This weekend, Chicago’s Club 220 hosted a stand-up comedy night called Balkan Comedy Night, featuring American-born comedians united by their Balkan heritage.
Members of this interesting and unusual troupe, which had previously performed with great success in San Jose, Austin, Phoenix, St. Louis, and Las Vegas, include Ryan Radusinović, Lulu Jovović, Vik Đonaj, Ariana Ramić, George Dulčić, Luka Lončar, and Stanko Zovak. If you were to count their ancestry, you would find one Serbian, two Montenegrins, two Croats, one Bosnian, and one Albanian.
Unlike the mountainous Balkans, where their nations still live in a state of war despite the absence of active conflict, these young people do not see their heritage as a problem or a difference, but rather emphasize what they all have in common – their humor, which heavily relies on their family roots.
“We were all born in America but grew up in Balkan families,” said Ryan Radusinović, of Montenegrin descent, the mastermind behind Balkan Comedy Night, a troupe currently on a US tour, with Chicago being their sixth stop.
“Our parents were born there, and that has left a significant mark on us in every way. That’s why our jokes are like that,” he told Serbian Times.
And it was the best-attended performance yet, as Club 220 was sold out days in advance and was packed with people eager to hear jokes told in the Balkan style.
“These are mostly my friends from Los Angeles, whom I met over the years working in the stand-up business, performing in various places. I realized that we had a lot in common, that our immigrant roots were the biggest inspiration for our performances, and I thought: Why not create a team and go on tour together?”
ON TOUR: The Balkan Comedy Show team toured all of America together
His idea proved to be a good one and received positive reactions wherever they performed.
“Everywhere we went, people laughed. There were no problems or incidents. It showed that there is still much more that unites us than divides us. The same traditions, culture, language, mentality, you can’t forget that so easily,” Radusinović emphasized.
In that sense, the performance in Chicago was no different from the previous ones. There were no free seats, and the audience greeted the comedians with smiles and applause.
Among them was Lulu Jovović, a Serbian from LA whose life story resembles a Hollywood film:
“My mother’s family had to flee Yugoslavia in the 1960s because of their political beliefs and sought asylum in the USSR. You can imagine what kind of politics they advocated if they were granted asylum in the Soviet Union!” she says with a smile and a dose of self-irony, continuing:
“And in the end, such a family ends up in the USA, which sounds absurd and funny in itself. I hope it’s clearer to you now why I ended up becoming a stand-up comedian.”
Luka Lončar is the only one in the group who was born in Chicago, coming from a family of Montenegrin immigrants.
“I’m happy I had the opportunity to perform in front of our people, who can best feel and understand these immigrant jokes of ours in their full sense. Americans find it a bit exotic, they laugh, but it’s not the same,” says Luka.
CONNECTING THROUGH HUMOR AND ROOTS:
His friend Vik Đonaj is Albanian, who says he didn’t feel uncomfortable at all surrounded by an audience where Serbs were in the majority.
“The people were great, not preoccupied with politics, I felt super comfortable. And I really like this whole show of ours because it shows how good and authentic Balkan humor is, and on the other hand, how much we have in common, we people who come from those areas. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian humor is definitely closer to me than American or any other because we have the same mentality, we have the same tradition, although we don’t speak the same language,” Đonaj emphasized at the end of the interview for Serbian Times.
FIND OUT MORE:
Piše: Antonije Kovačević Foto: Privatna arhiva