Burma's top standup comic: 'We sacrifice our lives for jokes'

Zarganar spent years in solitary confinement for standup routines that mocked the authorities. Now Burma's best-known comedian is free – and still laughing

• Laura Barton, guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 March 2012 14.30 GMT .. 

'Cautious optimist' … Zarganar in the 2007 documentary This Prison Where I Live

As the rehearsals for the Secret Policeman's Ball unfold on stage, Zarganar and I are sitting up in the gods of Radio City Music Hall, discussing the performance he will deliver later this evening – a speech in praise of Amnesty, and freedom of speech. "I'm very excited," he says, in a voice so low it seems to rise up from his boots. "I am delighted to be here."

Zarganar is Burma's best-known standup comedian, feted for his jokes, of course, but also for the suffering he has endured to be able to tell them: he has not only been banned from performing numerous times, he also spent a total of 11 years in prison for daring to mock government corruption. Born Maung Thura, Zarganar is his stage name, and translates as "tweezers", a reference to the sharp precision of his humour.

Burma's comedy scene is, he tells me, remarkably different to that of the UK or the US. He surveys the rows of seats before us. "This is my first time in such a big theatre," he says. "When I saw the theatre from the stage I could not believe the size of it. In Burma the theatres are very small, and sometimes temporary or open-air, without a roof. There are two national theatres, and the owner is the government, and so the government shows what it wants; we can't perform there."

The style of comedy is different, too – a fact necessitated by the looming figure of the authorities. "I've watched TV shows in the United States," he says, "my friend showed me Stephen Colbert, and he made lots of jokes about the government – and he can do this because the constitution protects him and allows him freedom of speech. If I made those kinds of jokes in my country I would surely be sent to prison."

This is not to say satire does not exist in Burma – rather that it is perhaps a little subtler. "Of course the comedians are very willing to make jokes about corruption," he says, "this is our style. But we sacrifice our lives for those jokes." His favourite comedian is Godzilla, who has never been imprisoned, but has on occasion been banned from performing. "He always makes jokes with a double meaning," Zarganar says. "They are satirical and critical of the government, but they are tactful. Sometimes they are not funny immediately – sometimes I'll get home and only then get the joke."

Zarganar has been arrested and imprisoned on four separate occasions: in 1988, 1990, 2007 and again in 2008. He was once sentenced to 59 years in prison for "public order offences", though he was freed in a mass amnesty of political prisoners in October last year. I ask how he felt upon hearing this sentence, and he smiles. "Every time I was put in prison my thought that was that every door opens two ways, in and out, and one day I will be released, for sure."

Still, one imagines that remaining upbeat alone in a cell must have proved a struggle. He shakes his head. "Every time I kept my sense of humour, and that helped me survive in solitary confinement for four or five years," he says. "I had no friend, no neighbour, so my sense of humour had to help me survive. In every instance, I also saw the situation from the humorous side."

He says his work helped him through. "I always tried to compose songs while I was in prison," he says. "I had no paper or pencil so I wrote them in my head, and in my heart. I wrote down poems and scripts, and sometimes I used a rubber band as a string and played it to make music. I actually have no experience with musical instruments, but when I came out of prison I could read music, because of that rubber band. I used that time to train my mind, and I kept myself and my sense of humour going with this work."

Zarganar is 51, but his comedy routine began in childhood. His parents were writers, and he claims to have inherited his mother's great sense of humour. At high school, in the fifth grade, he gained a reputation as a great mimic, taking off his schoolfriends and his teachers, as well as the voices of famous actors. At university, where he studied dentistry, the jokes continued, but the authorities were not amused. "I made jokes to the lecturers and the professors and the ministers, and they were angry, and they banned me from participating in the final examinations for six months," he says. "And then when I passed my examinations, they refused to issue my degree certificate for another year. But despite all these difficulties, I don't regret making those jokes."

There is a thrill, he says, to performing. "I stand on the stage, and put on a show and tell these jokes … and when the people laugh, I like that face," he says. "I like the laughing face. I am a qualified dentist, and I always say if the dentist can open one single mouth at any one time, well the comedian can open many mouths at once and make them laugh."
Zarganar's parents died during his time in prison, and his wife and children fled to Los Angeles. "They worry about me," he says softly. "They want me to move there and be with them. But I have a duty to my country, I have to go back."

He insists he does not hate the government itself, only the episodes of corruption and bribery and the unfair conditions. "So this is what I make jokes about." But he feels things are changing in Burma, albeit slowly. "This is the beginning," he says with a smile, "these are baby steps. I only see it from the bright side, I am an optimist, but I am a cautious optimist."

• The Secret Policeman's Ball, featuring Zarganar, is on Channel 4 at 10pm tonight.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/mar/09/burma-standup-comic-zarganar