Reuben Kaye: ‘Some people definitely deserve to be cancelled’

After his bawdy joke about Jesus on The Project earlier this year, the cabaret star has some advice for anyone who finds themselves cancelled.

‘Not all art has to deal with politics to be political’, Reuben Kaye says. Picture: Jax Moussa.

Comedian, singer and performer REUBEN KAYE lives between London and Australia. The son of a German ballet dancer and a Russian artist talks to BRIDGET CORMACK about being cancelled and his love of butter.

My advice to someone who finds themselves publicly cancelled is … I guess this is about my joke about Jesus last year on The Project (Reuben was forced to postpone a Sydney show after making a bawdy joke about Christ). We’re always going to piss off someone. The point of comedy is to push boundaries. However, some people definitely deserve to be cancelled. Not me, however. I should never look back on my actions and learn anything. I’m brilliant and always have been. Everybody says so. But nobody talks about how humble I am.

When it comes to artists bringing politics on stage … I think if that’s what the artist wants to do, and they can do it and get away with it, then absolutely. I think art is inherently political. But not all art has to deal with politics to be political – because every part of our lives is politicised.

My show Apocalypstik is about … the apocalypse, masculinity and the life of my uncle as a bank robber in East Berlin. It’s part elegy, part eulogy, part Eastern Bloc Dog Day Afternoon. I wanted to examine what trapped people will do. There’s this great Bette Midler quote that I love, which is “she’s not a mean person. She’s a trapped person”. It is so interesting to look at the lengths people will go to to escape. I think it’s in human nature to escape. All of the greatest songs are about getting out. We’ve got to get out of this place, about running away from something or running to something. A lot of queer experience is about world-building, a lot of queer experience is about imagining a utopia. My uncle was trying in all his myriad ways to escape to somewhere better.

Queer comic Reuben Kaye during his appearance on The Project in March. Picture: The Project/Channel 10

Being severely bullied at school – verbally, physically, emotionally – made me … very angry. It also made me very funny because it made me find out exactly what my weapons are and what my arsenal is. Although I couldn’t really physically fight back, I could certainly fight back with words, with art, with comedy. You could say it put me on a path to do exactly what I’m doing now.

These days I’m fighting back against … homophobia, transphobia. I’m trying to fight back against a system that continually tries to tell me how I should exist. A system that tells me how I should spend money. I think if you’re not fighting back against something, you’re not paying attention.

The best performance advice I ever received is … get on stage, tell the truth, try not to bump into the furniture, and get off.

If you came to my family Christmas you would hear … Happy Birthday, because it’s my stepfather’s birthday. You’d hear my mum's fingernails tapping because she’s trying to quit smoking. You’d definitely hear someone going “Ow!” because they’d forgotten the oven mitts when they try to take something out of the oven and you’d hear a spoon going through lots of butter. Butter is for everything. It’s a social lubricant. It’s a salad dressing. It’s for the meat. It’s for the bread. The four great food groups in my family are butter, sugar, salt, alcohol. It’s not Christmas unless you eat like a renaissance pope.

My post performance ritual or routine is to … take off my makeup. Have a vodka. And then dive into a pool of the Argentinian men’s water polo team. If they’re not available, I am taking applications.

Reuben Kaye is touring his shows Apocalypstik and The Kaye Hole to Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, January 19 to May 12.