The Definitive Guide to Comedy
While improvisers from around the country (and even some international actors) converge on New York City this weekend for the annual Del Close Marathon, some of the Upright Citizens Brigade star pupils inevitably cannot make it because they’re in the middle of production of a TV or film project. This …
Big day in U.S. politics, eh? The U.S. Supreme Court upheld much of President Barack Obama’s law expanding health-care accessibility with a 5-4 ruling today. Even so, the presumptive GOP presidential challenger, Mitt Romney, immediately made a speech upholding his demands to repeal the law if he’s elected. Despite the …
The improv groundhog saw Del Close’s shadow, which means, somehow, someway, we’re experiencing the Del Close Marathon six weeks early this year! That’s one of the new new things to make DCM14 different from its 13 predecessors. For one thing, DCM14 is bigger than ever! The improv comedy marathon has …
Anyone can throw on a mask and pretend to be a Mexican wrestler for laughs. Just ask Jack Black, who employed this method to great effect in 2006 for Nacho Libre. Or go back in time to Seattle, before the Y2K virus wiped out life on Earth, and a time …
Lee Aronsohn, co-creator of Two and A Half Men as well as an executive producer another CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, had this to say over the weekend at the Toronto Screenwriting Conference about this year’s crop of female-centered sitcoms: “Enough ladies. I get it. You have periods.” And …
The easiest way for me to tell you how thrilled I am about Kate McKinnon joining the cast of Saturday Night Live is to remind you what I’ve told readers about McKinnon. From my review of her “one-woman sketchtacular,” Kate McKinnon on Ice, last year during its run at the …
Of all of the arguments about women in stand-up comedy, the one I never ever hear is the portrayal of female stand-up comedy in TV ad campaigns. Because it’s almost always for feminine hygiene products, showing us a woman onstage with a microphone making jokes about whatever problem the product …
Both of New York City’s major outlets for sketch and improv comedy announced new house teams for the 2012 calendar year. Nate Dern, the Upright Citizen Brigade Theater’s New York artistic director, said he received more than 400 audition submissions from actors and 160 writing packets for the UCB’s weekly …
In interviews over the years, members of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre often have referred to their organization as “the Fugazi of comedy.” It was no accident, then, that Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye was chosen to deliver the monologues for a planned special reunion of the UCB’s founding four to …
Hey kids of all ages, kids who love dancing, and kids who love the Upright Citizens Brigade. If you live anywhere near Austin, Texas, then you have the chance to see the UCB4’s latest feature film before everyone else, as Freak Dance premieres this weekend at the Austin Film Festival. …
