PRESS

Prepare To Get Riffed On With Comedian Sugar Sammy

by City Lights with Lois Reitzes
2017-05-31

Sugar Sammy's brand of comedy is global, which makes sense given his upbringing: he was raised in a multicultural neighborhood in French and English-speaking Montreal with Indian parents.

Sugar Sammy has performed all over the world with huge tours in Canada, India and France. Now, he is touring through the United States. He is making a stop at Atlanta's Punchline Comedy Club this week, with shows running Thursday through Sunday.

Improvising and riffing off the audience is a huge part of his shows. In an interview with Lois Reitzes, he said it helps him keep the material fresh.

“When you do 300 to 400 shows a year, you could go into autopilot mode. It prevents me from getting there,” he said. “It's the equivalent of a musician who knows his songs but wants to go and jam and improvise a little bit.”

Sugar Sammy earned his place as Quebec's best comedian through his dual-language show “You're Gonna Rire.” It was one of the first of its kind. He also toured through India by invitation from Comedy Central India. More recently, he's been performing in France, where he said he had to behave like an anthropologist in order to write a convincing show for French audiences.

“With a culture, it's very important that you are precise because if you just talk about the stereotypes from the outside, it can become a caricature, and that's when people get offended. It's when you haven't done your research," he said. "But when you're your precise, and you're bang on, people can't dispute that, and they can recognize themselves in the material.”

AUDIO: http://news.wabe.org/post/prepare-get-riffed-comedian-sugar-sammy