Interview: Comedian Chanel Ali Brings RELATIVE STRANGER to SoHo Playhouse

Chanel Ali is a standup comedian who is bringing her one-woman show Relative Stranger, presented by Sarah Cooper, to Soho Playhouse for a short run beginning on September 17. We chatted over the phone about the show and her process for making it happen.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you had to describe your show to someone unfamiliar with your work, how would you do that?

I would say it's an autobiographical comedy about me, a young woman who was in foster care, moved around a ton, [and] became a stand-up comedian. I met my cop dad when I was 18, and then after I became a comedian, I booked a commercial, found out about a brother that I didn't know I had. Then I decided to let my cop dad know about himself. And it's a wild, true story filled with lots of healing and lots of laughs.

How did you come to meet your dad the first time?

Well, I was in foster care and when you're a foster kid, you just kind of become like a bill in the government system. And so as I was about to turn 18, they wanted to rectify that bill. So they subpoenaed him for his DNA. My whole life, I always knew his name, but I didn't know that he was a cop. So anytime I tried to look him up, I couldn't find him. That's the thing about cops. You can't find their phone number. And this was pre-Facebook. So they subpoenaed him for his DNA because they wanted back to child support. Once they found him and got his DNA, they told me that he was a cop, and then I was able to just call police stations and find him.

Wow, okay. What about your mom?

I got taken away from my mom when I was two. She had experimented with drugs in the eighties [...] and even though she got clean prior to having me, she had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder. So she relinquished custody pretty quickly after I was born because she knew she was unfit. [I] always say that it's the perfect blend of that chaos and funny chaos and funny. People tell me like, I cried, I laughed, I cried, I laughed again, and then I left feeling lighter and full of hope, you know? But I always say that it's really an orphan story. I think that's what my story is, is like the orphan come up and we love that. We love Harry Potter, we love Batman, we love Annie and Black Annie.

What was the process of putting the show together like for you?

Honestly, it was very cathartic. The first paragraph that I wrote, I just wrote out of anger. I had just cussed out my cop dad, told him that I had uncovered his past because I became a successful comedian and booked a commercial. And the scenario to me was so upsetting that it became kind of funny. I just was like, wow, this is incredible. I'm presenting this cop with DNA evidence and he will not acknowledge it. Wow. I'm going to write this down and it's making me giggle a little bit. I can feel myself kind of healing from it in real time. And then I started thinking about my whole life and I was like, Chanel, that's the craziest story I've ever heard. And I have met really incredible people and I have made up characters who have incredible stories and none of them come close to the things that I've seen and experienced. So it felt like very reassuring to be able to tell people about things and have them say wow, I never would have guessed that about you. You speak so well and you have such a great disposition. I never would have guessed that you had this Batman upbringing, but it's been really dope, honestly.

Tell me about the commercial. So you're doing this commercial and how did that lead to you finding out you had a brother?

So I booked the commercial [for 23andMe] through Kevin Hart's production team. Then after I shot the commercial, I came back, I obviously had 23andMe because they gave it to me. And I got a notification while I was in an Uber and it said, hey, do you want to load your family tree? I said, load it up, baby. What do I have to fear? And it said, hey, you have a brother named Anthony in Philadelphia. And my first thought was that I was being pranked because I had dated so many Anthony's from Philadelphia that I was like, come on, what are you talking about? What is Kevin Hart setting me up to uncover? And is the commercial still happening? Am I still at the shoot now? Because this feels like a prank, right? And so I went full catfish and found everything that he ever posted and realized that we're good. Never dated my brother. But I reached out to him, he said, I'm in the Navy, I'm currently in Bahrain. I just told everybody on this base about my new sister, we're all watching your specials and people are crying and we're cheering and it feels like we're celebrating a birth and I can't believe you're my sister and I can't believe you found me. And it really was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. If I never would have chased my dreams, if I never would have got to this point, I was not going to [do] 23andMe.

So do you send Kevin Hart a holiday card?

I did let them know right after I found that out… I messaged them and said hey I just found out about a brother... did you guys know about this? I'm lucky that it worked out and I have been in talks with the production team, they know of my off-Broadway run and they're interested in maybe turning this into something that everybody can watch at home.

How long have you been working on the show?

About a year. It took me about a year.

That's not so crazy long. I think that sounds actually kind of quick.

I agree. And you know, as a comedian, jumping into this world was brand new to me. I had to Google a lot of things like, how do you [do] off Broadway? And one thing I learned is that like the show needs to be really, really good before you can explore that space. And what I decided because I'm a very methodical person was that if I stayed in New York City and tried to workshop it night after night or month after month, it was gonna take me years and years and years to build up that type of rapport. So I mostly did it in other places. I took it to Edinburgh, I did it at the Fringe, I was invited to the Melbourne Comedy Festival, did it there in Australia, and it also helped me make sure that the show is very worldly, because if I can make some old guys in Scotland listen to me and hear my story and say, wow, you did good, that's how I know when I bring it back to New York City, it's gonna get really sharp and that it'll be something that everybody can understand and identify with.

What was it like working with a director? Because comedians don't work with directors usually.

You know, it was honestly very therapeutic. It felt really good to sit in front of somebody… because in the beginning, I didn't even know what this totally was. It's like a one woman show. I just didn't really know what else to call it. And it's been really dope to sit with somebody and have them see the vision and then add to it. Help me use sound cues and tech cues. I wasn't doing any of that. In the beginning, it was me and a microphone. I just didn't have any direction. And so it's been great to have certain things come to life. She's brought a lot of love and a lot more color to some of the scenes that I was playing very straight to camera, I would say. But also it's challenging. It's challenging when you present a work to somebody and you're like, this is my baby. I've poured my heart and soul into this. This is my life story. It's everything. And they're like, okay, let's cut this part. It's like, you just cut a finger of mine off, but also hopefully it'll grow back and I'll be stronger now. So it's not an easy process, but it is, it's important for art, think sometimes to have some direction and to make sure that our message is not being diluted.

So it's not a super long run. Do you have a plan for what's next or are you going see how this goes?

I'm gonna see how this goes, but obviously I wanna kick this worldwide. I'd love to do a theater tour. Obviously I'm pitching it to a lot of networks right now and production companies trying to take it to people's television screens and maybe do like a serialized version of it. I think it could lend itself to the kind of Baby Reindeer type vibe. But yeah, I want everybody to hear this story. It's my greatest work thus far and it's the dopest wildest story I've ever heard. And yeah, we're dreaming really big. I don't know totally because I'm still in the phase of the plan where [I] can't believe this is happening. So we'll see. We'll see what happens next.

Photo credit: Michael Gebhardt

Find more information about Chanel Ali at her website ChanelAli.com.