Brittany Previte
Senior A&E Writer
The Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company (UCB) will perform in McGaw Chapel this Friday night at 8:30 p.m., bringing professional improv comedy to campus in one of Wooster Activities Club’s (W.A.C.) most exciting events of the year. The touring company takes some of the finest performers from its theater acts in New York and L.A. and performs all over the country.
Michael Hatchett ’16, W.A.C. Comedy Director and member of the student improv group Don’t Throw Shoes, has been coordinating the event since last June. While the campus has seen comedy groups like Baby Wants Candy and Second City before, this will be the first time UCB visits Wooster.
UCB’s signature style is long form, which many unfamiliar with improv may have never seen before. Unlike short form improv such as “Whose Line is it Anyway?” in which performers play short four to five minute games based on very specific suggestions from the audience, long form takes broader suggestions, and performers riff on the same subject for closer to 30 or 40 minutes.
“The UCB style of long form is they’ll usually have a monologist, where they will get a word from the audience like ‘ham,’” Hatchett said. “And then one person will do an improvised monologue, so it will be a real story or real events from their lives inspired by that word. Then they will perform a series of scenes based off of that monologue.”
The comedy group has been known to perform variations of the monologue format, but no matter what the performance entails, Hatchett said, UCB will amaze with their characteristic long form style.
W.A.C. has been very focused on getting students excited for the event, W.A.C. president Noël Mellor ’15 said. The group has amped up advertising efforts and invited students to get a taste for UCB’s style of comedy by showing clips of the comedy group’s past performances both while tabling in Lowry and on the event’s Facebook page.
“We think every W.A.C. event should be the [most fun] event you’ve ever been to, but this event is definitely one that we are really concerned about hyping up and getting students to come,” she said. “This is something we all believe is a really exciting event, having this big of a touring company come to a college this size. I know sometimes we get criticized for Party on the Green and Springfest, [for] bringing in smaller names, and so this is in the world of improv comedy, one of the biggest groups [in the country].”
The UCB performance will have something for everyone, Hatchett said. “Ideally, I want there to be a lot of people who came there on a whim,” he said. “I know if you go you’ll have a good time. With stand-up, it can be a little on the fence — if you don’t like the stand-up style, or if you get offended at a joke they do, then you might leave with sort of a bitter taste in your mouth. But because this is all improv, there’s not going to be one style of comedy… With improv, that’s what makes it so open, so accessible, and that’s what makes something that I really think everyone can enjoy.”
Hatchett encourages all of campus to attend and enjoy UCB’s remarkable talents. “Unless [you] go to Second City or the UCB main stage theaters regularly, it will probably be the best improv comedy you will ever see, at least at this point in your life,” he said. “Expect the unexpected, and expect to think it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. It’s going to be really funny; you’re not going to know what’s going to happen — there’s no way to predict it with improv, and that’s why improv is great. It’s going to be a side of comedy you’ve never seen before, but you’re going to want to see again and again after you see this.”