KVN/ КВН

KVN, pronounced ka-veh-en, is a national institution. The Club of the Joyful and Inventive is like the Cambridge Footlights kind of sketches and Whose Line Is it Anyway? turned into a competition. It takes the form of clubs, teams often from universities, who compete against each other at city level, regionally and nationally.

Higher Level Contest, from an official video

KVN has its roots in the 1950s but started in its present form in 1961. Higher levels were televised and, as you can imagine, giving university students the option to speak on live TV was not the best of ideas in a dictatorship. Sure enough, the Soviet authorities' patience ran out and over a period of years increased the censorship - pre-recorded, edited, forcing a reduction in the improvised parts of the contest and then reviewing the scripted parts, slashing what could be done. Censorship even went to the extent of banning false beards on the basis that they could be interpreted as mocking Marx or Lenin.

A revamped KVN reappeared in the mid 80s and has been on TV ever since. While the original was rather formal and more about games involving the teams setting and answering and gaining points for correct or humorous responses, the newer version was much more entertainment and humour-based. Equally, the game has gone from suspected and banned by officialdom to events on occasion attended by the president, almost certainly the only time you can make a joke at his expense in his presence.

Advert for a show, featuring the long-time club president, Alexander Maslyakov.

The format is a selection of games, a mixture of improvisation and prepared sketches, songs or even videos. Three games are compulsory - welcome, music and a Q&A - and the rest come from a bank of possible tasks. For each of the rounds, points are awarded by a jury. It's become a forum for performers and writers resulting in many former KVN players becoming professional comedians, actors and writers, usually individually but with some teams also remaining together as a troupe.

The humour is varied - slapstick, parody, droll, absurd, witty, smutty, but never outright vulgar.  A couple of translatable jokes:

• A crematorium worker sneezed at work and now he doesn't know who's where.
• For misbehaving, Tom Thumb's father beat him with a thread.

"Soup's ready"

A great example is this sketch (no Russian needed). It's based on a classic Soviet cartoon, Boniface's Holidays, in which Boniface, the circus lion, goes back to Africa on holiday. There, he juggles for a local child and then each day of his holiday, more and more children appear wanting more tricks. In the sketch version, Boniface isn't performing, but supplying drugs... all done to the original cartoon's soundtrack.

A still from the cartoon

KVN appears to view itself not just as an organisation but more as a movement, perhaps a throwback to its Soviet origins. It provides a productive pastime, an outlet for creative and technical ability both on stage and behind the scenes and a place where similar-minded people can come together to compete in a friendly, mutually supportive environment. Some teams start at school but most start at university, especially if taking it seriously, not too far removed from the 1960s when its games featured at school, children's summer camps and pioneer camps. There are clubs worldwide, even here in the UK, usually for ex-pats though not always. An estimated 5 million people attend shows annually and many more watch on TV. Hugely popular and enormously entertaining.

Amateur, university level KVN