After a triumphant run at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Yes And… Laughter Lab Finals, Canadian-born comic Aditya Mayya brought his deeply hilarious and poignant hour long special, ‘Aditya Mayya Pretends to be Sad’, back to his New York home base on Oct 18.
Well, Brooklyn’s Starr Bar, but as the quick-witted comic proclaims early on, creativity is most favorable in the misdirection and absence of truth.
Detailing his removed childhood and tendency to growl at other children, Aditya Mayya got up one day in front of his peers and told jokes. From that moment on, he found imaginative freedom in lying publicly for a laugh and concocting a well-told narrative.
Perhaps the biggest lie told early on in the show, is one that highlights his younger brother, Josh. Mayya jests that the dynamic duo of “Aditya and Josh sounds like a Nickelodeon show trying a bit too hard to be diverse.”
Only the 28-year-old Mayya reveals mere moments later, after a bellowing belly-laugh from the audience, that his brother’s name is actually Keshav, and he had jumped to his death from his COVID-era dorm six years prior.
Aditya Mayya in Brooklyn, NY
Needless to say, the audience hung on every word Mayya offered, only for the skilled jokester to undercut any lingering tension with continuous, societally-defiant wisecracks and a desire to elude all indulgent sentimentality.
Recounting his Zoom-streamed eulogy, Mayya pokes fun at the few permitted funeral attendees for social distancing “because it’s not like you can catch suicide.”
Mayya has no problem calling out that his deep-seeded tendency to resist candor and affinity for delightfully dark wit may not be the best coping mechanism, but it’s the story he knows best how to tell. A juvenile sense of humor is one he shared with his late-bro, along with overlapping music tastes and love of their hometown baseball team, the Toronto Blue Jays.
Mayya’s innate reflex to keep things light becomes exceedingly present as he returns to his New York base and dodges prodding concern from friends for his own mental wellbeing. “I’m good,” he tells them.
Mayya turns to alcohol consumption, only to explain away the self-destructive behavior with a bold statement: “has anyone considered that drinking is really cool?”
Then, the comedian finds joy in a new romance with a kind and captivating neighbor. He paints a heartwarming meet-cute in the hallway of their East Village walk-up that feels straight out of an indie rom-com. And it might as well be, because Mayya lets slip they met on Hinge.
The sharply self-aware comic of course finds the former exceedingly more compelling from a narrative standpoint. But to none of his friends’ surprise, Mayya admits that the combined ingredients of a new love story amidst hidden, profound grief didn’t concoct the best boyfriend material.
Despite the relationship ending rather mutually and with unwavering care for one another, Mayya was unable to outrun himself and his own truth on the fifth anniversary of his brother’s passing, when the Toronto Blue Jays devastatingly lost the world series.
Aditya Mayya in Brooklyn, NY
Overcome by this prolific irony, Mayya chooses to finally open up to his friends. And despite chafing against emotional vulnerability through consistently zany quips and artful storytelling, he concludes that the universal experience of loss is one that binds people together and there is joy to be found in life after tragedy. Even if it requires a little truth here and there.
This hilariously evocative hour is not one to miss from rising-star comedian Aditya Mayya. He plans to extend Aditya Mayya Pretends to be Sad’s run both in New York and at venues internationally.
“And maybe even off the globe. I’m in talks with NASA for an ISS tour,” says Mayya. “Fingers crossed!”
