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• 1 2022-11-26T12:57:58-08:00 Primer: People 2 plain 2022-11-26T13:40:37-08:00

  On-stage performers dominate discussions about what happens at KVN games. Teams, though, usually consist of a number of people—sometimes several dozen people—that work off-stage. Leagues also employ editors that train KVNshiki and shape the content of KVN games.
  
  Editors
  
  Editors (redaktory) help teams improve their material before performances, usually in official, paid capacities. Teams perform skits and pitch ideas to one or several editors, who then offer feedback. The number of editing sessions a league hosts before a performance varies. In the First Moscow Region League, which is considered a "teaching" league for new KVNshiki, teams attended three editing sessions before their quarterfinal match. Teams in the Odessa National University league had editing sessions every day for the eight days leading up to the semifinals. Editors Pavel Demchenko and Viktoria Pis'michenko gave teams advice about how to re-formulate punchlines, arrange their skits, and make their characters stand out. They also asked teams to take out some material, either because it was illogical, irredeemably unfunny, or negative (dealing with drugs, death, or sexual themes). During an editing session before the ONU semifinals, for instance, Demchenko pushed the Odessa Bandits to "find a reason" to include a number based on The Godfather or not show it at all. The Bandits presented a skit they called "bandit store" to Demchenko and Pis'michenko. In their sketch, a bandit walked in and told the shop attendant that he needed to buy a sign that would let someone know that it was their last day on earth. The attendant that they had several products available, at different price points. The most basic option was a horse head left in the bed (like in The Godfather). The second, more original, was an elephant head. The third option involved a combination of several animals. 
  
  Demchenko, unsmiling, took few notes as he watched the skit. Afterwards, he said, "Well, the idea is interesting. But you need something from real life...I would like you to be more of a team than bandits." To give them some ideas about how to write jokes about everyday life instead of mafia movies, he said, "Everyone sees children in the morning, and not bandits, because of the people they know. You see? Something from real life." The Odessa Bandits ended up omitting "Bandit Store" from their semifinal performance. 
  
  

  Marfin and Chivurin
  
  Editors Mikhail Marfin and Andrei Chivurin deserve special mention. They worked together as Top League editors for eight years (Marfin from 1991-2004 and Chivurin from 1996-2012), and wrote the definitive KVN handbook, What is KVN? (Chto Takoe KVN?) (2002). Marfin told me, though, "The theory of humor in the book—that's mine. That's my own theory of humor." He said he wrote the first version of the book in complex language, "So that people would read it with difficulty, so that they would understand that they were reading about a serious, important topic" (interview with author, June 3, 2019). Chivurin, he said, re-wrote parts of it for simplicity and clarity later on.
  
  The book has made the names "Marfin and Chivurin" seem like an inseparable collocation. Marfin met Chivurin, though, in editing sessions. I asked Marfin during an interview if he had any favorite teams. He said, "Your favorites become those who made you suffer the most. And you suffer the most with the teams you start with—with those teams who you yourself brought out from their universities, who you yourself shaped as an editor. That team, for me, is the team of the Kharkov Medical Institute, whose captain was Andrei Chivurin. I learned on that team. I taught them, and I learned from them. And then they became champions in 1995" (interview with author, June 3, 2019).
  
  Chivurin stopped editing for Top League in Moscow in 2014 when the war broke out, went back to Ukraine, and helped create League of Laughter, a set of Ukraine-based team comedy competitions similar to KVN. Marfin, after working on other television projects for fifteen years, returned as a Top League editor in 2019. The theme of the 2019 season was "What is KVN?"
  
  Thinking of Chivurin's League of Laughter project (Chivurin is the lead editor) Marfin told me, "It's a wonderful time in the life of Ukrainian KVN because it's doing things in a new way...There you have amateurs with fire in their eyes, and the work's a lot more interesting than it is here right now. I would be super thrilled to help out with that, but everything is very sad—with this divorce between Russian and Ukrainian KVN."
  
  Ukrainian teams, with the exception of some from Russia-controlled areas, stopped competing in Russia-based televised leagues in 2014. These teams, from Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine and Sevastopol and Simferapol in Crimea, still attend the annual KVN festival in Sochi. At the opening ceremony of the 2019 Sochi festival, Marfin said, "Last year there were 446 teams here. This year we will have even more, and teams are still showing up. We will have even more when the Ukrainian teams come. I hope they will join in again soon." The large auditorium applauded him. Marfin, here, probably meant the eastern Ukrainians and those from Crimea, who did indeed attend the Sochi festival, but teams from Odessa, Kiev, Dnepr, and the rest of Ukraine may have been on his mind. 
  
  About two weeks later, at the 2019 League of Laughter festival in Odessa, Ukraine, Chivurin told the assembled competitors, "If you've played long enough in the regional leagues and you don't have anything to do, if you're tapped out, you have the opportunity...to play in the international KVN leagues—"
  
  League of Laughter emcee Vladimir Zelensky, still a few months away, at that point, from the presidency, interrupted in an irritated tone, "League of Laughter!" The auditorium erupted clapped and laughed at Chivurin's gaffe. The editor then clarified that competitors could play in international League of Laughter competitions, newly opened in Israel, Estonia, and Armenia. When or if Ukrainian teams will compete in Russia-based leagues again remains uncertain.
  
  Authors
  
  Not all team members appear on stage. Authors (avtory), for example, only write material but don't perform themselves. Aleksei Eks, now a professional comedy author and league editor, began as one such teammate. He began selling jokes when he was still in college. A journalism student at the time, he also wrote humor columns for two newspapers, "I wrote jokes, then, knowing that people would buy them from me immediately" (interview with author, October 28, 2019). As teams advance, especially to national levels of competition, a market develops for selling jokes. Authors write jokes, skits, and musical numbers, and sell them. 

  In Moscow region student competitions, one joke cost about 300 rubles in 2019 ($4.80 at 2019 rates). Jokes for Top League sell for much more, though pricing has a lot to do with an author's relationship to a team. People who were from Irkutsk, for instance, helped the team Buryats come up with material for their Premier League games because they wanted to see local teams succeed. Supply-and-demand rules the day, however, which means the richest teams, like Gazprom and Tatneft (Tatarstan Oil), often do very well in competitions—though fans grumble about "bought victories."
  
  Teams in Top League and other televised leagues can hardly do without authors, both because of the quantity of jokes suddenly required and because of the professionalism expected for TV. A team selected for Top League will compete three times between January and May, writing, in the process, seven sketches. Most teams need at least a little help. Even teams at lower levels, though, will call on authors for important games. Friend Zone got some jokes from a friend back in Odessa before their octofinals match in Rivne, for example. The editors had cut most of the material they brought with them and they were left scrambling to put a number together two days before the competition. And during an editing session at the 2017 League of Laughter festival, editor Chingis Mazinov said of a team from Kharkhiv, in defense of their promise as a team, "Apparently they don't have authors." Chivurin replied, "You can tell." In one of the more insulting comments I've heard a judge tell a team, in a debriefing session after a game in Odessa one young man told the all-female team Friend Zone, "That game was even worse than the last one. Girls, date some authors."
  
  Judges
  
  Every game has judges, usually six or seven. Organizers often choose former KVNshiki, though sometimes prominent members of the community, like businesspeople, teachers, or members of the local government also serve as judges. I was asked to judge two school league quarterfinal competitions for the Baikal School League in Irkutsk in 2016.
  Other team members who don't appear on stage
  
  Sound operators: Sound operators play musical clips and sound effects supporting a team's performance. Each team has their own sound operator.
  
  Requisitioners: Requisitioners help teams get props, costumes, live animals, and other things they need for their performances. Small-scale student performances usually have small budgets and small prop requirements. Requisitioners for televised leagues often have more to coordinate.
  
  Administrators: Administrators handle finances, hotel bookings, flights, scheduling, tickets, etc. for teams.
  
  NB: Who is Masliakov?

  "I'd like to be brief and witty. That's what the game we call KVN asks for," said Alexander Vasilievich Masliakov in the introduction to his book, KVN Lives! "But for me KVN isn't just a game," he continued. "KVNshiki often say, 'KVN is a way of life.' For me KVN is simply life. And life is not always amusing, as it turns out, though it goes by quick enough" (Masliakov 2017, 5-6). Alexander Masliakov is the main host, or emcee for KVN's Top League, and has been since 1964. He is also the president of Amik, the International Union of KVN, and thus oversees the operations of a hierarchy of leagues based in Russia.

  He's led every KVN Top League game nearly anyone remembers, goes to every annual KVN festival in Sochi (a rite of passage for KVNshiki), and is like a father figure to many in the KVN world. Online reporting about KVN games that Masliakov is watching rather than emceeing often notes the moment he arrives: "Dad's in the building" ("Batia v zdane"). During their 2018 Top League final, the Irkutsk team Raisy took time to thank Masliakov for his years of support. 

  —Friends, over all these games, Alexander Vasilievich has become a really close individual. But we can't pin down who, exactly.
  —Maybe he's a teacher?
  —Well, he doesn't give us grades.
  —Maybe he's a friend?
  —Well, he doesn't follow us on Instagram.
  —Girls, I understand. He's like our father. 
  —Birth father or adopted?
  —We see him six times a year. Obviously our birth father!