Mo Amer: Arab-American stand-up on doing comedy in Donald Trump's America

'Sometimes God just sends you the material'

For a Muslim American stand-up, there can be few better comedic breaks than being upgraded on an international flight and finding yourself sitting next to Donald Trump’s second son. Especially, if it happens while the president-elect is rumoured to be planning to introduce a so-called Muslim travel ban.

Mohammed “Mo” Amer immediately recognised both the unlikeliness, and comic potential of the moment. After asking Eric Trump to pose with him for a selfie, Amer quickly posted the image on social media, with the words: “Good news guys Muslims will not have to check in and get IDs. That’s what I was told. I will be asking him a lot of questions on this trip to Glasgow, Scotland. Sometimes God just sends you the material.” The post very quickly went viral.

Two years on, and with a travel ban against several Muslim-majority nations in place after a bitter legal fight over Executive Order 13780, Amer still scratches his head over his encounter with Trump on that flight from Newark to Glasgow, and the upgrade he jokes must have been arranged by a “Hillary Clinton supporter”.

It was “a surreal experience”, he tells The Independent, saying that Trump’s son told him not too believe “everything you read”, but who did not flinch as he was quizzed about the threats his father had made on the White House campaign trail to ban Muslims from entering the US.

In many respects, the description of the encounter en route to Scotland to begin a UK tour – painfully awkward, honest and brutally funny – sums up a large part of much of Amer’s approach to comedy, as he reveals the travails and challenges of migrants to America, especially Muslims.

As a stand-up who has spent several years opening for Dave Chappelle, he says he tries not to derive too much of his material from Donald Trump – “he does not deserve that much attention” – who is a constant and rich source for many comedians. Yet, he cannot ignore the greater insecurity felt by by friends and relatives, and the poor international perception of the US, since the president’s election win. “We’re supposed to be the global example.”

The 37-year-old recently recorded a live show at Austin’s Paramount Theatre for a Netflix special, The Vagabond. In it, hopping around the stage and constantly dabbing at his brow, Amer recalls the years spent travelling the world as a comedian with only a “travel document” rather than a passport, entertaining US and coalition troops in Iraq and Kuwait, and trying to explain to Japanese immigration officials his profession. (The only US comedian they had heard of was the disgraced Bill Cosby.)

After his family of Palestinian origin fled Kuwait after the first Gulf War, and moved to Houston, it took him almost 20 years to get citizenship. That struggle, provides a rich vein of material that is both funny and sad.

One of Amer’s talents is a gift for mimicry and accents – a British customs official, a US soldier from Alabama, the Chinese-American woman who is thrilled when he finally wins citizenship, the Latino Houston gang member who cannot decide whether he is one of them or not. All are voices and personas he deploys, apparently without offending anyone, and which people of different ethnic backgrounds are able to laugh out loud at.

Speaking Arabic and Spanish, as well as English, helps. So does his conversational, almost confessional style. Somehow, an entire theatre can laugh, as he mimics himself threatening to blow up a self-service kiosk as he recalls heaving with frustration being forced to go through the same ritual of his travel document not being recognised every time he flew.

“It was just something I did. It was not something I ever practiced,” Amer says of ability to switch from (mock) British, to (mock) German to real Houstonian. “I just did it. And I started doing different ones, and they worked.”

Amer says the shows require rigorous preparation, something he learned from his friend, Chappelle. This was especially true for the hour-long, curse-filled live show, filmed in Houston, with his mother seated in the front row and for which Stro Elliot and Black Thought from The Roots provided original music.

“It’s hard work. But as long as you have them engaged….I know I’m funny,” he says. The worst fear for a comedian, the one thing every one dreads, he says, is a silent audience.

For all the cultural differences between the many audiences he has performed for around the world, Amer says he believes comedians can be – or even should be – global even in their appeal.

“I’ve never had any issues with this,” he says. “My mentor in Houston, Danny Martinez, said to me to be universal. At that point, it was in the US. And you had to be a funny in west Texas as you are in New York City.

“That rang true globally for me. The only thing, is that in some some countries, the set-up gets more laughs than the punchline.”

Amer, who is set to begin work with comedian Ramy Youssef on a series that explores the life of a first-generation American Muslim in New Jersey, believes stand-up comedy is enjoying “a golden age”.

“Stand-up comedy is one of three indigenous art forms from America, the other two being hip-hop and jazz,” he says. ”Therefore, the evolution of the internet and YouTube has introduced stand up comedy globally.”