Stand-up comedians from Slovakia

Comedy in Slovakia is measured against a duo rather than a solo act. Milan Lasica and Július Satinský began working together at the end of the fifties and made their name on absurd dialogue and wordplay at Divadlo na Korze in Bratislava. After the Prague Spring they were partly banned from Slovak stages, spent two years in a cabaret in Brno, and returned when Štúdio S opened with Lasica directing it. Both names sit in this catalogue, and both belong to a theatre tradition rather than to a club one.

The stand-up that followed is organised around one group to an unusual degree. Silné reči began at the Nu Spirit Club in Bratislava, founded by Ján Gordulič, and grew into the collective most working Slovak comics pass through, with regular nights at Luna Bar and Stará tržnica and a televised run on TV JOJ. Gabo Žifčák performs with it. A comic here joins a bill rather than building a room of his own.

Working west across the border is old practice. The duo spent their banned years in Brno and appeared in Czech films, and the stand-up collective plays dates in the Czech Republic as a matter of course, so the natural second market for a Slovak act is the neighbour rather than any circuit that would need the act translated. Michael Szatmáry works in Slovak and mixes political material, irony, personal stories and Jewish themes, and he plays music in the act. Bekim Aziri and Tomas Hudak are catalogued here from the club side, which is younger than the theatre one by decades.