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BBC MUNDO RADIO
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: October 30, 2011
Taking her first tour on Friday night of the completed Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, known as U.C.B.East for short, in the East Village, Amy Poehler examined its renovated 124-seat performance space, its twin lobbies on Third Street and Avenue A and its momentarily immaculate bathrooms, “so clean you could improvise off them,” she said.
Marcus Yam for The New York Times
Matt Walsh and Amy Poehler hosted the opening of a new Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. More Photos »
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Marcus Yam for The New York Times
The crowd at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater's opening watched improv acts. More Photos »
Marcus Yam for The New York Times
From left, Amy Poehler (seated), Matt Walsh, Chris Gethard, Neil Casey and Ian MacKaye (seated) at the new space. More Photos »
But being a comedian Ms. Poehler, the “Parks and Recreation” star and a principal member of the Upright Citizens Brigade troupe, eventually made her way to the bar.
As she drank canned wine through a straw, Ms. Poehler was reminiscing with Alex Sidtis, troupe’s managing director, about the coming of age of their comedy-training institution.
Only a few years ago Upright Citizens Brigade was admitting audience members to its shows by tapping them on their heads as they stood in line instead of selling them tickets; now it was just 24 hours away from the official opening of its second New York location.
Over the summer Ms. Poehler and Mr. Sidtis even donned grown-up clothing to meet officials at the Buildings Department and secure a liquor license for the new club.
“I know this is hard to imagine,” Ms. Poehler said, slipping into a facetious stage voice, “but sometimes people pretend they’re opening one thing, when they’re really opening another. You have to prove to them you’re not a sex club. And any day we can prove that.”
Since its opening in 1999, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater has also proved itself a crucial part of New York City’s comedic fabric, regularly feeding the performers and writers it cultivates to prime-time and late-night television series like “Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock.” The opening of U.C.B.East is a demonstration of its outsize footprint and an occasion for some outsize celebration, as well as the latest sign that a group dedicated to professional immaturity is reluctantly maturing.
As is often the case in comedy, finding this latest Upright Citizens Brigade outpost (in addition to its longtime home on West 26th Street in Chelsea and a second club in Los Angeles) was a matter of timing.
Mr. Sidtis said the group spent about three years searching for the new space, aiming for a location on the West Side or below 14th Street. (Though there are many comedians who live and work in Brooklyn and Queens, Mr. Sidtis said it was “too soon” to contemplate the troupe’s theaters in either of those boroughs. “The nature of the theater is pretty industry competitive,” he said. “What industry remains in the city is strongly based in Manhattan.”)
The Avenue A setting — the former home of the independent Two Boots Pioneer Theater — was identified in 2009, at which point, Mr. Sidtis said, “we thought we would be in and out and open in a few months.”
He added, “Obviously, that sort of optimism was met with challenges.”
What followed was two years of due diligence, negotiations, paperwork and construction approvals. A rear wall in the theater had to be moved back to accommodate a digital video projector, and the lobby needed additional soundproofing; the bar was constructed upstairs, and bathrooms were built downstairs.
Meanwhile the troupe got a crash course in East Village civics when a “Hot Chicks Room” sign, advertising the club’s bar and referring to a skit from the group’s Comedy Central series, drew complaints from neighbors. The sign was taken down and given to an environmental group, which posted it over the greenhouse where it keeps its chickens.
In September the U.C.B.East space started hosting performances by comedy teams, and as of Friday, Mr. Sidtis said, the last thing the club was awaiting for its grand opening was a permit for its illuminated signs.
But Saturday’s planned festivities were thrown for a further loop when rough weather prevented two of the founders, Matt Besser and Ian Roberts, from arriving in New York for the event (their plane from Los Angeles was diverted to Syracuse), leaving Ms. Poehler and the fourth member of the troupe, Matt Walsh, to handle M.C. duties for most of the night.
Some of the young faithful who turned out on Saturday night said it was actually a good omen that all four could not be together for the occasion. “It’s just too much explosive energy in one room,” said Cristina Cote, a sincere 24-year-old Manhattan resident and a student in the troupe’s improvisation and sketch-writing classes. “It would be like reuniting the Beatles.”
Instead, a sold-out 7:30 p.m. show featured Ms. Poehler, Mr. Walsh and Horatio Sanz, a “Saturday Night Live” alumnus, among a team of comedians who improvised sketches in response to monologues performed by the surprise guest Ian MacKaye, who formerly fronted the rock bands Fugazi and Minor Threat.
Responding to an audience member’s suggestion of the word “Medusa,” Mr. MacKaye recalled an incident when skinheads briefly overtook the stage at a rock show he played at a Chicago club called Medusa’s. That spawned skits about a janitor recruited to play Hamlet; an Appalachian folk band called American Taliban; and a balding middle-aged man who is mistaken for a skinhead. (“You people are strange,” Mr. MacKaye said from the stage.)
A second show at 9:30 offered a grab bag of acts that were, in theory, supposed to keep their sets to five to seven minutes. Sue Galloway, who plays an ambiguously accented comedy writer on “30 Rock,” performed a character piece about a drunken office worker singing an aggressive version of “I Will Follow Him” at a karaoke night; David Cross, the “Arrested Development” star, read remarks posted on the East Village blog EV Grieve that complained about the Upright Citizens Brigade’s arrival. (“Go back to campus, you new jack cornballs,” one outraged commenter demanded.)
Around midnight, when the show concluded, patrons and performers streamed into the bar to celebrate with fruit plates and bottled beer.
Mr. MacKaye, standing in the club’s narrow green room, seemed satisfied with his unlikely foray into comedy. “I’d never heard of it, I had no idea why I was asked,” he said of the Upright Citizens Brigade. “It was a very interesting, and, I think, healthy, pleasant experience. I was very happy to be invited. It totally felt natural, and it made sense to me.”
Sitting among the emptied-out seats of the theater they had helped to create, Ms. Poehler and Mr. Sidtis said the grand opening had delivered just the sort of unpredictable energy they want U.C.B.East to re-create nightly.
“It was the perfect combination of funny and weird and sloppy,” a wearily satisfied Ms. Poehler said.
“Ultimately,” Mr. Sidtis said, “it was all improvised.”
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