The American comedian Matt Davis is performing in Morocco’s Marrakech on December 5 and Casablanca on December 6 as part of his touring show and project, Bad Familiar, where he hilariously puts the equation “familiar equals good” to test. He promises that it will be “a fun evening.”
Having performed in over 250 cities and 50 countries around the world, including world-renown festivals such as Just for Laughs in Montreal, JFL42 in Toronto, and Sketch Fest in San Francisco, Matt Davis is meeting the Moroccan audience for the first time in Marrakech and Casablanca.
The show is set in Marrakech on December 5 at 8 PM at The Mad House Marrakech, and Casablanca the next day at 8:30 at The Irish Pub. (Click the links to buy a ticket).
In an interview with International Morocco, Matt Davis invites Moroccans and Expats to come and bring their friends, and promises that “it will be a fun evening.” He adds, “if you can watch a movie in English you can follow whatever I’m joking about. And even if not, I’m funny enough to look at.”
Asked about the reason for his choice of Morocco, Matt Davis explained that on numerous occasions, people tell him after shows that Moroccans and Expats would love his shows and recommend that he should visit it for his own delight. He went on to say that as he visits new places, he likes to be influenced by the people he meets and the places he visits, and that he is curious as a comedian “to understand that what is funny in city A or city B isn’t only funny in those places.”
Concerning his expectations about the Moroccans and the English-speaking expats in Morocco, Matt says:
“I’ve heard really positive things on both, and expect the shows will be really fun evenings with some smart and cool people. I assume that whenever someone – anywhere – chooses to come to my show, they’re either already interested in something a little different, or perhaps comedy in general.”
BAD FAMILIAR, Expanding the realm of the “new not-yet-created”
In this touring show, Bad Familiar, Matt Davis uses funny personal narratives as he comically challenges beliefs related to language, nationality, and religion, and shakes down racism and social hypocrisy, among other things. Having written it as he toured the world, the show brings a unique, and a borderless, perspective on the day-to-day issues faced by all communities, irrespective of their cultural backgrounds.
Matt Davis attempts through his tour to help individuals and communities knock the dichotomy of the Strange and the Normal out of their perspectives. He believes that our preferences for the familiar and rejection for the unknown puts us in “a dangerous game of defining “good” and “bad” in ever-liming terms.” Stripping the familiar and the unfamiliar from a value judgment can keep us away from mistaking our subjective view on things for the objective truth, and allows rediscover them as “as equally temporary things.”
In this regard, Matt Davis adopts a straightforward approach (“Bad Familiar”, and not “familiar does not equal good”) in challenging this notion that he thinks it emanates from “a pause for definition that facilitates the act of preference” but hijacks our sense of reality. Comedy for him is, thereby, one of the tools that should be effectively utilized to detach this dichotomy from value judgment and further expand the realm of the “new not-yet-created.”
