“What do you think about this?” asks comedian Vadym Dziunko. Dziunko is on stage with two other comedians and a well-known singer. Everyone sits and holds microphones, playfully trying to find humor in a place and time 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 each to eat, drink and listen to comics with whatever was on their minds, often the latest news about the war with Russia. Or in the case of this shovel-as-a-rifle 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 Oleksandr Dmytrovych. Then he imagines a trainer, giving advice to the children. “We can’t give you rifles yet——” “Because we only have one,” concludes the third comic, Maksym Kravets. This is Cultural Defense, an evening of unscripted and free-flowing humor held in Lviv every few nights. It began two weeks after the Russian invasion, when Kravets, a Ukrainian intelligence officer by day and comedian by night, called the show’s co-creator Bohdan Slepkura and pointed out that the Cult Comedy Hall was in a basement. “I said, ‘You know, the place is a bomb shelter,’” recalled Kravets, a burly and bearded 42-year-old. Kravets, wearing a “Wildness” T-shirt, and Dmytrovych sat in another room of the club after the show recently. At first, they said, they weren’t sure anyone in the country was in a laughing mood. The shock of the invasion was then fresh 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 isn’t the right time for comedy,” said Dmitrovich, who is 30 and bearded. (“We’re ugly without a beard,” he explained.) “We were petrified,” he continued. “But after the first show, we came and sat in this room and realized that people want to laugh. They want to hear jokes about our enemy. From that first night, we knew this was going to be bigger than we thought.” There has just been an international star in Ukrainian comedy, and he happens to be 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 a punch and one singer, Mykhailo Khoma, spent a lot of time ruminating on his childhood. Ukraine has long had a modest live comedy scene, although anyone accustomed to typical American club settings will find novelty in the show’s format. There is no warm-up act and at no point does he stand alone on stage. There are different guests every night. The evening begins with four men leading a raucous call-and-response in Ukrainian, as does the rest of the show. Hosts: “Glory to the Nation!” Audience: “Death to the enemies!” Hosts: “Ukraine!” Audience: “Above all.” Hosts: “Putin!” Audience: Unprintable putdown! After that, the stars take their seats and start talking. Some of the humor is self-deprecating. In an earlier broadcast — all available on YouTube — Dmitrovich spoke about the news that Ukrainian soldiers had acquired a “disposable” anti-tank missile called the NLAW. This was amazing, he said, because by nature and necessity, Ukrainians are used to reusing 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 together. Now these are slippers that I offer to visitors.” There are many jokes about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is scorned as a stupid idiot who underestimated the spirit and determination of Ukrainians. The Russian military, on the other hand, is largely spared. The point, Dmitrovich explained, is not to underestimate the invading forces, which Ukrainians see as formidable and terrifying. It’s to cheer up people who aren’t on the front line, or who may have once lived near the front line and have since moved away. So, during a performance, Kravets extolled 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 show a few weeks ago, a poll was mentioned that found 90 percent of Ukrainians want to join the European Union.
How the war in Ukraine affects the cultural world
Card 1 of 6 Valentine Silvestroff. Ukraine’s best-known living composer, Mr. Silvestroff, made his way from his home in Kyiv to Berlin, where he is now sheltering. In recent weeks, his comforting music has taken on new meaning for listeners in his war-torn country. Alexei Ratmansky. The choreographer, who grew up in Kyiv, was preparing a new ballet at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater when the invasion began and immediately decided to leave Moscow. The ballet, whose premiere was set for March 30, was postponed indefinitely. “What is the first thing you will 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,” Dmitrovic said. “Who are these people?” Performances double as men 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 about some of the largest donations, along with messages for contributors. This Saturday night, a donor put the hosts on the rarity of jokes. The goal for the evening was to raise enough money to buy a car for the border guards, and as the public headed home, about an hour before curfew at 11 p.m. imposed by the war, the objective was almost achieved. In more than 50 performances, Cultural Defense has raised nearly $70,000. The crowd at these shows skews young, with most being in their 20s to 35s. There are rows of seats packed near the stage and tables in the back for those who want to sample Cult’s menu, which, somewhat unprofitably, is preceded by a long list of sushi offerings, including rolls and nigiri. In brief interviews before the show, some viewers said the onslaught of depressing news made laughter 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 contraction.” Even here, however, reality intervenes. Minutes before the final cheer this Saturday night, several cell phones simultaneously began blaring the classic air raid siren, that rising and falling sound that is a staple of every World War II movie in which soldiers fight before an attack. Everyone checked their phones and opened an app — several are available — that monitors the government’s warnings of missile strikes. “Warning! Air Alert!” read a 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 stage chatter never stopped for a moment. Wind alarms are quite common in Lviv. there were 10 during Cultural Defense performances. And anyway, the place is a certified bomb shelter. If there was real danger, this would be a good place to wait for it. An hour or so later, long after the broadcast had ended, a second message appeared: “The air alert has ceased.” During a post-show interview, both comedians stated that they hoped the war would end before the fall, purely for career reasons. They have organized some corporate concerts 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 is also, in some ways, uniquely fortified. As Dmitrovich put it, “As long as we laugh, we don’t give up.”
