“Hardened by surrealism”

Many Den/The Day readers obviously remember the splendid numbers of Dnipropetrovsk State University’s famous KVN (Club of the Funny and Inventive) team. They dis-appeared for some time, only to appear again – at least for the public at large. What brought along the new wave of popularity was the artists’ new project, cabaret Funny Arctic Fox. The ironic, subtle, funny, and very talented numbers of Funny Arctic Fox are now appearing on the TVi channel and ranking high on YouTube and, finally, in Den/The Day.

We, too, could not deny ourselves the pleasure of communicating with what may be justly called intellectual humorists: the theater’s author and artistic director Hryhorii Helfer, author and musical director Yevhen Hendin, as well as stage director and actor Yevhen Chepurniak. In spite of all the jokes and capers which our guests were generously dishing out, we had quite a serious and, in our view, very meaningful conversation.

Larysa IVSHYNA: We have gain an impression that the capital of humor is moving or even has already moved from Odesa to Dnipropetrovsk. Can you explain why? What is funny in Dnipropetrovsk?

Hryhorii HELFER: “I once came across a newspaper comment that Dnipropetrovsk had been making the whole country laugh since the times of Leonid Brezhnev. There was a period, when he was the funniest character on an enormous territory. But, speaking seriously, Dnipropetrovsk is our native and beloved city which I think is also very advanced and intellectual, even though it used to bear the burden of being a Soviet-style closed defense-industry center. But, nevertheless, it is the birthplace of Mikhail Sverdlov, Aleksandr Galich, and Helena Blavatsky.”

L.I.: You know the inner world of Dnipropetrovsk.

H.H.: “We love it and we are its patriots. In reality, Dnipropetrovsk – especially its university – was full of humor even during the most stagnant years. I graduated from Dnipropetrovsk State University’s Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty, but later I annulled this eduication by graduating from the Gorky Literary Institute.”

Yevhen CHEPURNIAK: “You did it…”

H.H.: “Yes, I did it (laughs). There were KVN battles going on between students and teachers at the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty. That was a hotbed of free thinking. Zhenia (points to Hendin) was then at the Economics Faculty.”

L.I.: At the same time?

Yevhen HENDIN: “No, I was younger.” (Laughs.)

H.H.: “And Yevhen Cepurniak was at the Chemical Technology Faculty.”

Ye.Ch.: “But there was a gravity center.”

H.H.: “Yes, there was a gravity center. When the Club of the Funny and Inventive was revived, I studied in Moscow. The boss was not Maslyakov but the program director Andrei Menshikov. It is widely believed now that Maslyakov invented the program and all the jokes, but in reality things were a bit different.

“To cut a long story short, I came to the editorial office and said there was a team in Dnipropetrovsk. The first reaction was: ‘Where? What? What about?’ But, in the long run, we must have done them in. And they were just recruiting team members. In a word, Maslyakov and Gusman came to us at a proper moment. Even the Party City Committee was in the picture.”

Ye.Ch.: “The Martians came, too.”

H.H.: “They previewed us and said it was all in a shambles but still, as there was no way out, they told us: ‘You’ve got a day and a night – and you’ll play against the Moscow State University (MGU) team.’ We played and beat the MGU team.”

Ye.H.: “The score was 0:3. A walkover of sorts…”

H.H.: “We were then welcomed in Dnipropetrovsk as cosmonauts.”

Ye.H.: “Let me tell something very nice now before I forget it. Back in the Soviet era our native city of Dnipropet-rovsk was famous as a city that makes missiles that are supposed to hit a target. But, as long as these things are no longer produced here, we have committed ourselves to making these ‘missiles.’ We know the targets. Nobody must die – on the contrary, something must be born. That’s the kind of racketeers we are.”

Ye.Ch.: “Let me add something. All that was produced in Dnipropetrovsk was supposed to fly off and never come back. And the people who would fly away from Dnipropetrovsk would either not come back or come back – this time for all to see.”

Ye.H.: “They would come back as monuments.”

Ye.H.: “The most frequently asked question now is: ‘Are you not afraid?’ And one more: ‘Why are you not in Israel?’”

H.H.: “And we answer: ‘Is anybody afraid of us?’”

L.I.: And what do you answer when you are asked why you are not in Israel?

Ye.H.: “We’ve all been there 12 times each. But why should we be there? We have our job and the newspaper Den here.”

H.H.: “Besides, we played KVN and were a very popular team. And it once dawned on us that we were a variety theater of sorts, a self-sufficient artistic group. Our actors received an education. Incidentally, Yevhen Chepurniak is now Meritorious Artist of Ukraine.”

Ye.H.: “It was a pleasure to win in KVN games, but self-realization was and, thank God, still is the number-one question for us. Actually, we launched the very idea of musical number, no matter how immodest this may sound. We were the first to do so.”

L.I.: What are level and the bar of humor for you? How are you feeling this? For instance, there is 95th Quarter – it is also about political satire…

H.H.: “There are reference points that do not depend on ‘quarters’ – these are Grigory Gorin, Schwartz, or Mikhail Zhvanetsky. In other words, there are some absolute things. So, in spite of everything, our reference points remain high.”

L.I.: And Saltykov-Shchedrin…

H.H.: “Even Shakespeare has a lot of fun, although some argue that it was not he but some other author.”

Ye.H.: “For now it is a time of personal tastes, postmodernism. It is unrealistic to write Gorin-style every day. There are so many information channels now. People have very many diverse reference points. They have all run away to fill humoristic niches.”

L.I.: And you?

H.H.: “We cannot run away, for we are doomed to get tormented. Why are Maslyakov and we in different fields now? We wanted to do what we liked and thought naively that everybody would like this. We are speaking of man and the meaning of life, but it turns out they don’t need this. They need something else.”

L.I.: Then you are at the right place. We, too, have been trying hard for 15 years to do something that… Anyway, we have understood each other.

(All are nodding in consent.)

Olena YAKHNO: And why are you never invited to Jurmalina [humor fest in Jurmala, Latvia. – Ed.]?

H.H.: “We cannot outstrip Petrosian.”

Ye.H.: “We’ve made some unsuccessful attempts. We were approached by six well-known operators who said: ‘You are really cool, and we are so much fed up with all this.’”

O.Ya.: But this means all these Petrosians are more successful than you are…

H.H.: “Why is Kafka read by thousands and some other author by millions?”

Ye.H.: “Darya Dontsova and Kafka. We don’t need Dontsova. What do you consider the criterion of being successful? Money?”

O.Ya.: When I was getting ready for this interview, I googled for “Funny Arctic Fox” and in fact did not get too many links. I expected more. I was stunned by the lack of information about you.

Ye.H.: “The cabaret Funny Arctic Fox is very young – it was born last year. Previously, it was the Dnipropetrovsk University KVN theater. Some numbers have gone down in KVN history and are now classics, such as ‘Emmanuelle,’ ‘A Mob Get-Together,’ etc.”

L.I.: You were just our secret weapon.

H.H.: “If the highest degree of self-realization is the criterion of being successful, then we consider ourselves successful in many respects. But if you judge it from the angle of money, then, of course, we are very far from Petrosian.”

Ye.H.: “There is such thing as mass culture, and 90 percent of people will never be watching us.”

H.H.: “Advanced people, too, will feel hurt if it turns out that they were fooled. They will say: ‘Good Lord, we went to a uni, we are so high-brow, but it turns out that even housewives understand this.’”

Ye.H.: “We have played on big stages, such as Madison Square Garden and the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. But what really appeals to me is the audience we playing to today: 100 like-minded people. This is really a treat, even though it does not fetch much money, of course. Money is made with a different part of the body.”

Ye.Ch.: “I must look back on the way all this began. We were in fact abreast with time. That was the moment – maybe because we were younger or, maybe, because the entire society was full of hopes. And the KVN movement was still alive as a large-scale phenomenon of advanced youth. Who remembers now the actor who played in The Square Peg?”

Ye.H.: “I do – Norman Wisdom.”

Ye.Ch.: “Good for you! You remember because you are advanced. And Charlie Chaplin is common knowledge. He was and is still known as Chaplin.”

Ye.H.: “There was no fast food at the time, and now it is the time of fast food.”

Ye.Ch.: “But we are still the same. Yet it happens sometimes that we coincide. For example, we have coincided today, and we are being watched. The trouble is we lack adequate mass media coverage. Yes, there might have been more instances like this. But the question is whether it is needed. One must do what they like and take interest in.”

H.H.: “We terribly torment each other whenever we do something for ourselves. But we work easily for the uncle who launches a corporate party and says to us: ‘Here are 10,000 dollars, please stage something for me.’”

Hanna SHEREMET: I saw an interview with Maslyakov the other day. Asked whether today’s young people who play KVN are aware of the degree of freedom they have, he said: “I don’t think so because they have outgrown freedom.” I find this disputable, though. Before coming here, I told Ms. Ivshyna that my idea of the degree of freedom was what you showed. And what is being shown today is not freedom – it is a glossed-over self-censored product.

H.H.: “It seems to me freedom cannot in general be measured by any degree. There can only be a degree of non-freedom. We were once keenly aware of this and tried to break the latter. But now they are just unaware of the freedom they are enjoying, and they are only focusing on earning money. They are talented guys. But we did not understand that this might fetch money. We used to think of how to all this democratically and tiptop. But they understand only too well that they will be easily spotted in one project or another. What they have is, to quote Dostoevsky, ‘coined freedom.’ And he was also right.”

Ye.H.: “It is Maslyakov, not Dostoevsky, who is right because man mostly appreciates what he has earned in a hard way or what he is being deprived of. But they did not acquire, nor are they being deprived of it so far. They will appreciate it when they begin to have their freedom being gradually taken away.”

H.H.: “Whatever the case, what is now cannot be compared with what was in the Soviet era. There is much more freedom today. The goal of current freedom is to make sure that certain things should not be touched. For example, it seems fashionable now in Russia to love Putin. This vogue is being imposed, even though some people are already booing him. Even there, this cuts both ways.”

O.Ya.: And who is it fashionable to love in Ukraine?

H.H.: “Oneself.” (Laughs.)

O.Ya.: A fresh scenario for you: our president’s family lineage was recently found. He turns out to come from the nobility.

Ye.H.: “We have already ridiculed this: as are the times, so are the aristocrats.”

L.I.: And is real life supplying more material now?

Ye.H.: “We have never thought we will be again fixated on politics. Undoubtedly, the catalyst is the contact with TVi.”

L.I.: And do your Dnipropetrovsk shows have anything to do with the city?

H.H.: “No, the numbers we write for TVi have, as a rule, a longer life and are more humane. They are not about Yanukovych. There is a number that we have not shown for more than five years and then staged it again. It is a story of three old clowns: red, white, and black one. Each of them is trying, in his own way, to make the audience laugh. Is this a butt of jokes in Dnipropetrovsk only or is this typical of all people?”

Ye.Ch.: “We can hardly speak about ‘Dnipropetrovsk humor’ – it is Odesa residents who should confirm their specifics. We already have a conflict between the form and the content. We are actors, so we cannot keep pace with the speed our texts are written with, on the one hand. On the other hand, not every text can be used as a stage number. Some things can only be shown in the shape they have on the TVi channel. My job is to try to stage what has been written.”

L.I.: Yevhen, which of the latest numbers is your favorite?

Ye.Ch.: “We are of the same opinion here: it is ‘A Toreador in the Corridor.’ There is everything there: irony, parody, hyperbola, splendid actors, gorgeous music, and the caustic form of expressing this all.”

Ye.H.: “We have a very tight schedule: we receive a theme on Tuesday and should write a text in one day. On Wednesday we record the soundtrack, and then we must film all this. So we do all this with live actors for a third or fourth time. ‘Toreador’ was made in this mode, too.”

L.I.: Did you decide at once who will be singing?

H.H.: “It is Sasha Sergeyev, the Opera House’s leading actor. He graduated from the Novosibirsk Conservatoire, not the Yaroslavl Institute, as we did. He is ‘our’ actor.”

L.I.: You could assign a certain role in your cabaret to a guest star…

Ye.H.: “Surely, provided they pay for everything.”

H.H.: “We would love to invite politicians and write texts for them. We did this in Russia.”

H.H.: “Well, we’d better not write anything for Liashko, but we’d write with pleasure a little song for someone like Yatseniuk.”

Ye.H.: “Zhirinovsky and Luzhkov sang our texts…”

L.I.: And where is he now?

H.H.: “The point is Zhirinovsky sang it OK, but Luzhkov sang out of tune and learned the text very badly.”

L.I.: Why not invite Putin and Medvedev to sing in duet?

(Everybody laughs.)

O.Ya.: You said we are living it the times of fast food. But my impression is we are living in the times of surrealism: a fence was put up again near the Verkhovna Rada on Freedom Day. Why do you think they keep on putting it up?

H.H.: “It seems to me they were putting up nothing – they had just been hosing it down very well and it grew again.

Ye.H.: “I think we are going through a period of hardening by surrealism. In the long run, we (or our descendants if we don’t live to see it) will learn to value freedom, for we did not have to struggle to win independence. We must understand that if we manage to go through this and remain ourselves.”

O.Ya.: And will we able to go?

Ye.H.: “Well, is there another way to go?”

H.H.: “There are some objective laws which you cannot bypass.”

Ye.Ch.: “The Soviet Union collapsed all the same! Seventy years seem to be nothing from the viewpoint of history.”

Olha RESHETYLOVA: Does the scale of humor depend on the scale of an epoch?

H.H.: “It surely does. Swift laughed on a different scale. Simply, the country we are talking about was an ideology. The word ‘party’ was equivalent to the word ‘God’ at the time.”

Ye.H.: “This made humorists polish their Aesopian language and mastery. Raikin was not an anti-Soviet actor. But many of the spoken things had a deep subtext. Now, too, some things are not being publicized because of a danger: they can no longer shoot an individual but may well imprison him or her. We have never been any political ‘killers,’ but the question ‘Are you not afraid?’ is, pardon the expression, effing us up and just seems unnatural.”

O.Ya.: And are you not afraid?

Ye.H.: “No.”

O.Ya.: And why are you not afraid?

H.H.: “Because we are not scared. We are not some kind of ardent revolutionaries. Of course, we do have some inner principles, but, by all accounts, any person can be scared. We are normal ordinary people who have lots of vulnerable spots. But, on the other hand, when we are speaking of freedom, we just want to have a territory of free self-realization. Some may find this unreal, but we find it organic.”

Ye.Ch.: “We had numbers devoted to Tymoshenko and Yushchenko. We once had a number called ‘The Story of a True Bee-Man’ (everybody laughs), as well as a letter from Vertinsky to Yulia Tymoshenko when she was the premier. Naturally, nobody dogged us. Gentlemen in the street should not at all think of politics. For when the entire society is involved in all this mayhem…”

Ye.H.: “In fact they are not thinking. It only seems to us that they are thinking of this when we read Facebook or sit at an editorial office.”

H.H.: “No, Yevhen, I don’t agree. It does not just seem. It is not normal when ordinary people curse politicians at a marketplace but still watch television.”

O.Ya.: People are said to be apathetic and fed up with politics now.

H.H.: “But who says it, the BYuT men? They are right. Should they go and tear their shirts for Turchynov?”

O.Ya.: Nobody has torn a shirt for Tymoshenko, either.

Ye.H.: “I will assure you, a time will come when more than one shirt will be torn.”

O.Ya.: Incidentally, a historic summit is to be held on December 19, which will perhaps (touch wood) grant us the EU association status. Do you think Ukraine deserves this association in its current plight?

H.H.: “I think so. In any case, if there is even the slightest opportunity to integrate into or come closer to [Europe], to have at least some agreements that can enforce European rules here, we must seize this opportunity.”

Ye.H.: “I have no answer to this question. I think it is a high degree of the current regime’s legitimization. These are not just lofty words – there is a regime in this country. I won’t compare this with the 1936 Olympics, but I have very mixed feelings. For, on the other hand, the participation of BYuT in the new-style elections is also legitimization of these elections. From the angle of abstract humanism, one should not sign an association treaty with or hold Euro-2012 in a country like this. But, on top of this, it is my country and I would like it to stand some chances.”

O.R.: But there are also questions about European values. Angela Merkel has calmly launched Nord Stream together with Russia, in which Khodorkovsky is behind bars and Politkovskaya was assassinated…

Ye.H.: “But Russia promised nothing. It never applied for EU membership.”

O.R.: Right, but what about double standards?

Ye.H.: “Nobody idealizes it, but as far as values are concerned… There is nothing perfect in this world but me (laughs). The whole life of an individual and a country is always a choice: a choice in order to reach something and strive for perfection. They say democracy is ugly, but humanity has not yet invented anything more valuable. So nobody idealizes Europe. We are not living in the void – we travel there. But, at present, it is the best option. The Eurasian way is nothing but backward movement.”

Ye.Ch.: “I think if this door remains closed, there will be fewer options. And there will be a different picture in which there will be only one entrance and one exit.”

Ye.H.: “The bitterest thing is that, while we are talking here, we feel that society can in fact have no impact on the authorities.”

O.R.: Even by means of humor?

Ye.H.: “To do so by means of humor, we must have a lot of TNT equivalent. We are carrying out our humorist ‘nuclear’ project like Iran, but we don’t have such a number of ‘warheads’ so far. We can do this, of course, but it will take years.”

O.Ya.: Chornobyl and Afghan war veterans managed to exert some influence…

Ye.H.: “I think Chornobyl disaster fighters are being manipulated. It is also part of the attempt to shift some blame to the Verkhovna Rada: let them do it rather than somebody else. All is so entangled.”

O.Ya.: You mentioned the Election Law. Why don’t you like it?

Ye.H.: “First of all, I don’t like that it envisions the first-past-the-post system in the current situation. I don’t like the mothballing of political parties – 1 percent is too little, 5 percent is too much. I cannot see here any possibility for changing the elites and the MPs.”

O.Ya.: But the first-past-the-post system is also a social uplift of sorts for certain people.

Ye.H.: “Olena, I can’t see the way the local and regional elections are held. Money, the administrative resource, etc., will say the last word. Unfortunately, figuratively speaking, 80 percent in this country will vote for buckwheat [an allusion to pre-election governmental handouts. – Ed.].

O.R.: An interesting experiment was conducted recently in your Dnipropetrovsk. A poll was held in the most crowded places about the Verkhovna Rada elections. Under the proportional system, the Party of Regions won with 50 percent of the votes and the Communists garnered 10 percent. But those who are going to vote under the first-past-the-post system put on the list a maniacal murderer, a woman who had killed several children. But the point is not about this… When will the people begin to think?

O.Ya: But can anyone be forced to think at all?

H.H.: “It is impossible to force somebody to think. Thinking is quite a complex process. One can only encourage doing so. One must do what you and we are doing. We shan’t go to the barricades, shall we?”

Ye.H.: “I don’t know.”

O.Ya.: Hendin and I will perhaps go.

H.H.: “But I am sure there emerges a new generation of people who are glued to social networking sites and exist in a bit different world. They may find other arguments which we cannot understand.”

O.Ya.: Incidentally, doesn’t it seem to you that these networks are exhaust pipes?

O.R.: An illusion of activity?

H.H.: “But in Egypt and Tunisia they were not just exhaust pipes.”

Ye.H.: “It is cutting both ways now. In this country, they mostly work as exhaust pipes. If the undermining ideologues try hard, they will be also able to analyze the networking sites. We must be less internetized than Egyptians. But, undoubtedly, it is exhaust of the negative, as are the Chornobyl disaster fighters.”

O. R.: One of your best-known numbers, a classic now, is “Emmanuelle.” We have a page titled “A Story of one Photograph.” And what is the history of this number?

H.H.: “The next year will mark the 25th anniversary of the Dinpropetrovsk University KVN. We have a book on the 10th anniversary, which describes the making of this number. Indeed, it focused on everything that the then society lived on. The three of us, authors, – Sasha Kostiantynivsky, Zhenia [Chepurniak], and I – gathered in the kitchen. So Zhenia said: ‘Let us assume that people are watching a porno…’”

Ye.Ch.: “Yet we were subconsciously thinking all the time about society and people…”

Ye.H.: “But still more consciously about pornography.” (Laughs.)

Ye.Ch.: “This number has an absolutely ideal proportion between recognizability, democratic form, and content. It has details as well as the overall picture, i.e., freedom. This is perhaps why it dropped such a bombshell at the time.”

H.H.: “Still, as time goes by, there are fewer and fewer people who know this picture.”

H.Sh.: It is like a symbol of time…

Ye.H.: “It is again about the above-mentioned fast food era. At the time, erotica was not fast food, an accessible product. The innocent Emmanuelle was its symbol. This is why it was identified with freedom.”

Ye.Ch.: “When we were on a tour in Germany, a Czech company came to see our program and this number. They turned out to be Radio Prague employees who later spread word about us.”

O.Ya.: Could you say when we will be able to see it in Kyiv?

All together: “What?”

O.Ya.: Funny Arctic Fox.

H.H.: “We have already had the experience of performing in Kyiv. Last year we brought over the cabaret program ‘Funny Arctic Fox’ which was quite a success for Freedom. As you know, those who hang out at Freedom are differently oriented.”

Ye.H.: “They are bombast-oriented. They are the people who had to pay 600 hryvnias each. And this immediately creates a different impression. But we wanted them and us to be like-minded people.”

Ye.Ch.: “It is now a time when even jazz does not draw many people. And we are perhaps somewhere in this niche. So the House of Officers would be the most democratic stage for us. But the stage is one thing, and the partner is another.”

H.H.: “Of course, when the audience consists of the people who know how we did it, this really inspires us. We still keep, since the KVN times, such a mandatory accessory at our concerts as a warming-up with the audience.”

Ihor SAMOKYSH: Does the society of today need political satire?

Ye.H.: “We will tell you this if our Kyiv concert is a success. In reality, there is a stable sensation that people do need this. ‘The 95th Quarter’ also works in this field. But they have a problem: what they are doing is business. And any business is dependent – they cannot do what poses a threat to their business. What we are doing brings no benefits – it is difficult to take something away from us – so we are feeling freer to do what we please.”