From left to right: Semyon, Alexei, and Paul rehearse “Beauty and the Beast.”

It is 6:30 p.m. and the brash, young comedy team, the “Illegals,” have only half an hour left before the women in the Russian hair salon kick them out. Half an hour is not a lot of time, they figure, but it’s enough to run through their comedy routine one more time.

As the sound of an upbeat melody starts rolling, Semyon, Ruslan, Alexei, and Paul take two steps toward the mirror wall of the room, raise their arms, and smile smugly. Then they break into a flurry of short skits and absurdist one-liners, all in Russian.

“Do you have anything for the head?” Ruslan asks, looking pained, in one scene.

“Here, take an ear…” answers Alexei.

Looking in the mirror after every joke, the Illegals pretend to see the blinding stage lights and the cheering audience that will greet them in two weeks at the popular Russian comedy competition, KVN.

KVN, roughly translated as the “Club of Humor and Wit,” is a team game-show, where students from different colleges, cities, and countries compete by presenting comedy sketches, humorous musical numbers, and improvisation. It is fast-paced and intense, which is why one of the show’s creators described it as “intellectual football.” With no direct equivalent in other cultures, KVN is an essential component of modern Russian life and a popular import of Russian-speaking immigrants around the world.

A humorous critique of the world in the form of popular entertainment, KVN has continued almost unchanged since Soviet times. In Russia and other ex-Soviet republics, being a “KVNshik” can make one a celebrity on par with famous professional comedians. However, away from its television audience, KVN is for some 40,000 Russian-speaking immigrants in the U.S., Israel, Germany, and even Australia, not a road to fame, but a unique national tradition worth holding onto in a foreign land.

The Illegals inherited KVN from a fifty-year-old tradition that started after the death of Stalin. As Soviet control began to ease in the late 1950s and 1960s and television sets became more common in Soviet households, a group of Russian university students created a unique television game-show. At first, KVN was a question-and-answer game based on a Czechoslovakian show and similar to Western models. Although the teams had to give correct answers, witty answers were also allowed. Soon, the producers began to emphasize humor, making up amusing contests and assigning the teams funny skits to prepare.

With lightheartedness rarely seen at the time and humor normally reserved for the underground subculture, the nationally televised show immediately captured the Soviet imagination. During each game, life on the streets would cease and the next day, everyone discussed the jokes they heard. KVN aired through 1971, expanding to more and more teams from different cities and Soviet republics, but then was cancelled due to criticism from government officials. It was revived only at the dawn of glasnost, when emerging liberties and disarray in the government allowed for less control of what was being said on television. KVN was once again allowed into the mainstream culture.

From left to right: Ruslan, Alexei, Semyon, and Paul in the green room.

The rehearsal

Looking in the mirror, the Illegals rehearse a scene from one of the three essential contests forming any KVN game, including the upcoming quarter finals. Each game starts with the “Greeting,” where a team introduces itself with short tidbits of humor, loosely connected mini-scenes, and dialogues. Then they move on to the “Warm-up,” an improvisational contest in which each team has 30 seconds to come up with a funny answer to a question. Then comes the “Homework,” usually the longest and the most theatrical part of the KVN game. It is akin to a sketch from Saturday Night Live and is rehearsed in advance. The “Homework” skit needs a lot of preparation, and each teammate has to be on top of his game.

For the Illegals, one of the key moments in the “Homework” is a scene borrowed from Beauty and the Beast. Ruslan — a blond, blue-eyed, big-boned Byelorussian — plays the merchant, whose three daughters (Paul, Alexei, and Semyon) ask him to bring back gifts.

“What would you like, my oldest daughter?” Ruslan asks.

“Bring me a decorated shawl,” replies the redheaded Paul and adds happily, “from Gucci!”

“What would you like, my middle daughter?”

“Bring me an older sister who is not stupid,” says Alexei, the tallest of the three “daughters.”

“What would you like, my youngest daughter?”

“Bring me alimony for three years from that Beast!” answers Semyon, carefully enunciating every word.

At the end of the scene, everyone starts talking at once. Paul gets criticism for his bad pronunciation of “Gucci.” He repeats it several times, giving more punch to the “cci.” Semyon blushes deeply as he tries to argue with Ruslan about the wording of the skit. Meanwhile, 25 year-old Alexei — the team’s oldest member — smiles to himself like a satiated cat. His hair is sticking out and worn-out jeans hang on his tall, thin body. Over the clamor, he hears Sasha, the team’s music assistant and only man behind the scenes, scolding Ruslan.

“You show off too much,” Sasha says. “And you eat up lots of words.”

“He is fine, leave him alone!” says Alexei protectively. Putting his hand on Ruslan’s shoulder, he tells him, “you are a star.”

Other, less poignant criticism continues to echo through the room as everyone gets ready to leave. Ruslan, who has the springy walk of a boxer and a childish smile, tells the skinny, stylishly dressed Paul that he does not like him as an actor. “Do you like me as a man?” answers Paul flirtatiously as everyone chuckles.

“Bunch of homos on this team!” says the dire KVNshik, and walks out into the cold Brooklyn night.

Forming a team

The Illegals, whose four members currently live in three states — New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania – are a truly heterogeneous team. Unlike the majority of Russians who immigrated as Jewish refugees, Ruslan and Alexei both moved to the U.S. three years ago, using a four-month visitor exchange program to stay on the new continent. Before they met, Alexei and a few other young illegal immigrants created a KVN team based in New Jersey and named it, appropriately, the Illegals. At first, many KVNshiks, who have lived in the U.S. since the biggest wave of Russian immigration in the early 1990s, thought the laid-back style of the Illegals was strange. However, some saw in their style a way to improve KVN’s American league.

“I first met them at the KVN festival in 2003,” remembers Sergei, a member of a Chicago team and a loyal friend of the Illegals. “They brought freshness and youthful inspiration into the game. I immediately wanted to meet them. Their acting ability and quality of humor put them on a level higher than the other teams in the league.”

Yet so far, the Illegals have not been very successful. They left their first game due to disagreement about the judging. Then, they regrouped to incorporate some members of a team from Philadelphia — Semyon and Paul among them.

Semyon, who has attentive eyes and an apologetic manner of speaking, did not participate in KVN back in Russia. However, he loved to watch the games on T.V. Unlike Alexei and Ruslan, he is not an illegal immigrant. After he moved to Philadelphia with his parents five years ago, he found out about the local league and created his own KVN team. “I wanted artistic realization,” he explains. “Some people paint, others play a musical instrument, and I play KVN. It’s a great feeling when you’ve written something, performed it, and the audience liked it. I feel artistic satisfaction.”

Semyon invited his childhood friend and neighbor, the redheaded Paul, to join the team. Paul, who just moved from Israel, did not remember much Russian. But he was stylish, funny, and had a good attitude. “I basically came to KVN for sex,” Paul says impishly. “But now I am the one who has to supply all the chicks.” Outside of KVN, Semyon and Paul work and go to college. They are majoring in film and hope to make a documentary about the plight of the young illegal students like their teammates.

The last member to join the Illegals was Ruslan. Although he contributed professional KVN experience from Russia, the team still lost the last season’s semifinals. “I went to rehearsals like a fool with a notebook and a pen,” remembers Ruslan. “And everything just ended in drinking.” Although Alexei’s official response to Ruslan’s complaint is “Nothing brings people together like vodka,” he blames their loss on razdolbaistvo — a slang word that means irresponsibility, carelessness, and even laziness.

“Razdolbaistvo is both our flaw and our style,” he says. “We can’t get together, we can’t rehearse, we can’t figure out the music. That’s why we lost at the semifinals last year. We were funny, but unorganized.”