and energy for it after working in IT?
Kerey: It comes from discipline, planning, meditation, and constantly working on myself. For example, I’ve completely cut out alcohol before performances. It slows your reactions. And for a comedian, especially when you’re doing crowd work, your reactions are the most important thing.
TCA: Why didn’t you choose acting as a profession from the start? You studied in South Korea and the U.S. and now work in Germany.
Kerey: Yes. I did my bachelor’s degree in finance and business in South Korea, then went on an exchange program to the U.S., where I studied investment.
After that, I decided to return to Kazakhstan and worked in management consulting. Then I realized I wanted to go abroad again for a master’s degree and started thinking about what field to choose.
I probably have some kind of internal survival instinct. I grew up during the economically difficult 1990s and early 2000s, and there was always this fear inside me that I wouldn’t be able to earn good money, or that I might literally have nothing to eat.
So I didn’t choose a profession based on what I liked. My first consideration was whether I would be able to find a job afterward.
TCA: So IT is the profession that gives you financial stability?
Kerey: Yes. When I chose the field, I could see that IT specialists were needed everywhere. I didn’t want to be a programmer – I found it uninteresting and really boring, even though I was good at it.
So I chose information systems because it sits somewhere between business and IT. That allows me to earn good money now and pursue creative work at the same time.
TCA: Telling personal stories onstage must require a certain amount of courage. You’re effectively allowing huge numbers of strangers to see you up close. How difficult was it for you to overcome that fear?
Kerey: Yes, it takes courage, and you have to work on your fear of visibility, your fear of being seen.
I had to work on that too because, in our culture, a woman is supposed to be quiet and modest, not seen and not heard. That stays somewhere in your subconscious.
When you put yourself out there onstage, there will inevitably be people who don’t understand you. So you have to be internally stable enough and believe in yourself enough not to be afraid of doing it.
TCA: After you appeared on the Kazakh podcast Zamandas (a name that can be translated as “contemporary” or “someone of the same generation”), one viewer wrote: “She’s such a great girl and so funny, but her eyes look so sad.” You really can see that sadness in some comedians.
Kerey: It’s quite common. On the one hand, we want attention, love, and recognition, probably like everyone who works onstage.
On the other hand, to get that attention, you’re extremely hard on yourself. You judge yourself for mistakes and think you haven’t done enough.
I do that too. After every show, I sit down and write out what I could have done better. Even if the show went really well, there’s always something I can work on.
TCA: Perhaps that level of self-demand is one reason you’ve progressed so quickly. But how long can you keep going at that pace?
Kerey: I’ve started thinking about that too. I spent a lot of last week thinking about it.
I started meditating, looking inward, listening to my thoughts, and trying to hear something other than my inner critic. Of course, you can keep pushing yourself all the time, constantly trying to achieve more, but I realized that I treat stand-up like a project – as though I’m the project manager of my own career. And I don’t think that’s sustainable. You can run on that fuel for a while, but one day it will run out and you’ll simply break down. You’ll burn out. So right now, I’m trying to find some balance.
TCA: And how do you feel immediately after a performance? Drained, or do you get so much energy from the audience that you leave the stage feeling recharged?
Kerey: After a show, I’m happy and really pleased if everything went well, but physically I feel completely wrung out. At the same time, people come up to me and say, “I was in a bad mood, but now I feel so good, I have so much energy.” So it turns out that I give more than I receive. And right now, I’m thinking about how to replenish that energy.
TCA: How good is Europe for developing as a stand-up comedian, and is it possible to turn comedy into a stable profession there?
Kerey: There are a lot of different shows and open mics appearing now. If you’re a new comedian and you need stage time, it’s a really good place to work and develop.
But there’s still a certain ceiling in Europe because there isn’t a fully developed industry here. That’s exactly why I travel so much now.
Opportunities appear, but they’re more random. There isn’t really an established infrastructure that lets you keep moving to the next level.
TCA: Besides English and Russian, you sometimes perform in German. Do you plan to develop your German-language stand-up?
Kerey: Yes, I sometimes perform in German. But for now, I’m concentrating on my English-language show.
TCA: You’ve said you want to record a full-length stand-up special. Do you already know what it will look like?
Kerey: Yes. I already have my first hour, which I toured with in the spring, and I’m now writing my second hour, which I’ve already brought to Almaty.
I want to turn those two hours into one. I look at my old material now and realize I don’t like half of it anymore. So I want to choose the best material from both hours, combine it into one show, and record it. Definitely in front of a live audience. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do that soon.
