Kaneez Surka unpacks love, identity and apartheid-era memories in Foreign Return

There is a very distinct strain of loneliness that comes not from being alone, but from belonging everywhere and nowhere at once. It might be the ache of airports, the comfort of multiple accents, the quiet confusion of calling three places “home” and meaning it every single time.

Love, Identity, and Laughter with Kaneez Surka

For comedian Kaneez Surka, that in-between space is not just a biographical detail, it is the beating heart of her new solo show, Foreign Return, which arrives in Chennai next week.

“At the core of the show, this isn’t really about geography,” she says. “It’s about what it means to belong. I’ve lived in three different countries, and in each one, I’ve been both a resident and a foreigner at the same time.”

Born and raised in South Africa, shaped by the Mumbai improv scene, and now based in New York, Kaneez has spent years toggling between cultures, audiences, and identities. In India, she is “foreign return”. In South Africa, she is Indian. In America, she is both and neither. Each city fits. Each city doesn’t.

Foreign Return unpacks that tension, not through policy or politics, but through romance. “So while identity and immigration and, you know, ethnicity and nationality are part of the show. The show really is about love,” she explains. “The kind of love I’ve searched for, experienced, lost, in each of these places. There’s this quiet hope that maybe finding love is a way of finding a home, even though I’m not sure that’s actually true anymore.”

Furthermore, she adds, “It’s not full-on setup-punchline. There are moments I happily take to explain an emotion I felt.”

That emotional turn marks a shift from her earlier special, I Found My People, which explored living in America as a single woman navigating life without a conventional nuclear family. This time, the focus narrows and deepens. “This show specifically talks about my romantic experiences in three different countries. It has a more emotional tone.”

One of the most anticipated segments draws from her childhood in apartheid South Africa, a part of her story she rarely addressed while performing in India. “I talk about what it was like dating during apartheid,” she says. “Dating was segregated. I was dark-skinned in an all-white school. That shaped how I see love in many ways. I’ve never spoken about it like this before.”

When a comedian revisits her teenage dating life under systemic segregation and frames it as a love story, it reframes history not as distant politics in black and white, but as lived awkwardness, longing, and struggles even in mundane aspects of life.

Chennai, she admits, is still an audience she is getting to know. “I’ve only performed here once, maybe 10 years ago. I’ve never done my full show for a Chennai audience. I’m excited to find my people here.”

She will, of course, open with crowd work; improv still runs through her bloodstream. But the written material remains intact. “There’s this balance between performing for the room and staying true to who you are. I’m leaning more towards staying true to who I am.”

What makes Foreign Return particularly compelling is not just the material, but the method. She admits that most of her writing happens live. “My improv self finds performing on stage way more effective than sitting down and writing,” she says.

The result is a show that feels less constructed and more discovered in real time. That looseness allows vulnerability to seep in naturally. It also explains why her work resists easy categorisation; it is neither strictly political nor observational. Instead, she locates humour in what she calls “the human experience”.

Her background in psychology, she adds, quietly shapes how she writes and performs. “I did study psychology in college,” she laughs. “Unfortunately, I didn’t learn a lot because it was one of the easiest subjects to do. Now I wish I could go back and actually learn some stuff I could use.” Still, the curiosity stayed. Through therapy and reading, she finds herself returning to the subject often. “It helps so much in trying to understand the human experience, because that’s what I write about. I’m not a heavily political comedian and I don’t do observational comedy as much. I talk about the human experience. Psychology helps me understand how the human brain works so that my stories feel relatable to everyone around the world, regardless of where they’re from.”

If Chennai audiences were to walk out with one lingering feeling, she hopes it is this: “That we never have to have it figured out. That there is no final destination.”

If she were ever performing her final show, the takeaway she hopes audiences would carry is surprisingly simple. “If this was my last show ever, I’d want people to feel like they’ve never seen anyone have so much fun in their life,” she says. She recalls the joy of American figure skater Alysa Liu at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, whose relaxed, exuberant presence captivated audiences worldwide. “The joy and fun she had was electric and contagious. She was just enjoying herself and doing what she loved. That’s the feeling I’d want people to walk away with — like I was having the time of my life on stage.”

If Chennai audiences were to walk out with one lingering feeling, however, she hopes it is something quieter: “That we never have to have it figured out. That there is no final destination.”

During the chat with us she repeats the phrase, “figuring it out”, like a refrain and laughs, “May that should be the title of my next show.” Love, belonging, career, identity. None of it resolves neatly. None of it is supposed to. “It’s not the search to find one place that I belong to or one person that I belong to. It’s a constant process of figuring it out.”

When asked what advice she would give aspiring women comics, she borrows from the Nike playbook: “Just do it. Tweet that tweet. Post that post. Book that tour. We don’t figure it out by sitting at home perfecting things. We figure it out by doing.”

Rs 499 onwards. On March 14 at 8.30 pm. At Medai - The Stage, Alwarpet.

Email: shivani@newindianexpress.com
X: @ShivaniIllakiya

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