Crossing Borders. Russian Stand-up: Local and Global Meanings

Abstract

Stand-up comedy is one of the brightest youth scenes of modern Russia, rapidly gaining popularity over the last decade. This genre of modern laugh culture rarely gets the attention of either foreign or domestic scholars and researchers. This article focuses on the career strategies of stand-up comedians, the peculiarities of their communication with audiences in the context of the formation of the stand-up scene in contemporary Russia in comparison with the formats of humor and laugh culture characteristic of the Soviet and post-Soviet times. The uniqueness of the Russian stand-up experience will be revealed through the analysis of characteristic style markers associated with the genre: the liminality / transboundary nature of the emerging culture, the high mobility of stand-up artists, creative collaborations, and touring exchanges within and between cities in their native regions. As a theoretical framework, the construct of youth cultural scene is used as the most adequate to the case under the study. The empirical base of the article is 15 semi-structured interviews with participants in the stand-up scene, non-participant observation of stand-up performances, and the textual analysis of blogs of stand-up comedians. The case study material was collected as part of a large-scale research project aimed at tracing the migration strategies and life plans of talented young people in the Northwestern Federal District of Russia.