Standup comedian Roman Shcherban: people are drawn to humor by trauma, pain, poverty and topical issues

He also believes that modern children have their own opinions on everything, allow themselves to be free and stand out for their ability to express themselves.

In a new episode of the Antipodes program on Iceland TV, Lviv standup comedian Roman Shcherban talked about how he discovered standup, moving to Kyiv, his education, school and training to become a teacher, as well as alcohol, mushrooms and other substances.

My colleague Volodymyr Petrov, whom you just met in the dressing room, said in his story that comedians are very often somehow traumatized in childhood. He used hyperbole, he said these are people who were raped by their parents, something like that.

Is it true that it is trauma that gives the impulse for this kind of humor? That is the first question. And the second: what makes a person cross the line of ordinary notions of humor and dig deeper, into themselves and into other people?

I think that trauma, pain, poverty and topical issues definitely drive people to humor. Especially standup. After all, it seems to me that standup should be some pain wrapped in jokes. And it must include some personal experience. I don't allow myself jokes about rape, about Hitler, black humor, I just don't feel comfortable with that.

I don't have any personal experience of that. And when it is not backed by such things, but is just a joke for the sake of a joke, for hype or for some provocation, I don't see the point. On the other hand, pain in standup is not an end in itself either, because everyone gives a damn about your problems. Nobody cares that you go out there and have nothing to pay for or eat. Screw everyone.

And you have to find that point of contact with the audience so that everyone just sits there like: «Wow, I had that too, well, you said it, dude, that's real». That is the reaction there should be. If it is based on pain that everyone has, and the joke is cleverly and tastefully wrapped, then it's cool, that's standup. What makes people dig deeper? I think there is probably some kind of psychological deviation here.

Maybe half-psychosis, maybe quarter-schizophrenia, maybe some half-developed bipolar disorder. I often talk to myself. I feel happy, then sad. I go out and then I remember, wait, did I lock the door? I definitely did, I was talking to myself, so I locked the door. It seems to me these are already some such manifestations. To calm down, I come home and make collages. I cut things out of magazines and just glue them.

I could do all this in Photoshop on a laptop, but the range of those tools is limited. I can download whatever I want, zoom in on each picture as I like. Convert, flip, reverse and so on. But here everything is limited for me.

What I find in a magazine, what fits on a sheet, that's what I have to work with. And it calms me down, it takes me six or seven hours, I just forget everything. I sit and cut out little pieces of paper.

Returning to Dadaism, because collages are one of the leading trends there. Where can these collages be seen?

On Instagram.

You say you talk to yourself. By the way, I actually have the same thing. It's called obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is generally considered an urban disease. But it's normal, I think. We just live in conditions of such information overload. Have you ever taken antidepressants or tranquilizers?

No. What changes or expands consciousness, that was only mushrooms.

Did they help?

Well, it was a very interesting experience. And it had such consequences that I simply stopped drinking alcohol for six months.

You're not the first, by the way. Zezyulin, vocalist of Latex Fauna, also told me that he quit drinking and lost 15 kg after that.

I just got some kind of charge of sobriety. I was sober every day, even though I'm from a village. I tried vodka at 13 and, it seems to me, in all those years there was never a stretch of more than three weeks when I couldn't drink something. So for a very long period I was boozing, let's say.

In short, alcohol didn't leave the body, considering that it takes three weeks to leave.

Yes. And I felt a sort of surge of energy from knowing I could do without it, at parties and when talking with friends. You don't have to sit and drink 50 grams. Even though this was 2019-2020 and even 2021, during that quarantine. Everyone says it was quite a hard time, but for me it was one of the best. In terms of career, definitely.

I directly link all of this to the fact that I cut back on alcohol a bit. True, back then I still had the idea of getting married, and good thing it passed, because, honestly, that was nonsense.

Why?

Because I'm not ready for it yet.

You studied at a pedagogical college, your specialty was primary school teacher.

Plus English.

What is a modern Ukrainian school, and is it capable of teaching a child anything?

Damn, I don't even have any idea what a modern Ukrainian school is now. Speaking from my own experience, the time at college, although it's basically a vocational school barracks, compared with how I spent my days at university, at college I was practically at «Harvard». In two years I didn't miss a single class, and then for the next two years there was something like 20 hours a week.

Every day I walked around with some Cossack drawings cut out of cardboard, vases, accordions, rugs. I walked like some kind of clown, a circus performer, never with empty hands. I walked because I had to. It was after-school practice, an open music lesson here, on guitar, on harmonica, a warm-up, a physical exercise break. I didn't have a second to think about anything else.

Kent came and said, «let's go to a disco». Mom: «In a minute, he's sewing up there, he'll finish sewing and come». And I was doing a hidden seam with a little goat, cross-stitch: I had to make fabric with samples of different seams.

And at university?

At university it was all sorted out. I realized you didn't have to go every day, you could just show up for the module or the test, the seminar and the exam, and it worked out fine. My Kents were working as journalists from second, from first year. No diplomas, nothing, and I didn't even work as a journalist at all.

There was one week in the newsroom of some internet portal, where I had to write four posts on Facebook and duplicate them on Instagram, and I lasted a week. I said: «That's it, goodbye, I can't anymore».

But you did work in your field a little, with children?

I worked as an animator for six years. I went to children's parties. Once I was driving in Lviv region to Rudno, which is near Sambir, when I needed to get to Rudne, which is near Lviv. And then I drove another 60 km anyway, because they were waiting for me. There were a lot of different cases.

You play with the kids, make a funny face, you're the pirate Jack Gorobets, but there's always one little kid at every party. That parachute, a round piece of fabric, all the kids wave, and I: «F**k, if you do that to me one more time, I don't know what I'll do to you», and right away again: «Kids, let's all do it together». After six years I realized that was it, I was burned out, even though I worked two more years at a children's camp with teenagers.

Creative burnout. F**k, interesting, is there statistics on suicides among animators?

Maybe.

Modern children, let's say, don't have some of the flaws characteristic of your generation anymore?

It seems to me there's a kind of fear of self-expression, a kind of being cramped. They don't have that anymore. They are less dependent on some outside opinion or social morality. And they express themselves more easily and allow themselves to be free.

Since I've been talking at the children's camp with 16-17 year olds, each and every one of them has their own opinion, shitty, feeble, meaningless, but their own. And you're like, well, you're saying it right? So what. And when they told me to stand, I stood. When they told me I was saying something wrong, yeah, then I was saying something wrong. And you argue and can't prove anything, because he already has his own postulates that you no longer challenge.

What's the most frightening thing you've seen at school?

Toilets.

Not toilets, not the word «d**k» on the wall. In people?

Indifference and inertia. Because there are people who really see that spark in at least one of the students, and that spark gives them the enthusiasm to conduct a lesson the way a teacher should, not just: open it, write, color, and I'll do what I want.

Inertia, I think, is the worst thing that can happen at school. And that's it: if you're burned out, give the place to someone else who will work with enthusiasm and show results. Why sit there suffering in misery and torturing children.

Provincial syndrome. We know that very often people who move from a village to the city and acquire some status, get some money, start showing off unbelievably. What makes them behave like that?

It's hard to resist this star sickness. When you get in among crows, you have to caw like them.

But they outdo everyone.

They outdo everyone because it's hard to stop. Once you've seen that you can spend money on whatever you want, on whatever you need. And here we come back again to upbringing and education. If basic human values are not instilled, then he is probably doomed to such pretentiousness. And it probably ends with him crashing his car at some intersection, with all that money and some weapon in the trunk.

What signs can identify a provincial in a big city? Let's try to compile a top list of provincial pretensions.

Some kind of excess, redundancy. Fur coats, I don't know, fancier than ordinary ones. Stones everywhere, gold. Well, all that lack of restraint. Whatever a person can screw up, that's how they'll achieve maximum success.

Who is the most disgusting scumbag in Ukrainian politics?

Yanukovych was such a scumbag that I couldn't even look at his face. And in general, everything around him, those Azarovs. It's all disgusting. How could something like that happen in Ukraine? He's a convict. And people sat there, police, everyone involved with law enforcement, with that mug hanging behind them. Horrible. That's a scumbag. I recently went to Mezhyhirya. F**k, what he built there. Horrible. How can that be.

Well, he's probably the absolute embodiment of what we've been talking about.

There are plenty of scumbags of all kinds. I won't get into pseudo-intellectual musings like that, I'm far from that politics.

I didn't ask you to say anything intellectual at all. I'm saying: «Who the f**k is a scumbag?». That's all.

Yanukovych is a scumbag.

If Putin were a porn hero, what would that porn be about and what would they do to him there?

Back then it was probably like this: it would be Thursday, a sunny day, a mansion about three stories high, also terribly tasteless but pompous, all glass, with the sun reflecting off it. He's watering some bushes nicely, and one bush is shaped like a bird. Very nicely trimmed. And then some ordinary stinkers come in, a couple of such tramps. And they say some standard lines there, as happens in films of that kind.

Personally, if I were directing such a film, I would want the sex act to end, probably, with some torture. You could use the idea with the pig. Something like that. Honestly, let them do whatever they want with him. Even quarter him and then give themselves a light fisting with any part of that shameful body. 

How do you feel in Kyiv in general? You said the city somewhat stunned you. What surprises you on a sensitive level?

First of all, it's Russian-speaking. In the city, and in the office. There's this YouTube channel «We're on a Jeep», they brought me out of Lviv, so to speak gave me a chance to work in the capital. There everyone also speaks Russian and there's always some Russian-language content in the background. Well, it's important for them to monitor what's happening on YouTube, and that's mostly the Russian YouTube segment.

For the first week I felt like a foreign body, like a splinter in the eye. It's always a new team, a change of environment, that's stress, but not to that extent. I just felt very, very uncomfortable. I missed home so much in a week that I went back, we drove to the Carpathians and Yaremchuk was playing at full volume all day. My task was not to be sober for a single second.

I was so happy to be in the Carpathians, in Galicia, with friends. I just hear the Ukrainian language. And the distances. These distances just amaze me. Well, okay, I took a taxi from the Left Bank to the center. It was drizzling a little. There it cost 100 UAH, back it was 230 UAH. How can that be? Oh, come on. And from the metro I still have half an hour to walk. Just minor, minimal inconveniences.

Because in Lviv in recent years I didn't use public transport at all, even though I walked from my apartment to work for half an hour, and that was through Rynok Square. And I look around and think, God, how glad I am that I'm Galician and that I'm in Lviv. And not here. This eclecticism, this architecture, it physically hurts me. Here's some old building, here's a new high-rise, such terrible bad taste. Here's a church, cars driving by.

Has any architect looked at this even with one eye? I'm not even talking about preserving the city's architectural ensemble, but at least don't do blatant crap.

Well, our famous one-eyed architect did look at it.

And moments like these really repel me in the capital.

Don't you have such anxious states?

They do, they do. I've gotten up in the middle of the night and opened the window: «Roman, it's all in your head, calm down, what's the big deal, you did your job, go back to Galicia». I'm in shock myself, because I thought it was all made up, these panic attacks. And in the metro... these walls press in, this crowd of people. There is that.

And there's a feeling, I remember, in Luhansk, when I needed to go a kilometer to the store, I took a car and drove. And here in Kyiv, how far is it home, five? Fine. I'll walk.

No, I'm also ready to walk. But there was another moment: you're coming back around two in the morning, and it's a bit scary. This isn't Lviv. You think: «Wait, this is already Kyiv, I know you can put headphones in your ears and walk for an hour».

You can, but it depends on the district.

Thank God, I have a normal district. There's just nowhere to hang out, no such scum. No dives, nothing. Just one tire shop. Although I walk and sometimes it seems to me that a car will just stop, the window will lower and they'll shoot me. Well, maybe they confused me with someone. Damned if I know. Those fears are already reaching absurdity.

Who did they confuse you with? Rinat Akhmetov?

I don't know. Maybe I look like someone.

Which films do you consider the funniest? Do you have three favorite films? 

I do. That would probably be two different questions, because favorite films and funny ones, I'd split into different questions. 

Come on, favorite and funniest. 

I've talked about this film everywhere I could. On social media, on all the podcasts and interviews I went to. But again, I'll repeat it, maybe someone from the Iceland audience will hear. The film is called «A Good Year», directed by Ridley Scott. Marion Cotillard is simply unsurpassed, she's the embodiment of femininity, and Russell Crowe.

If I see Russell Crowe in a film, it can't be complete crap, there's definitely a grain of truth in it. Even if the IMDb rating is low, I'll still watch it myself and form my own impression, because it's Russell Crowe. In my first week, when I was a bit down, I watched «Gladiator» to cheer myself up.

So this film «A Good Year» is about summer, about wine, about childhood, about harmony with yourself. Every frame is a work of art. You don't have to watch it and become wiser or gain experience in observing Ridley Scott's work, you just enjoy it. A glass of wine in the evening, turn it on and just veg out.

There's a very cool moment where he sits in a Citroën and starts speaking French. I experienced the same thing in Lisbon just a couple of months ago, when they were telling me in Portuguese where to go, and I totally didn't get it.

This language barrier is very interesting. It seems I have experience communicating in other languages, but there are some where, like Slovak, I understand, but can't say anything. My tongue just won't turn, words won't form sentences. An interesting phenomenon. It seems to me that if you learn another language, Italian or Spanish, you should be so well united that you'd be at home anywhere. But that's just musings.

Back to films. Favorite films: this «A Good Year». It's even hard to say. Let's go with funny. Long ago I watched Leslie Nielsen in «The Naked Gun» and everything related to it. They seem primitive, but they're so absurd and so funny. «Airplane!», well, those are the comedies I always watched.

And also from that category, probably «Hot Shots!», there's similar humor there too. I was amused by Polish series. There was a series «The Kerski Affair», a purely Polish production that competes with «The Simpsons» for the title of the longest-running sitcom on television. It's about some drunk who lives in Wrocław and only finished school.

Every time his wife says to him: «Will you find a job?». And he says: «In this country there's no work for people with my education». He always wanted to run some business. These were always such absurd episodes and very interesting humor. And there was always some grain of philosophy hidden there, a small moral. And in all that absurdity, a correct message was woven in. 

So several generations of people were raised on such things. And they have a shared cultural reference based on this series. 

I had experience communicating with Poles. When I studied at the journalism faculty, I went to scientific conferences two or three times. Although I'm not really much of a journalist, I didn't delve deeply and just studied somehow, skipped classes. But I knew the language a bit, so I went. I don't really know where this love and sentiment for that Polish series comes from, because everyone says it's rubbish, they haven't watched it.