Lviv, Ukraine — Some news stories are so dark and absurd that they sound like they were concocted in the warped imaginations of bored satirists. Like the headline from Belarus a few weeks ago that reported 10th graders there were being taught how to aim rifles – using shovels.
“What do you think about that?” asks the comedian Vadim Dzyunko.
Junko is on stage with two other comedians and a famous singer. They are all seated and holding microphones, cheerfully trying to find humor in a place and moment when the tragic trumps the funny by a spectacular margin.
It’s a recent Saturday night at Cult Comedy Hall, a comedy club in downtown Lviv, near Ukraine’s relatively peaceful western border. About 100 people spent about $13 apiece to eat, drink and listen to comics spouting whatever came to mind, often the latest news about the war with Russia. Or in the case of this shovel-as-a-gun business, the subject is the strange life in Belarus, a dictatorship just 150 miles to the north.
“What do you expect from a country where the potato is a weapon?” says comedian Alexander Dmitrovich. Then I imagine an instructor giving advice to the kids.
“We can’t give you guns yet…”
“‘Cause we only have one,” concludes the third comic Maxim Kravets.
This is Cultural Defense, an evening of unscripted and free humor organized in Lviv every few evenings. It all started two weeks after the Russian invasion, when Kravets, a Ukrainian intelligence officer by day and comedian by night, called one of the show’s creators, Bohdan Slepkura, and pointed out that Cult Comedy Hall was in the basement.
“I said, ‘You know, the place is a bomb shelter,'” recalled Kravets, a burly, bearded 42-year-old.
Kravets, wearing a “Wildness” T-shirt, and Dmitrovich sat in another room at the club after a recent show. At first they said they weren’t sure anyone in the country was in a laughing mood. Then the shock of the invasion was new and hundreds of thousands of residents from the eastern part of the country flocked to the city.
“Before the first show, we thought maybe this wasn’t the right time for comedy,” said Dmitrovich, who is 30 and also has a beard. (“We’re ugly without beards,” he explained.)
“We were petrified,” he continued. “But after the first show, we came and sat in that room and realized that people wanted to laugh. They want to hear jokes about our enemy. We knew from that first night that this was going to be bigger than we thought.
There is exactly one international star breaking through in Ukrainian comedy, and that is the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. If that’s putting pressure on others in the business, it wasn’t evident on stage this Saturday, when no one seemed particularly pressured to land on the headliner and the singer, Mihailo Homa, spent a lot of time reflecting on his childhood.
Ukraine has long had a modest live comedy scene, although anyone accustomed to the standard American club setup will find the show’s format novel. There is no warm-up act and at no point is anyone standing alone on stage. There are different guests every night. The evening begins with four men having a hoarse conversation and response in Ukrainian, like the rest of the show.
Leading: “Glory to the nation!”
Audience: “Death to enemies!”
Leading: “Ukraine!”
Audience: “Above all else.”
Leading: “Putin!”
Audience: Unprintable!
The stars then take their seats and start talking.
Some of the humor is self-deprecating. In a previous broadcast — all of which are available on YouTube — Dmytrovych took issue with the news that Ukrainian soldiers had mastered a “disposable” anti-tank missile called the NLAW. This was amazing, he said, because by nature and necessity Ukrainians are used to using everything over and over again.
“I got slippers in a hotel in Egypt a year and a half ago and I’m still wearing them,” he said. “When they got dirty, I washed them. When they fell apart in the washing machine I glued them on. Now these are slippers that I offer to guests.
There are many jokes about Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, who is despised as a cocky idiot who underestimated the spirit and determination of Ukrainians. The Russian army, on the other hand, was largely spared. The point, Dmytrovych explained, is not to play down the invading forces, which Ukrainians consider fearsome and terrifying. It is to lift the spirits of people who are not on the front line or who once lived near the front line and then moved away.
Thus, during one broadcast, Kravets praises the surprisingly polished beauty of checkpoints in Lviv (“I wouldn’t be surprised if they served lattes”), some of which have extremely long queues. (“At first I thought they were going to take my order and end up giving me a Big Mac.”)
Domestic politics is a recurring theme. During a broadcast a few weeks ago, a survey was cited that said 90 percent of Ukrainians want to join the European Union.
How the war in Ukraine affects the cultural world
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Valentin Silvestrov. The most famous living Ukrainian composer, Mr. Silvestrov made his way from his home in Kyiv to Berlin, where he is now in hiding. In recent weeks, his comforting music has taken on new meaning for listeners in his war-torn country.
Alexey Ratmansky. The choreographer, who grew up in Kyiv, was preparing a new ballet at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow when the invasion began, and immediately decided to leave Moscow. The ballet, which was scheduled to premiere on March 30, has been postponed indefinitely.
“What’s the first thing you’ll do when we join the European Union?” asked a guest on stage.
“Look for the 10 percent who didn’t want to join the European Union,” Dmitrovich said quietly. “Who are these people?”
The show also doubles as a fundraiser for Ukraine’s war effort. Each performance is streamed live on YouTube and viewers can send donations online. Throughout the evening, an offstage host shares details of some of the larger donations, along with announcements about the performers. On this Saturday night, a donor annoyed the hosts with the lack of jokes.
The goal of the evening was to raise enough money to buy a car for the border guards, and when the audience went home, about an hour before the war-imposed curfew of 11 p.m., the goal was almost reached. In more than 50 performances, Cultural Defense raised nearly $70,000.
The crowd at these shows is skewed young, with most in the 20 to 35 age range. There are rows of seats crammed near the stage and tables in the back for those who want to sample Cult’s menu, which, somewhat inappropriately, leads with a long list of sushi offerings, including rolls and nigiri. In brief interviews before the show, several viewers said the onslaught of depressing news made the laughs seem necessary.
“I think it’s three for one,” said Petro Diavoliuk, who was drinking and eating with friends. “All the money goes to the military, people relax and it’s cheaper than a psychiatrist.”
Even here, however, reality intrudes. A few minutes before the final ovation on this Saturday night, a line of cell phones simultaneously began blaring the classic air raid siren, that rising and falling sound that is an invariable part of every World War II movie in which soldiers scramble before an attack. Everyone checked their phones and opened an app — several are available — that tracks government warnings about missile strikes.
“Attention! Air alert!” read text in both Ukrainian and English on a Telegram channel called Notifications CD, for civil defense.
No one seemed remotely concerned, and the flow of chatter on stage never stopped for a moment. Air raids are quite common in Lviv; there were 10 during Cultural Defense shows. And anyway, the place is a certified bomb shelter. If there was real danger, this would be a great place to wait it out.
About an hour later, well after the show was over, a second announcement came up: “Airborne alert has been suspended.”
During an interview after the show, both comedians said they hoped the war would end before the fall, purely for career reasons. They have corporate gigs lined up in other countries and while hostilities rage, the men are forbidden to leave the country.
That was a joke. Humor in Ukraine is both a prayer for normality and a form of resistance. It’s also uniquely empowering in a way. As Dmitrovich said, “As long as we’re laughing, we won’t give up.”
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