(Courtesy Merem Melek Management)

Stand-up comedian Ernest Prakasa closed his 'Illucinati' tour with three full houses at the Gedung Kesenian Jakarta (GKJ), Central Jakarta, on Saturday.

'I had three shows because apparently the rental fee of the building is the same if I hold one or two shows,' the comedian said while on stage. 'As a Chinese, I don't want to waste the money I've spent, so I decided to use it for the whole day.'

Ernest is known for his style of making jokes about his Chinese heritage.

'Actually, the reason is because I want to raise the bar for myself. I had one show during my first performance at GKJ, then I had two shows on my second and this is my third, so there will be three shows,' he said in a post-show interview.

For the 'Illucinati' tour, Ernest came up with more serious topics ' still wrapped in humor ' when he riffed on the upcoming presidential election.

He said he focused on the election because he wanted to give people insight about the candidates so they could make the right decision when casting their votes. 'Many still don't know who they really are ' and to talk about that issue, I forced myself to be brave to talk bluntly about each one of them.'

Ernest has been on the road since November for the tour, hitting 16 cities in Java, Bali, Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, topping his 'Merem Melek' show in 2012, which covered 11 cities in the nation's first stand-up comedy tour.

'Going on tour is just like playing a game where we're moving from one level to another. Once the tour is completed, I believe that the experience will take me to another level,' he said.

Ernest proves his point. Having performed in front of hundreds from different backgrounds, he said he eventually found comfort on stage.

'I am more comfortable now on stage because I have finally found my character as a comic. In addition, people have also started to recognize my style,' he said.

When on stage, he said, he liked to think of the audience as his friends whom he liked to talk to and make jokes with.

'That way, I have the same level with the audience, so I'm not preaching around,' said Ernest, who admires American stand-up comedian Ellen DeGeneres.

Aside from finding characters, he said the tours helped him improve his focus. 'Stand-up comedians must know how to develop their topic; evolving from trivial things to something big. My journey in life also plays a great role in writing scripts. For example, I often talk about Sky [his 4-year-old daughter], and I will probably still talk about her years later but from different angle.'

Stand-up comedy started to become popular in Indonesia around four years ago.

Ernest took part in the first season of Kompas TV's Stand-up Comedy Indonesia in 2011, coming in third.

To focus on making it in stand-up, he left his job at a music label. 'I had a career before, but when I knew stand-up comedy, I fell in love with the art of stand-up comedy; It's a complicated, yet very challenging form of art,' said the former radio DJ.

He said there was an art to stand-up, from the scriptwriting to directing the performance to acting.

'I have to be able to perform like someone who has been totally rehearsed but is seemingly unrehearsed.'

The fun has also started to spread from Jakarta to other cities, prompting the establishment of many stand-up comedy communities and making the competition tighter.

'Because the competition in this sector is pretty tight, I have to be very serious in this because I have chosen my career to be a stand-up comedian,' he said.

He set up Merem Melek Management to develop not only Ernest's career, but those of new talents, recruiting Ge Pamungkas, the winner of season two of Stand-up Comedy Indonesia, and Arie Kriting, the third-place finisher of the show's third season.

'I have made the standards for the recruitment. They have to be funny, of course, but the next important thing is that they must have the motivation to be better and must know what they aim for in the future,' he said.

In the meantime, after spreading laughs in his tours, Ernest wants to take a break to enjoy the Chinese New Year holiday with his family in Jakarta before going back to Bali, an island which has been his home since April.

'I don't want to write any stand-up scripts for a while. I just want to play at the beach with Sky before going back to business: preparing my second book and my new film,' he said.

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