Last week the folks at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) sent out a letter announcing they were permanently closing their venues for both performances and classes in New York City. (This on top of announcing in March they were laying off all their employees at their theater spaces in NYC and LA, in response to the pandemic.) The letter was signed “Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh, Founders of the Upright Citizens Brigade.”
The folks at UCB learned how to do this in Chicago, in our (until now) always crowded improv scene. At iO. At the Annoyance. At Second City.
They used to be the bad boys (and for a long time, like all improv in the early 90s, they were male dominated), the guys who sat in the back of the class and needled the teacher. They loved tweaking the noses of authority figures. And I loved them for that.
It is easy to call for disruption when you have no stake in the status quo. But what do you do when the disruption comes and you don’t want it because you have something to lose? What do you do when reality itself undermines the consensus reality?
