Description
In Ukraine, a country that elected former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky as president, it didn't take long for the stand-up scene to reboot after Vladimir Putin launched his invasion in February 2022. But the jokes are not quite the same anymore. "All my humor is built on my personal experiences. And as at the moment, our life is focused on the war, so my humor revolves around that," says Maryna Voytsekhovska, who has hundreds of thousands of views on her videos, on stage in a bar in Kiev that night. "We don't fight with weapons but we fight with our words, with our messages," explains Ivan Zhornokley, the producer of the "Ukrainian Stand-Up Agency". "We don't want to laugh just for the sake of laughing. We want to share our pain, our worries". IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES