Even if you don’t necessarily subscribe to it, if there are enough stereotypes, there must be some grain of truth to birth order theory. From the oldest child pressured to live up to parental expectations and being a role model, to the youngest child doted on and spoiled by parents, it is likely you might have noticed some of these traits in either yourselves or the people around you. But what of the middle child, caught somewhere in between and supposedly neglected?

Comedian Sharul Channa takes to the Drama Centre Black Box this April to tell all in a laugh-out-loud, but brutally honest sharing of what it was like growing up as a middle child. Aptly titled Middle Child, this latest stand-up from Sharul takes us back to her earliest years and spins tragedy into comedy, sharing about her parents bringing her up, and her relationship with her sisters, and how all that has translated into the way she views the world.

“I think being a middle child has shaped my entire perspective – it’s about getting the hand me down toys and clothes from the older sibling, and how a lot of the time, you also look very genetically different from the older child, so people will end up saying ‘wow, were you picked up from the rubbish dump’?” says Sharul. “It’s things like that that set you on the path to comedy, where you’re so exposed to it from a young age, and you learn to take things in your stride. I remember how I was getting made fun of for things like being big-sized from eating so much bread, so much that my nickname ended up being ‘Gardenia’!”

While she looks back on these incidents and laughs, Sharul hasn’t always been able to handle that kind of pressure well, and shares more about the other stressors in her youth. “I do think I had a lot of generational and ancestral wounds to clear out, and I’d see myself as a peacemaker a lot of the time, pretending I’d have a stomachache when my parents started fighting just to get them to stop,” she says. “In a way, I do suspect that’s what led to my chronic anxiety, but I don’t blame my parents for it – they were still very young after all, and immigrants too, so they were facing all these changes in their own lives while bringing me up.”

On top of that, Sharul’s mother faced a lot of pressure to produce a son, only to end up with three daughters. Sharul’s sisters almost never surface during her stand-up sets, and she takes the opportunity to share more about them now. “My older sister was an accountant, and used to live in Australia before moving back to Singapore with her son, and readjusting to life here,” she explains. “On the other hand, I treat my younger sister almost like my own child, she’s about seven years younger than me, and I would always care for her when our mom went to work. These days, I’m still the first point of contact whenever she needs advice. Strangely, both of them embarked on Master’s degrees in the line of counselling and clinical psychology.”

If anything though, Sharul has chosen to carve out her own path as an artist, and her entire family has made peace with it. “When I first went to LaSalle, my parents asked me what I would do for my career since it was so hard to get acting roles as a brown girl in Singapore. I just told them I’d teach speech and drama and destroy the lives of other children,” says Sharul. “I did actually do that for a while, and my parents got off my back since I was earning an income, and eventually, I made it in comedy, and now my parents do end up coming to watch my shows and actively support me, and have accepted that I’m not going to be going down a conventional route, unlike my two sisters. In fact, my parents still cut out articles in The Straits Times about me, and people even ask my dad if he’s my father, because they know who I am.”

Sharul has also become a makeshift therapist for her parents, but finds that because of all the energy and time she puts into her comedy career, she finds it harder to spend her time on other things as well. “I will always be growing my comedy career, and I have big plans coming up, from returning to India, to touring to some parts of Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia,” says Sharul. “This is something I’m going to keep doing, and along with all that, to maintain a balance where I have a healthy marriage and healthy career.”

“For a show like this, it can be more difficult to write and speak about such personal topics, compared to say observational comedy, but it’s also a means of healing that part of yourself that needs purging. I don’t ask my parents if it’s ok to talk about some things or test run it, I just do what I want and face whatever comes after,” Sharul continues. “Though sometimes my mom will end up heckling me on Facebook and claim that she never did certain things, and I end up deleting her comments. People will ultimately take away what they want, but this is my show and I tell it how I want to, where I share how being a middle child has shaped my worldview and my style of comedy. My advice for parents of middle children – be more open with them, be more honest in your conversations, and never assume that they’re dumb or underestimate them, so they can be prepared for what lies ahead in life.”

What Sharul is ready to do then, is to show how strong she’s become, and in doing so, share that strength with her audience, and use comedy to draw power from pain. “No matter how far I’ve come, I always remember to stay humble, and to always ensure that I put on a good show for my audiences, regardless of the venue or country I’m in,” she says. “What we must always remember is that everything is temporary and perishable, including ourselves, and we owe it to ourselves to make the most of our time, and keep the peace when we can – even when you get frustrated, you learn to let it go, like between myself and my helper, who can be quite blur sometimes, and I’ve started to treat her like a sister as well.”

“It hasn’t always been an easy path – every week is a new challenge, but you learn to become resilient along the way, and tackle them as they come. Especially as a female comedian, it can be difficult in any country – when groups of men show up, there’s usually a power struggle that comes up, where they either want to fuck you, or fuck with your head. And because I won’t let them do the former, they’ll usually try the latter,” she concludes. “All I can do each night is end up licking my wounds, and show that I’m not affected by it and never give them the pleasure of thinking that they managed to get to me. And just like how a good actor can bring an audience to tears while only being on the verge of it herself, when I apply that to my comedy, I will talk about it without crying, and speak my truth.”

Middle Child plays from 3rd to 7th April 2024 at the Drama Centre Black Box. Tickets available here