Brenda Fiala is tired of being the odd person out at the karaoke club. She doesn't relish being treated as if she were "Godzilla" or "Miss America" while doing business in China. And she wasn't amused when a man propositioned her in a hotel elevator.
Such experiences are par for the course when you're a blonde, 1.75m-tall international businesswoman. The surprising thing is that it took so long for someone in Taipei to turn these disturbing yet funny situations into a comedy act.
"I'm Taiwan's first foreign female standup comic — as far as I know," said Fiala, whose next show is tonight at the Sappho lounge. While that might seem like an important distinction, Fiala, who was interviewed by phone from Hong Kong, insisted she felt no pressure. "None at all," she said. "I'm doing this because it's fun."
PHOTO: RON BROWNLOW, TAIPEI TIMES
Fiala, a freelance brand management consultant from Colorado, was listening to ICRT on the way to work two months ago when she heard DJ Rick Monday make a pitch for the first All Star Comedy Night, which he was planning for the end of October. Monday said he would only organize the event if a woman participated.
The idea stuck with Fiala, and when she went for a run that afternoon she realized she had plenty of material. Such as how people in China treat her like she's "Godzilla" or "Miss America." How she has a hard time gaining acceptance as an equal with businessmen in Japan. Or about the time when she exchanged pleasantries with a man in a London hotel elevator, only to have him mistake her for a prostitute and ask if she was "working."
"She doesn't have to make up jokes. She just has to tell stories," said Monday, who is looking for a comedian of Asian origin to participate in the next All Star Comedy Night, tentatively scheduled for March 14. "Probably her funnier stories are the ones she didn't tell" at her first show.
Most of Fiala's stories are about what it's like being a businesswoman in Asia. "You always end up at a KTV," she said with a sigh. "It's the same routine. You walk into your private room. I'm usually the only woman who's not working. Women walk in 10 at a time and the boss chooses one for each member of the party. I either get the lady boy or the youngest salesman. Somehow it's not comparable."
Having done consulting work for a multinational beverage company in China, Fiala knows her karaoke bars. You can tell the quality of the KTV, she said, not by how well-decorated they are, but by what the women's restroom looks like. "In the men's room you get massages and hot towels and whatever else." As for the women's room, "In an A-class KTV there's toilet paper. In a B-class KTV there's a hose." And in a really run-down KTV "let's just say only shake the girl's right hand."
It's a rich vein that's been tapped from the male perspective by Dan Machanik, who performs with Fiala tonight. His new material includes "12 ways to tell if your girlfriend works for a KTV" and "New Olympics Events for Beijing 2008." But Fiala is the first to offer a woman's point of view.
"You definitely want to have some females in the audience. It's just common sense," Monday said of the first All Star Comedy Night. "We wanted to let them know that it was absolutely female friendly and there was going to be someone on that stage that they could relate to."
"It will be interesting to see how much time they give her" tonight at Sappho "and how she wants to take it," he added. "She's a high-priced consultant, so there's a lot of truth and a lot of business advice that she could put into (her act) just by wrapping it around a funny story."
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