The KVN team from NSU “Baklazhanna” joined the official KVN league “Saint Petersburg”

From April 27 to 29, a large-scale festival of the KVN league system “NEVA” was held at the Youth House of Saint Petersburg. Three days of humor, creativity, and professional growth united 138 teams from 28 regions of Russia and the Republic of Belarus. More than 2300 spectators watched the active gameplay. As a result of the qualifying days, the distribution of teams across three leagues took place: the Central KVN League “NEVA”, the Student KVN League “Fontanka”, and the Official KVN League “Saint Petersburg”, which included the KVN team of the National Research University “Baklazhanna”.

The KVN team of NGU “Baklazhanna” appeared in 2023. It includes students from the Humanities Institute and the Mechanics and Mathematics Faculty of NGU, as well as representatives from NGPU and NSTU. The team did not go in full to the KVN league system festival “NEVA”; in Saint Petersburg, they played:Anastasia Kravtsova, Alisa Novoratskaya, Yulia KruchininaиKseniya Lyskova.

—In 2023, my teammates and I joined the humorous club “The Divanov Brothers’ Office,” back then we didn’t know how to write jokes or perform. Our first event was Khanty-Abat. At that time, I and some of the current team played for the “Integration” team. We took second place and went to Sheregesh., — recallsAlisa Novoratskaya, the captain of the team ‘Baklazhanna’.

After the team started playing in the leagues “KVN-Siberia” and “KVN-Siberia-NECST”, the main goal was always to travel to the “KIVIN” festival in Sochi. After the first season, it seemed to the team members that there were no more chances, but then they won the “Last Chance” Cup, received tickets, and went to “KIVIN 2025”. A year later, “Baklazhanna” again won the “Last Chance” Cup and went to the festival in Sochi, where editors recognized the KVN NGU team as one of the best among 500 teams, awarding it an increased rating.

In addition, “Baklazhanna” participated in the festival of the “KVN Siberia” league, the Student League, the Asian League in Krasnoyarsk, where the guys were invited to join the official “Yenisei” league, but the team declined the invitation and decided to focus on participating in the “NEVA” league of Saint Petersburg.

—Of course, we had heard about this league before — it is one of the major central leagues. A representative personally wrote to me and invited our team. It was unexpected for us because we ourselves did not think we had already reached the level of the central league. But since we were invited, we decided to try and not to refuse such an opportunity., — says Alisa.

At the festival, the team had the opportunity to show their performance in front of the KVN Higher League champions Dmitry Bushuev and Konstantin Podolsky. For the “Baklazhanna” performance, they collected their best jokes from archives, refined and added new fragments in the process, because I wanted to make the performance as strong as possible, and as a result received a score of 4.5 out of 5.

—The jury consisted of comedians we already knew, invited participants from the Premier League, the Major League, the First League, as well as representatives of improvisation teams. For us, this was undoubtedly a completely different level. It was especially pleasant that they treated us not as newcomers or an inexperienced team from the “province.” The director especially supported us, the editors also actively participated in the work, and it was felt that they were sincerely interested in us delivering a strong performance. Working with them was very comfortable, and this strongly influenced the overall impression.That is exactly why we have the desire to return there again, and we accepted the invitation to participate in the official league,— Alice shares.

Participation in the official league of Saint Petersburg provides the opportunity to perform on a stage that is very different from the usual Novosibirsk venue, to test and refine jokes in front of a different audience, to work with editors from the Higher KVN League, to become more recognizable, and to enter a higher-level league.