Kumar

Unapologetic, hilarious and cuttingly insightful, the stand-up comedian, drag queen and all-round performer Kumar has never been anything but himself in our conservative island.

- Renée Batchelor

Kumar has been a household name in Singapore from the 1990s. The fact that he is known by just the shortened version of his birth name, Kumarason Chinnadurai, is an indication of how far he has come to be the definitive Kumar in this country. Unlike performers whose fame has waxed and waned over the years, Kumar has been consistently famous for nearly three decades — although the medium of his comedy has changed from clubs to television and now the Internet.

In the ’90s he was known from his performances in the Boom Boom Room, a comedy club cum cabaret show in Bugis Street. He literally burst onto our television screens in pre-Netflix 1993, as one of the hosts on the comedy sketch show “The Ra Ra Show.” But although the show looms large in the collective memory of the generation that grew up watching it on Singapore TV, it aired on free-to-air television for just 10 months. Conservative society didn’t approve of its sexual innuendo and the liberal use of Singlish and it was eventually taken off the air. Kumar’s reaction is that of a realist. “They were not ready. I mean, in Singapore, there are some people who will never be ready.” Censorship, both by himself and by outside forces, is after all a recurring theme in Kumar’s public life.

Despite being short-lived, The Ra Ra Show had a huge and almost immediate impact on Kumar’s public visibility. It made him so famous that he once had to be physically lifted out of Takashimaya by a bodyguard, because of fans who mobbed him at a magazine’s live show. The incident left a deep impression on Kumar, who decided that it was all too much for him. When the show ended he was “very glad,” and ready to move on and continue working. “I couldn’t handle the fame, so I had to stop TV,” he says.