After years of lampooning the junta, Burma’s Moustache Brothers aren’t ready to stop poking fun at the regime yet, despite dramatic changes that mean laughter is no longer such a risky business. With nothing more than their sharp wit, the sexagenarian members of one of the long-isolated country’s most famous comedy troupes are perhaps among the bravest dissidents to have stood up to the generals. “It’s old wine in a different bottle,” said Par Par Lay, 64, also known as “Brother Number One”. With the regime embarking on a series of dramatic reforms, the satirists hope one day to be able to take their act on the road, and enlighten the poor about the political situation.

Lu Maw, a wiry 62-year-old whose broken English is peppered with mismatched idioms, elicited nervous laughter by admonishing the crowd at a recent show to be quiet because government agents were nearby. “We are blacklisted, jail birds, and illegals you know, so you are also here illegally,” he told a young American woman in the front row before breaking into a grin. “But don’t worry, the government loves tourists because they want your dollars.”

At another point in the show Par Par Lay asked the crowd if they wanted to see an authentic Burmese act. Within seconds, he was wearing a balaclava helmet over his moustachioed face and sporting a hand gun as he gingerly mimicked a thief breaking into a home. “That’s how they are, like Jesse James, Ali Baba, like bandits,” Lu Maw said on the microphone, alluding to the military to scattered laughter from the crowd.

The trio used to lead one of Burma’s most popular traditional comedy acts. The brothers are still officially banned from performing publicly, but they have found a way to continue their act by staging it for tourists in the family’s cramped garage in Mandalay.

Feigning seriousness, Lu Maw wondered aloud why US-led coalition forces had not sent unmanned drones to Burma, whose military he said had been involved in some of the world’s most atrocious rights abuses. “Burma is the same as Libya, Egypt, Somalia or Syria. But they all have oil,” Lu Maw said with a naughty wink. “Ah, but they (the West) don’t know what we have — we have opium and heroin too.”

After the one-hour show, the brothers personally thanked every visitor and sold them souvenirs. They said the money would go to helping those political prisoners still languishing in jail, despite a series of mass pardons that have seen hundreds of others walk free under the new reformist government.

“But 1 April, the day of election, is also April Fool’s Day. We hope it’s not going to be a joke.”

2012.02.29 DVB humour-still-weapon-of-protest