Ashwyn Singh’s Oct.19, 2024 show at Den 1880 in Uptown Waterloo was a bit of a homecoming for the Toronto based comedian.
Originally from New Delhi, India, Singh attended the University of Waterloo, where he earned a degree in computer science before switching careers to comedy.
Singh came from New Delhi India to attend the University of Waterloo. He earned a degree in computer science before making a switch to comedy. Singh has received praise across Canada for his Audacity comedy tour, including that of fellow Canadian comic Howie Mandel.
“You deserve a huge career beyond being a local Canadian comic. I think you’re next,” said the Canada’s Got Talent judge after Singh’s audition on the show’s Apr. 27, 2024, episode.
Singh’s tour wraps up later this year, but he is not taking time off. His next tour starts in Toronto on Nov. 22, 2024, and across Canada, Europe and India in 2025.
“I start with a show in Toronto before I go on tour, and then I end with one in Toronto when the tour ends because it feels like home. Then December is a big experiment. So, I’m going to go to London, Amsterdam and Dubai,” he said.
Singh builds his comedy around his experiences of immigrating to Canada, attending university and becoming a permanent resident. He does not change the material based on where he is performing. Instead, he likes to see how different people react to his comedy.
“I feel like we are all one people. We all have the same sensibility. Of course, there will be just a few things because the cultures differ,” Singh said.
While Singh calls Toronto home now, he said his experiences in Waterloo significantly shaped his comedy. His friends here included future Good Co. Productions founder Amit Mehta and Jazz Room sound engineer Jeremy Bernard.
“I used to sneak into the Jazz Room because Jeremy was usually doing sound. I would sit next to him at the sound board, and when I graduated three years later, the Jazz Room was the first place I headlined a show,” he said.
A career change from computer science to comedy might seem dramatic for most people. But for Singh, computer science and comedy both require a core understanding of how logic works, whether in a computer processor or a comedy club.
“Everything you do prepares you for everything you’re going to do. Computer science is essentially the study of logic and mathematics. It’s very A plus B. That math is reflected in art as well. Comedy has a rhythm. It might not have a melody, it might not have harmony, but there is a rhythm. There is a beat,” he said.
For Singh, that logical flow of comedy writing helps him reflect on what he experienced. He said each show follows the same evolution from raw experiences to laugh-inducing stories with twists, turns, and humor for his audiences.
Singh compared joke writing to keeping a journal where you make an entry the moment something annoying or angering happens to you. He said writing at that moment captures pure emotion, but it often does not make sense when you reread it later.
“You have something raw and truthful but don’t know exactly what you were trying to say. Then you read it again,” he said. “[…] slowly, the idea becomes more complete. You get to edit out the parts of your emotion that are too incendiary and add humour. You get to zoom out a little bit, so the finished sculpted product often has a very different feeling or says something very different than what you began with,” Singh said.
Building his sets this way can often change the intention of the original joke.
“Sometimes it’s true to the initial intention, and then sometimes it has changed into something so drastically different from what you began with that you don’t even like it anymore. One thing I know for sure is that at the end, the hour is far funnier than it was at the beginning, and that is the one of the goals of the tour.”
You can experience Singh’s comedy when he returns to Waterloo in March 2025. Visit www.ashwyn.me to sign up for tour updates.
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