Over the past two months a team from the Museum of Humor and Satire conducted and processed six interviews with Bulgarian humorists from various fields – cartoonists, writers, actors.
The conversations are part of the museum’s commitments as an associated partner in the international project HUMLIT, which began in early 2025.
The participants were asked 22 questions prepared by the entire Project Advisory Commitee team (participants from Poland, Romania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, and Spain).
The main goal was to explore the production of humor and its perception by the audience.
How did you start creating humorous content? Are there any topics that you consider unacceptable in humor? What general knowledge does the audience need to have to appreciate your humor? What is the role of humor in society today and will this change in the future?
These were some of the questions answered by the part of voices of Bulgarian humor – from different generations and genres – and share their experience, philosophy, and mission: Veselin Zidarov (cartoonist and writer), Svetlin Stefanov (professional artist, cartoonist, and woodcarver), Vesel Tsankov (humorist writer and editor on the Humor and Satire team at the Hristo Botev program of the Bulgarian National Radio), Dimitar Ivanov-Kapitana (puppet and stand-up actor, ventriloquist), Alla and Chavdar Georgievi (freelance artists and cartoonists, co-founders of the newspaper Pras Press), and Tsvetelina Tsvetkova (freelance writer and humorous content creator).
Below you can read selected quotes from their responses – sincere, thought-provoking and inspiring.
The processing of the interviews for the purposes of the study continues at the moment.
About HUMLIT Project
A key objective of HUMLIT is to understand how humor creation and humor literacy can be used to reframe conflicts and controversial issues in the public sphere and benefit European society by promoting dialogue rather than conflict.
The project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme and supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. It involves 25 partner academic and non-academic institutions from Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Denmark, Kosovo, Norway, the Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Poland, with the coordinating institution being the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
Expect more information very soon about both current activities and the entire research on the official project website: https://humour-in-europe.project.uj.edu.pl/
“I have an advantage to the other cartoonists because I deal with both cartoons and aphorisms. Cartoon is in the feminine gender and aphorism is in the masculine (TN: That is so in Bulgarian) and I have married them and I have so many aphorisms. There are tens of thousands of them. And I can extract a cartoon from an aphorism. From the cartoon I can extract the philosophical and make an aphorism.“
Veselin Zidarov
“When I was drawing a cartoons for already three years with two other colleagues who didn’t have the self-confidence of professionals, we met in Bozhentsi (small village near Gabrovo, architectural reserve) and we went to visit Todor Dinov, the father of Bulgarian animation. I told him: “I have a hard time drawing, I make 4-5 sketches until I clarify the idea…” and he went to his studio, because we were in the yard, and took out a tracing paper folded like a fan. And he said: “I make 17 edits.” They were folded like that because back then there was no Photoshop, no computers. So, at least I know from him, he encouraged me not to have a complex about having to make so many edits, that this is a good way to clean everything up and make it perfect.”
Svetlin Stefanov
“When I went to “Shrednoskolsko zname” (a newspaper for the school youth published during the socialist period), Krastyo Krastev, uncle Kaci (Bulgarian writer, humorist), gave me a very important piece of advice. The craft of writing and any sort of creative work is just like doing sports, it has to be practiced continuously. It has to be practiced every day. And with writing, you have to write every day…You have to write all the time. There’s one piece of advice that is recommended that is attributed to different authors. I am not sure who gave it exactly but it said that if you write one page every day, at the end of the year you will have 365 pages. If half of them are good for something, then that’s almost a novel or a large collection of short stories. So, it is important to write continuously, to write every day now. Now a person has what is also called inspiration. Of course, if a person waits for the inspiration to strike, I can tell you from experience, that they will not write anything. So, you have to sit down every day at the same time to create a dynamic stereotype, a habit and you start writing. You may not have anything in your head but you have to sit down, start thinking, start writing some sentences, cross them out, then go back, correct it and somehow the wheel starts turning. “
Vesel Tsankov
“Publishing a satirical newspaper in a tense political environment is a serious mission. Political cartooning helps build a more active civil society. People should participate in political life and determine the future of their lives themselves. When elections come, everyone should go vote, not sit at home or dig in their gardens. The purpose of political cartooning is to provoke and cause reactions. At Pras Press newspaper, we all stand for civilizational, progressive and democratic principles that we share with the general public, and of course there is some missionary work in this.”
Alla and Chavdar Georgievi
“I manage behind this seemingly absurd humor and dialect to say things that I want to say and they sound in a very different way… I have seen reactions, the first signal is laughter at some seemingly simple thing, at some absurd joke, even a vulgar one, and the next moment comes the realization… I can say whatever I want behind this absurd and heavy humor… I don’t think there should be taboo topics. It depends on how they are presented, it depends on how they are written. There are no taboo topics in humor and there shouldn’t be taboo topics in our lives too“
Tsvetelina Tsvetkova
“Well what can I wish for everyone, I wish for them to laugh because laughter is health. If you are sad, when you laugh, the bad things go away. It’s a little bit like when you’re sick and the pain goes away or when you’re angry at something-when you laugh, it all gets better. Humor…humor is a superhero in my opinion. But then again what are superheroes? They are those who manage to save people from evil, from the everyday grind, from reality…from anything, so that they can laugh and never stop laughing because laughter, as they say, will save the world. Or maybe the world lasts because it laughs. It really is like that. It really is. People need to have a sense of humor, to be able to see stuff from a different angle. There are moments when we need to be serious but for the most part…we are a part of this world for an average of 70-80 years, so it’s better to live those years laughing rather than to go through them with frowning expressions and constantly complaining how horrible everything is…”
Dimitar Ivanov-The Captain