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My Own Private Lesson in Parody

A few of the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, a Bay Area Asian American comedy and theater troupe.

By Jenny Walty

A punch line packed journey through the history of a composite Southeast Asian island, My Own Private Sukiprata has the actors and the audience rolling on the floor. Written and performed by the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, a Bay Area Asian American comedy group, the narrative runs through eight irreverent sketches that take no prisoners.

Between the pseudo-death scene that opens the show to the real death scene at the end, the story of Sukiprata’s history is told by one of its first inhabitants to his grandchild, so he/she can be proud of his/her Sukipratan heritage. They journey through time to see Sukiprata throw off its shackles of male domination and become a matriarchy; submit to a Scottish explorer and then revolt against him; join the United States to throw the Japanese off the island during World War II; and finally, see its people emigrate to the United States. Among other things, the sketches attack imperialism and address the lack of women’s equality in many Asian cultures.

In one sketch, cases of domestic violence are brought to the king’s judgment, only to find him trading jokes and familiar banter with the perpetrators and justifying or dismissing the crimes.

In a sketch about Sukipratan elections, the military dictator allows a democratic election, the American ambassador attempts to bribe the people, who subsequently elect the communist party candidate, who is then shot. Another election is held, and the communist is elected and shot again, and again, five or six times.

The pace of the writing leaves very little time for judgment; it seems 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors trust their audience to differentiate reality from comedy. The anthropology they perform in double time plants itself in our minds, to be played out again in slow motion to be questioned and examined, laughed at and questioned again. The “facts” are transformed into ridiculous situations that remind us of reality.

Through the invention of the exotic island of Sukiprata we can distance ourselves from our own history, but not the realities that history holds, and that we must confront in order to escape becoming the target of scathing comedy ourselves. The 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors are certainly always prepared to oblige and provide.