Open Mic Night in Moscow
Page 41
“When you’re younger, you think, I want a guy who’s handsome, rich, and intelligent. When you’re thirty-three and still single, you think, I want a guy who can read. And eat food with a fork.”
I ask Yevgeniy about this after. “Unfortunately, I think, for a lot of Russian men—and I was this way before I went to the U.S. and Canada—it’s difficult to laugh at a woman.”
“What about the host?” I ask.
Yevgeniy shakes his head. “She’s been on TV for five years,” he explains. “Everyone knows her.”
Stand-up might be new to Russia, but comedy is not. Ex-Soviet universities all participate in something called KVN, which is a hybrid of sketch comedy and improv and functions as more or less the cultural equivalent of American college football. KVN is huge in the former USSR. University teams sell out theaters, and the best go on to TV deals after college.
Bizarrely, much of the English-language stand-up available in Russian is dubbed, not subtitled. The Russian comics show me this the next day—hanging out with them again thanks to Yevgeniy. They pull up a Hannibal Buress special, and it’s a video of Hannibal Buress, with what sounds like a Russian movie announcer delivering translations of his jokes. The timing is all off; sometimes, Russian-voice-over Hannibal is still speaking after actual Hannibal has hit his punch line and the audience is laughing.
“It’s so bad!” they tell me, and I agree, but it’s also funny. Just not in the way that it was intended to be.
I ask them about their favorite act from last night, and it’s nearly unanimous: the final performer. I didn’t understand much of his set, but he got one of the most tepid responses from the crowd.
“No, no,” one tells me. “It’s not that. Everyone liked him because he really makes you think.”
The next night, I’m bored and wander to a nearby bar for a drink, which is promptly ruined by a drunk man who keeps trying to hug me. A German guy steps in to help, and I end up chatting with his colleagues, one of whom is a Muscovite named Alex who speaks perfect English. We never manage to fully shake the drunk man, and when everyone goes outside to smoke, he starts punching the German. I freak out, but Alex reassures me.
“No, no, they’re not fighting,” he explains. “They’re just making friends.”
Alex is unfailingly polite. He wears a tucked-in button-down shirt and initially speaks to me only in French. He and the German work for a European electronics company. The German has been visiting Moscow for work but has an early flight home tomorrow. After he leaves, the drunk man is still hovering; Alex has been pretending not to know Russian in order to get rid of him.
“I. Am. Moscow,” the drunk guy is saying.
“Ah, okay, yes,” Alex replies, and then, under his breath, he asks me, “Do you have your things near?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“MOOOOOS. COOOOW,” the drunk man yells.
“Yes, it is a wonderful city,” Alex says, and then to me, “Good. Have you paid for your beer?”
I nod.
“Good.”
“I. HOCKEY!” the drunk guy shouts.
“Truly a wonderful sport,” Alex agrees. To me, “Do you have everything?”
“My phone is charging at the bar,” I whisper.
“Go get it.”
I feel like I’m in some sort of KGB operation. I return and find Alex inspecting the drunk man’s scars.
“Oh, wow, yes, that looks very painful.” To me: “This is about to be a fight.” To the drunk man: “Ah, okay, did someone hit you very hard?”
“HOCKEY!” the drunk man screams.
“Now you have everything?” Alex whispers.
I nod.
“That is your jacket?”
Nod.
“Good, put it on.”
“YOU LOVE RUSSIA. HOCKEY?” the drunk man wants to know.
“I’m afraid I have never seen such things,” Alex replies patiently. “But perhaps I will love it if I have the chance.” Alex leans over. “When I give the signal, you will be ready to leave?”
I nod.
“You know, I think my friend and I would love to watch a Russian hockey game with you,” Alex continues, so smoothly and full of charm that I’m worried he might actually be ex-KGB, except he’s my age, and the KGB dissolved when we were four.
“Ne ponimayu,” the drunk man slurs.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Alex says, “but I’m afraid we do not speak Russian.” He laughs, and I take his cue and join him. Alex leans in. “Now.”
I freeze. I feel like I’m missing a lot of spy training.
Alex sees this and doesn’t miss a beat. “Pretend to go have a cigarette. I will join you.”
Alex spends the next few days showing me around Moscow. We visit museums, go for walks. One night, we take a taxi to Moscow State University, which sits on top of a huge hill overlooking the city. It’s two a.m., but the hillside is packed with people hanging out in their cars, drinking beers, and cooking on portable grills. Alex checks his watch. “Soon it will be sunrise!” he announces.
I invite him to my biggest stand-up show, which takes place at a bar called Lucky Jack’s. I’m surprised that most of the performers are Russians who prefer performing in English. There’s a dedicated DJ to play stingers between acts. He sits onstage for the entire show, facing the audience and never laughing.
This time, I don’t have to start off by asking if everyone knows what comedy is, because four other people have done it before me. There’s no meditative drum circle waiting to go on. There’s also no bongo player, which I find myself missing. The crowd responds to each joke, and also each segue and throwaway comment, with long, reasoned reactions. Though this is actually a legitimate stand-up show, it feels more like Socratic dialogues. We get slightly sidetracked by a discussion on LGBT rights. It’s so easy to imagine Russia as a country where everyone buys into homophobic propaganda and to forget that whenever you place people in urban environments, they tend to think more liberally and progressively.
Afterward, Alex and I celebrate in a bar that is trying to be a nightclub.
“You know,” Alex shouts over the aggressively loud music, “I was so shocked, because the first night, we exchanged numbers, and then, the next, you texted me.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I wanted to invite you to the museum.”
He shakes his head. “In Russia, a woman will never text first.”
I wake up the next morning with a sense of completeness. It’s difficult to place. This trip has been filled with milestones and mini-endings. Leaving Central Asia; arriving in Russia; finishing the Trans-Siberian. Why is this any different?
Outside, it’s warm, and I walk to a nearby art museum with an outdoor Georgian restaurant.
It hits me that maybe what I’m feeling is a sense of having come, seen, and comedied. Everything I’ve done in the former Soviet Union has seemed as inconsequential and simple as putting one foot in front of the other, but I realize that someone who would not see it that way is me, three years ago.
The version of me that thought breaking up with Anton meant I would never learn to count to ten in Russian and only ever stop in Moscow on the way to somewhere else. Or twenty-year-old Audrey who thought Prague was the most exotic place she’d ever been and that languages were things you were forced to learn in school and comedy was something you watched on TV. She would never have believed that one day she’d perform stand-up in Russia.
The strangest part is, I had seen so much of this trip as choosing between two diverging paths: one that circled around New York, and another that left and never came back. But even though I felt like I’d signed up for the latter, I now see that isn’t true. I have my story. I can go back with it. And then it will continue.
I think back to my pre-Trans-Siberian hangover in a Beijing McDonald’s, and how I worried that this Soviet thing wasn’t kick-starting the solving of my problems. But it was. I had just forgotten the definition of kick-starting something is to start it, not fin
ish.
Acknowledgments
First of all, thank you, dear reader, for reading this book all the way through, and then sticking around for the acknowledgments section. This was a long book to get through, and you could have been on Instagram. From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate your time, attention, and (in advance) nomination for a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Though I’m not the first person to say this, the fantastic Stephanie Delman is an agent extraordinaire and a maker of dreams come true. She was instrumental in conceiving this book and encouraging me to follow my voice, and she has supported me in so many ways for so many years. (I hereby officially bestow upon her the world record for most Greenpoint Comedy Night attendances.) I am so, so grateful for everything she did and does.
I will forever be indebted to my brilliant editor Emma Brodie, who took a lot of unbridled passion for the former Soviet Union and shaped it into a narrative. This book would not have been possible without her generous guidance, patience, kindness, and vision, and throughout this process, she has been a snake charmer coaxing out the best that I’m capable of. Thank you for pushing me to take risks that created a book I’m so proud of and helping me do something I wasn’t sure I could.
Thank you to my wonderfully talented team at William Morrow: Liate Stehlik, Lynn Grady, Cassie Jones, Susan Kosko, Leah Carlson-Stanisic, Jeanne Reina, Serena Wang, Lauren Lauzon, and Kaitlyn Kennedy.
I’m grateful to friends who read early draft chapters: Allison Khederian, Christie Volden, Clare Richardson, Danny Kaplan, DTF, Gus Tate, Jamie Blume, Joe Schaefer, Kristen Van Nest, Lizzy Hussey, Melissa Brzycki, Mike Zaccardo, Reyhaneh Rajabzadeh, Sophie Friedman, Tom Caya, and Topher Brantley. I’m also thankful for two friends who did not read draft chapters, but who have always been there: Alex Folkenflik and Michael Tanenbaum. A huge je t’aime to Laura Gordon, who read whatever I sent her approximately 30 seconds after I hit send and provided so much feedback and encouragement.
This trip would not have been possible without Vicky Zhang, who asked me to come back to China, and whose passion and determination I miss dearly. Thank you to everyone who helped me plan my trip, gave me information, put me in touch with friends, and provided encouragement when I was brooding over my sixth straight meal of instant oatmeal on a train. A special thank you to Sarah Reeve, who provided invaluable information on Central Asia.
I met countless wonderful, generous, inspiring people on this trip—too many to name, and some of whose names I never learned. They provided much-needed company, illegal visa application translations, rides, yurts, and friendship, and they taught me so much and helped me grow as a person. Thank you.
Thank you to Mom, Dad, Andrew, Aunt Pat, and the rest of my family, who also read drafts, fielded many a late-night phone call, and kept me alive by doing things like helping me decide what kind of takeout to order. Angela probably read this entire book at least seven times and caught approximately twelve billion typos, and I’m so lucky she is my sister.
Finally, thank you Oleg Shik, the source of my love for the former Soviet Union, and the best thing it ever created.
About the Author
AUDREY MURRAY is a redhead from Boston who moved to China and became a standup comedian. A cofounder of Kung Fu Komedy, Audrey was named the funniest person in Shanghai in City Weekend magazine. She is a contributing writer for Reductress.com and a regular contributor at Medium.com; her writing has also appeared in McSweeney’s, The Gothamist, China Economic Review, Nowness, and Architizer, and on the wall of her dad’s office. Audrey has appeared on the Lost in America, Listen to This!, and Shanghai Comedy Corner podcasts, on CNN and ICS, and in a number of international publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Copyright
OPEN MIC NIGHT IN MOSCOW. Copyright © 2018 by Audrey Murray. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Star illustration by Yana Alisovna/Shutterstock, Inc.
Map of Soviet Union by Serban Bogdan/Shutterstock, Inc.
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition JULY 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-282330-4
Version 06192018
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-282329-8
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* I assume this is true, though I’ve never read any rules for stand-up out of a general distrust for rules, with the exception of my aforementioned favorite book and intermittent personal Bible, Why Men Love Bitches.
* Update: it turns out you don’t get to write your own copyright page. Your publisher does that for you, and it can—and will—ignore multiple e-mails with reasonable demands that the page include more of your lucky numbers.