The best comedy’s all about originality, and you won’t see many acts like Slanty Eyed Mama, the fierce Asian duo consisting of New York’s Kate Rigg and Lyris Hung. Trained at Juilliard, the two fuse race politics and urban music to create one hell of an entertaining act. They play throughout the queer-themed We’re Funny That Way Festival. See Comedy Listings.
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You’re taking part in the Match Game gala tonight (Thursday, May 7) hosted by Jim J. Bullock. Will you be decked out in retro 70s costumes?
Kate Rigg: If by retro 70s you mean hot, tricked-out Chinese satin gown with crazy-ass Polaroid sunglasses that my mom bought in 1970… then yes! As an homage to Connie Chung, who’s the only retro famous Asian of the 70s, I may sport a crazy poodle perm.
Lyris Hung: Now that I know this, I’m going shopping.
Speaking of Match Game, Charles Nelson Reilly or Brett Somers?
Rigg: Oooooh so difficult to choose! Brett because she said the word “ass” on national TV all the time and is a predecessor of the iconoclastic dirty-girl talk of Slanty Eyed Mama. Charles because I am a card-carrying pedal-to-the-metal rock ‘n’ roll fag hag and Charles Nelson Reilly personifies gay BFF. He’s a no-bullshit will-tell-you-if-you-look-fat-in-your-pants teller of ribald stories and happy to verbally abuse suitors who do you wrong and sluts who push you out of the way at the pool. So it’s a tie.
Hung: Charles Nelson Reilly.
You mamas both studied at Juilliard. If you could bequeath a Slanty Eyed Mama Scholarship, what would it be for?
Hung: Sticking things up the butt of tradition.
Rigg: The Slanty Eyed Mama Scholarship for awesomeness. We would be the judges, and the criteria would be to take virtuosic classically based skills and inject them into contemporary performance media, style and content. Excellence in artistic expression combined with a street-infused modern appreciation of new forms of art from the street from popular culture equals awesomeness.
What’s on your Toronto to-do list?
Hung: Molly. Bobo. And a pilgrimage to Northbound Leather.
Rigg: I got a badass leather corset there last time. And Chinatown – obviously. And take my tri-racial godson-slash-soul-brother Kai for pancakes in the Beach. And visit my absolute favourite living artist, Leo, at Orbital Arts in Kensington Market.
If there were a Slanty Eyed Mama cocktail, what would it consist of?
Hung: Jack Daniels + Tabasco sauce. Enough of it and you’ll grow either a cock or a tail.
Rigg: Slanty Eyed Mama appreciates mixology as a vocation and a libation. Cleverness plus heart with a shaving of well-chosen profanity, served chilled over a layer of cultural awareness and compassion for the disenfranchised. Or: coconut water and orange juice served in a ziplock bag with a straw, prepared for me by my Indonesian cousins wearing I Love New York T-shirts.
