Stand-up Comedian Andriy Shchehel: Writing Jokes Is Not Happiness, Work Is Bullshit

He also compared Ukrainian stand-up to chewing gum for the Western hype.

In a new episode of the program “Antypody” on the Island TV channel, Ukrainian stand-up comedian Andriy Shchehel talked about his butt tattoo, his favorite comic, Ukrainian comedy and conflicts during performances.

Is it true that you have “SRAKA DUPA” tattooed on your butt?

It’s absolute truth. On my left buttock is “sraka,” on the right is “dupa,” and there are three silhouettes of me and my two colleagues, brothers, glorious sons of Ukraine, writers Yegor Ivanovych Romanenko and Vladyslav Volodymyrovych Kapytsia.

Great. Can you show it?

Of course.

Can I take a photo?

Absolutely.

It’s the first male butt I’ve photographed, by the way. Cool.

You’re welcome.

Is this a tattoo or, I don’t know, a signpost?

A signpost? I get it. F***ing. It’s a tattoo. And the most painful of all the ones I’ve had.

I have quite a few myself, but I just can’t imagine it.

I thought it wouldn’t be scary, but it was very painful. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Imagine you’re invited to perform in an oncology ward. Maybe some luxury oncology ward where wealthy people lie and get treated, who think, pardon my language, that they’re dying in style. They paid well, and you came to perform there. Where would you start?

I’d start with, “you probably won’t see my show again,” that’s where I’d start. But I’d grab a spot. I like that bed, and that’s where I’d stay. Then I’d throw in some situational jokes for them. I think it would be a very interesting performance.

I would definitely film it and definitely connect with each of these people, so they feel unique, so they feel the illness wasn’t in vain, that it was a starting point for a whole bunch of f***ing jokes.

Is this more about humanism, or cynicism and mockery? Or misanthropy?

No, it’s about a good performance. I’m just having fun. And they offered me the chance to have fun under these conditions. It would be stupid to do it any other way.

Are you having fun or entertaining people?

I’m having fun. Myself. What people do with what I tell them is something else.

Let’s imagine the same performance, but at the Kahariyk police station. So how do you greet these people?

Greet the cops from Kahariyk?

Well, you’re aware of the Kahariyk story?

Well, if they’re already putting me in these conditions, then I absolutely have to perform?

Yes, absolutely.

No problem, I’d perform just the same. I’d just stand there and state facts, try to let this atmosphere pass through me. It’s a unique experience. If your question is whether I respect cops? Well, if they’re cops, then no. Would I perform for them? If they pay, gladly.

No, I mean, terrible stories happened in Kagarlyk, rapes.

Well, again, I doubt that will happen to me.

Roma Skrypin once said Ukrainian media is a firework made of sawdust. What is Ukrainian stand-up?

Ukrainian stand-up is chewing gum for the Western hype. That’s what it is. Cosplay. We’re comics. We all borrowed the genre and try to write jokes we aren’t ashamed of, look for some balance and a chance to earn money. Ukrainian stand-up is a firework made of leftovers from American stand-up. And partly Russian. Because the Russians also perform in our information space.

If I were Dmytro Gordon, God forgive me, first I’d say I respect you very much, and second, I think I’d ask how you ended up in stand-up, how you came to this stand-up, but I can’t ask that. Tell me, please, the names of the three top Ukrainian stand-up comics in your opinion.

Which ones do I like? That would be Yegor Romanenko, that would be Andriy Kronglevsky, and that would be Denys Duma.

Who are the worst?

The worst? You probably don’t know their names. The thing is, I haven’t been in the hype for a long time, and sometimes I see some names on posters, and I don’t even know these people. Objectively they’re the worst, because they haven’t been doing it for long. And among those who have been doing it for a long time, look: Max Vyshynsky is crap, so that’s who I don’t like...

I don’t know if you can count Andriy Kolmachevsky as a Ukrainian comic, because he also always wrote crap and told one joke a year. Then he hung out in Russia, opened for Komisarenko, and now he’s returning to Ukraine with a solo concert.

If we can count him among our comedians, since he has devoted more than a year to the Ukrainian stand-up scene, then yes. And who else is doing this crap, it’s hard to say.

Can you say that Ukrainian stand-up is more popular in Ukraine than Russian?

No. There are objective indicators: halls that sell out, recognizability.

Reasons. Why?

Gazpromchik pours money into the Russian media and information space, it echoes here, people know, people love, they can’t help but watch. Because what is popularity? You show someone for a long time, people get used to them, and if you’re also funny or charismatic, that’s it, you go on tour.

We don’t have such capacities. Comics don’t invest much in themselves. Those who do are in no hurry, but here it’s developing very well, and the comics are great.

Imagine some of our fat cats decide to pour in money and create some Russian analogues. Under equal conditions, would a popular Russian stand-up comic and a popular Ukrainian stand-up comic, with the same visuals and the same promotion and marketing, draw the same audience?

Is this a question of whether Russian comics are better than Ukrainian comics?

No. For me there’s no question at all here. I evaluate the specific content of a specific person.

They’d draw without problems. Of course. That’s how they already draw. Well, I draw halls.

This is a question about perception. How ready people are to perceive Ukrainian-language humorous content.

There’s no such thing as people being ready or not ready to perceive Ukrainian or non-Ukrainian content. There’s content that entertains them, or content that doesn’t. And if you make a cool thing in any language, you rock it, and people like it, then you sell tickets.

As long as they understand.

Or they don’t understand. You’re not just selling jokes. Charisma, bare torsos, shouting, singing, side content, whatever. That’s a question for you. Or popularity. You just haven’t been on TV for a long time. Look, Dantes, Volodymyr Ostapchuk, they’re trying to sell tickets, and nothing. Girls come because they love it. Because they want to f***.

Who is your favorite American comic?

Doug Stanhope. 

Why? 

He’s direct, he’s hard, he’s talented, he talks about everything to the point, he’s not shy about going to the edge, real underground. He never cared about anyone, does what he knows, does what talent and experience tell him, and he really has beautiful monologues.

I think any content is worth living through, so you can live a life you could never live. And like Doug Stanhope, neither I nor any of us will ever live that way. Taking drugs, drinking like an animal, touring in a beat-up car, living and Bigsby, and at the same time being the most talented personality whose talent everyone recognizes. 

Well, that’s like being Pollock in painting, or like every journalist dreaming of being Hunter Thompson, wandering around taking drugs. 

Pollock, I wouldn’t say that. He’s the one who smeared paint on canvases. No, that’s not it, you had to make American art, and that niche was just being filled. It’s like Shatailo is filling the niche of national stand-up now. Shatailo is Pollock. And Doug Stanhope is Matisse. That’s what that is.

I don’t know how the masses react to him, because he already reaches our information space as a talented comedian, and everyone who comes across him respects him. But you can’t tell that at a family dinner. Everyone will say it’s crap, but now we all understand that it’s brilliant, that it’s very funny. 

But he’s very dark, very dark, if you ask me. He’s an embodiment of vice, I’d say. 

Yes. I can’t do that.

Do we have any comics who literally give their lives, who burn their lives out?

We do have such comics, but sometimes it seems to me they’ve convinced themselves of it. Nobody sincerely burns their life for this. We don’t have the opportunity for that. Here you can’t monetize burning out your life. Either you’re disciplined and you’re fine, or you burn your life out completely and nobody knows you. That’s it.

We have people with problems. We have people with drug problems, and with problems when cops grab you for drugs. And with mental problems. But you see, it’s too green for us to analyze anything. 

Do you use drugs?

Sometimes. 

Which ones?

My circle actively uses marijuana, and sometimes I don’t deny myself. Out of curiosity I’ve tried a few others. 

For example. What’s interesting about them?

Nothing’s interesting. It’s interesting as an experience, it’s interesting as something new. 

An interesting experience?

LSD. LSD is very interesting. Everything else loses.

Does it give you anything creatively?

Nothing gets written on drugs. Nothing gets written on drugs at all, it’s some nonsense. And what does a drug give you? It kills your ambition, calms you down, it tells you: “Andryukha, everything’s fine, you’re already Doug Stanhope, you’ve already filled the Olympic, everything’s fine, calm down.” LSD helps you be happy, not write jokes. Writing jokes is not happiness. 

That’s work.

Work is bullshit. 

“Writing jokes is not happiness” is a very deep thought.

I wouldn’t say it’s a deep thought.

So they aren’t written in a cheerful mood, not in optimism. Well, it doesn’t happen that you step out, it’s nice, sunshine, greenery, I have a date with my beloved girl tonight, now I’ll sit down and write a brilliant stand-up, because everything in my life is great. I have new sneakers. 

That’s nonsense. When the weather is good and the mood is wonderful, I have money and a date. Imagine you’re a subway driver: if the weather’s fantastic, you have a date tonight and money, would you go drive the subway? No. And I don’t want to sit down to write jokes either.

I sit down to write jokes as work. I don’t look at what the weather is like, I concentrate and do it, and with drive and optimism, everything that happens at the start happens, or briefly. I also shook, I shook like crazy from writing comedy. The first two years. Then you just go down into the mine like a shaft, you dig and go out to deliver. 

I’ve written various fiction, and when things were really bad, writing went much better. The better your mood, the worse you write.

Of course, that’s absolute truth. And it’s horrible. So I sacrifice everything I could write just to enjoy life. 

Does writing jokes exhaust you?

No, you just distribute everything inside yourself.

Let’s say this person who writes and the person who doesn’t, under equal conditions, the same domestic conditions, the same income level and so on, which of them is closer to depression, which is closer to suicide?

No, that’s at the level of personality, not profession. If you’re a depressive guy, whatever you work as, whatever you do, you’ll be a depressive guy. 

I don’t know, there are professions with a risk of depression, civil service, say. In normal civil service somewhere, I think 30 to 40 percent sit either on microdoses or on antidepressants, and everyone is on Gidazepam. I think the pharmaceutical industry is making a killing off our pharmacomania. 

Well, look, there’s a shit job like (some profanity), it’s not a bad job, it’s a badly organized job, with bad people. If you work in an IT company.

Is a mine a bad job, or a badly organized job?

I wouldn’t call it a bad job, you misunderstood my comparison. It’s hard work. I’m not saying it’s bad or anything else. Consider my comparison with the mine only as a comparison with a mine.

Have you ever been hit for what you say on stage?

I have. They threw a glass at me, I was performing in Brest. In Belarus. There was stand-up, and on the second floor they were celebrating a birthday, and two guys were sitting there just drinking. That’s what organizers do: they invite people, they sell the parterre, and then the venue sells to someone else who won’t listen to you, which really ruins the atmosphere.

And I started shutting them up pretty hard, and one guy said, “I’m going to throw a glass at you,” I said, “throw it,” he said, “now I’ll see how much it costs.” I said, “you cheap bastard, throw it, I’ll pay.” He threw a glass at me. They pressed the alarm button, six Belarusian cosmonauts arrived and dragged them out. In Kharkiv they wanted to give me the boot. 

For what?

Just that bulls live there... The restaurant is called “Altbir.” It’s just a black hole of mood. Just some crap. It’s underground stand-up. I’ve never been there in my life, but I was in underground stand-up. Svyat says we’re going to Kharkiv, and we’re going to Kharkiv in a squad with Nastya Derzka and Sergey Lipko. I’m performing last.

At that time my hair was longer and dyed white. Lipko performs and some little guys are sitting there, muttering something, you know, sarcastic jabs during the show sometimes. And they were especially brazen toward Derzka. Derzka was joking back. But I’m not one who jokes back.

I say, “guys, please, shut the f*** up.” Something kicked off, they shout something, I shout something back, I put them in a corner, they can’t handle the conflict, and I have the mic. At some point a guy says, “shaved dick.” I say, “of course, I’m a shaved dick, come on stage, I’ll f*** you.”

Everyone laughed, and they went quiet. I performed, and at the end a guy comes up to me: “We’re celebrating a birthday here, you ruined our birthday, go apologize.” I say, “go f*** yourself, I’m not apologizing to you.” It’s you who should come and apologize, and then maybe I will. I say, “call security.”

Security came, and I just left. Such conflicts happen. I’ve never been hit, because honestly, either I’m just lucky, or I don’t touch any ideologically sensitive groups or agencies. Or it doesn’t reach me. I don’t know. 

By the way, what did Yegor get hit for?

Yegor Shatailo had a performance concept: the show was about how defenders of traditional values oppose gay propaganda and equality marches and so on. And Yegor built his performance on the idea that we have to protect the traditional family now, because there are so many gays.

And then he said we have to ban traditional Ukrainian families, the way Margaret Thatcher banned the mines. And he announced that he’s performing in the Southern Coast of Crimea and will talk about closing traditional families like mines. These guys read it, got outraged, because they’re apparently defenders of traditional values, came over, sprayed something with spray cans, and forced him to apologize. Scum. 

They got offended by a shitty joke, but how would they have reacted to a good one?

It’s a good joke. Everything there is funny. People who react to attacks on traditional values don’t judge jokes as good or bad; they judge them as attacks on traditional values. 

I just don’t understand what could prompt a person. Maybe they were just hyping it up?

Hyping, of course. It was definitely chance, but such chance that looks very beneficial for all its participants. Yegor Shatailo is our Twitter star, a mouthpiece for defending liberal values, and a pretty boy, a Ukrainian-language comedian.

Tradition and order work. Everyone wins. No, this is the best thing that can happen to a comic in this country: someone punches you in the face, the community says, “oh, the comic got punched,” everyone else says, “the comic?” and you sell tickets. Exactly. 

Well, I don’t know. I think among such famous comics, only Louis C.K. would agree to come to Ukraine and get punched, rather than what he got in the United States.

No, well, we can’t say anything about Americans or Russians here. We have our own hype here, and of the tools available to us, getting punched in the face is the best. 

Normal marketing for your money.

Of course. 

Stand-up is a powerful industry, a separate branch of show business, worth many millions or even billions. Here, as I see it, all of this is capitalized very conditionally. Why aren’t Ukrainian businessmen, some just wealthy people, rushing to invest in Ukrainian stand-up? Have you ever had such relations with investors?

As for investors and why they don’t invest, it’s better to ask them. I’ve had a lot of contact with people who want to do something but don’t know what. You tell them, “I’ll do it the way I want, because it already works,” and they say, “no, it won’t work, go f*** yourself.” And that’s it. I don’t know, everything’s fine with me. I have no need, and I’m not rushing anywhere. I write something, perform somewhere, draw halls. What is this question aimed at?

Don’t look for a double bottom where there isn’t one. 

No, I just want to answer precisely, not dodge.

Okay. Gazprom pours a lot of money into Russian stand-up. Why doesn’t SKM?

Why doesn’t SKM? Because SKM has places to pour money. Ukraine is SKM. They make the Brothers Shumakher show there, and someone else. There are places to pump money. They have ways to protect their interests other than comedic content and attracting a young audience. Better ask them. 

Well, that’s probably some kind of information strategy? Don’t you think that through these young opinion-makers now in stand-up, they shape the agenda and the threshold of what’s allowed? 

I’ll tell you, I know the answer. You offer the state to take up your cultural weapons. And nobody makes such an offer to us, except that those who buy their product for broadcasting, as they think, it already affects something on TV.

If I come to someone and say I’m here and offer something, SKM or anyone among the powerful or wealthy hardly really forms an information strategy or policy. It’s more that I can enter their strategy and policy and offer some corrections. Say, “I’m a cheerful and f***ing guy, give me money, I’ll raise my recognition level, and then I’ll promote you.”

That’s probably how it’s really done. Because what’s in Russia? There’s Dosmukhametov, there are guys from Comedy Club Production, and these guys are tied to everyone who has money and knows how to get it back. And they say, “you give us first,” and then they return it.

It’s like with Kvartal. You give us more and we’ll sell it, we’ll pump some agenda. Yes, there is initiative, there nobody spares money. Because if I come and ask for money, they’ll hardly give me any. In short, if you give money in Ukraine, most likely you don’t count on getting it back.