Stand-up comedians from Uruguay

The country scores its comedians. Carnival here runs about forty days between the end of January and the beginning of March, and some fifty groups compete in the Concurso Oficial at the Teatro de Verano Ramón Collazo in Montevideo, ranked on points. Of the official categories, two are comic. Humoristas put together a scripted show of sketches, song and recitation; parodistas do the same but have to build their central scenes on an existing novel, film or real person. Murgas, the category outsiders tend to have heard of, sing the year's politics back at the crowd in chorus. It is all written, rehearsed, costumed and marked.

That is a seasonal, collective and competitive idea of comedy, and it was in place long before anyone here stood alone with a microphone. The oldest name in this list came from somewhere else again: Carlos Perciavalle, born in Montevideo in 1941, made his career in the café concert, the small-room revue he pioneered with Antonio Gasalla in Buenos Aires from 1966, and worked his summers in Punta del Este. For decades afterwards the humour most people knew reached them through television sketch programmes rather than through clubs.

Stand-up itself is recent and small. Maximiliano de la Cruz, whose father was a television comedian, fronted Los Comediantes in 2011, billed as the first stand-up programme on Uruguayan television, and marked ten years of doing the form in 2019. Laura Falero, born in Canelones in 1982, trained at the Comedy Club in Montevideo and wrote four solo shows with music, Graciosa, Varona, Normal and Muy completa, between 2016 and 2019, with feminist material running through them. Most of what an audience here recognises as comedy still comes round once a year, in costume, with a score attached.