“There I am—smoking weed in the bathroom of my own house avoiding my mother on the couch!” Sureni Weerasekera quips, the venue erupting in laughter. “That’s crazy isn’t it? The house I bought with my own money.”
I am no exception, my voice joining the chorus that zings through the room. But weirdly, between laughing, I also felt a little like crying.
Introduction:
Sureni Weerasekera is an award-winning queer Sri Lankan stand-up comic who made her debut on “Netflix is a Joke” in 2024. On the night of Oct. 24 2025, I had the opportunity of watching her perform at Raleigh’s Goodnight’s Comedy Club on her America tour.
I had long been a fan of her whip-smart retorts and hilariously mortifying anecdotes from her social media, but seeing it in person? It was magic.
When Sureeni Weerasekera walked on stage, drink in hand, wearing a grin wilder than a hyena’s, the static in the room turned to electricity. Folks who frequent live comedy know this feeling well, but for my readers who have only laughed at jokes from the comfort of their beds, allow me to bring the stage to you.
The Show
Some might believe that comedians are naturally facetious, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Sureni’s comedy was a calculated, versatile, quick-witted art.
In the first ten minutes of the show, she had already profiled each and every member of the audience, shrewdly deciding how to peel away our stuffy and proper veneers. Sureni commanded the pace and atmosphere of the room by the word, letting the audience hang from the cliff of every pause. No group was safe from her hawk-like gaze; Sureni was going to pick on you, and she was most certainly going to make you laugh.
Live comedy has long been a two-way genre that blurs the lines between entertainer and audience. While laughter is a universal emotion, the question of how to make someone laugh is as elusive as it is subjective.
For Sureni, that question has an obvious yet personal answer: morbid relatability.
Sureni’s anecdotes range all the way from her sexual escapades in the back of police cruisers to her dysfunctional and tragic relationship with her parents.
The idea of a ten year old stressing out over how to help their parents pay taxes and an immigrant mother kneeling down before her daughter begging for forgiveness are not inherently funny topics—and yet Sureni spins them that way with a practiced nonchalance, shocking laughter from all corners of the room. It takes a monumental amount of strength to smile about such things on stage the way she does.
When I met Sureni after the show, she apologetically rubbed her neck and told me, “this has been the lowest energy crowd of the tour.”
It baffled me because Sureni’s Oct. 24 show at Goodnight’s Comedy Club had reaped some of the loudest laughs from any crowd I had seen in the past four months—perhaps this speaks to the typical audience that Sureni is able to dazzle.
Next time she takes a tour down to Raleigh, make sure to be sitting in the front row. You won’t come out unscathed, but you’ll enjoy the burn.
— Killian Le
