b-r-double o-k-lyn drama

chriskelly:

I wasn’t in New York at the time myself, but I’ve heard on numerous occasions that after the towers fell on 9/11, many UCB people immediately congregated at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. That was just where they thought to go; it was second nature for them to walk in that direction. And I’d like to think that next year, if I’m visiting New York around the time the world is ending, I’ll run toward UCB as well, because that’s just the kind of place it is.

For the last five and a half years, the UCB in New York has been my home base. I’ve moved apartments six times, but that didn’t really affect me much, because the real place I lived was always on 26th street, just west of 8th Avenue, below the Gristedes that always closes three minutes before you need something from inside it. And let me tell you right now, that UCB place is goddamn magical. If you’re reading this, and you haven’t had a chance to study at UCB or see a show there, please drop what you’re doing and go now. Everyone’s experience at UCB is different, but as I prepare to leave New York tomorrow for Los Angeles, I am positive that some of my very favorite moments in New York, and some of the most important things I’ve learned about comedy (and MYSELF!), happened in that gross, lovely little theatre that sometimes smells like sour pickles if you lean your face against the back row of chairs, so don’t do that.

My first class there was Improv 101 with Chris Gethard in the fall of 2005. He recommended me for an internship after the second week of class, and then I immediately became a star! Just kidding. Then I swept garbage from the sidewalk into the gutter on Sunday nights while Amy Poehler walked past me to do ASSSSCAT for six months. And THEN I became a star! Just kidding. Then I swept garbage for another six months. I interned for a really long time because I think they forgot about me and because I did a good job. When UCB changed Training Centers in early 2006, I volunteered to help them move boxes for a couple days because I was eager to meet people, and because I wasn’t no dummy; lifting heavy things for people tricks them into liking you! Just kidding again. Sort of. But if you’re just starting out, and the chance comes around to move some boxes, I’m gonna go ahead and say, “Maybe you should move those boxes!”.

Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to be on three house sketch teams at the theatre, write and direct various shows, perform monologues at ASSSSCAT with Robin Williams (which was actually super boring—JK! This post is so much fun!!!!), and head write a TV pilot last year with Matt Besser, who one time walked by me with Amy Poehler in 2006 while I was sweeping garbage from the sidewalk to the gutter. See! There’s that storybook ending your were waiting for!

But who gives a shit about all that? Let’s talk about what I’ve learned. I’ve been at UCB for the last five years, and even though technically I’ve gone from being a student to a performer and writer to a teacher, I still feel like I just moved to New York, saw UCB, and thought, “I heard famous people do that! So, so will I!”. Even now when I’m teaching a sketch class, I’ll give a note to a student, and then in my head, say to myself, “Or not, I don’t know! Why am I in charge!?!? Don’t take my note, I’m just making this up!!!”. As a teacher, I’ve had to learn to keep my neuroses in check, to trust that I know what I’m talking about, but more importantly, to realize that we’re all just in the same boat, me and my students. I was a nervous, struggling student once trying to figure shit out, now I’m a struggling teacher trying to figure shit out, and soon, some of my current students will be struggling teachers trying to figure shit out. In retrospect, I’ve learned to not look at everyone else at UCB with this intense nervousness and fear and worry, because they’re all just as terrified and nervous and worried as I am. Either that, or everyone’s a real chill dude and I’m going to end up killing myself in my early 30s. Guess we’ll see!

I’ve also learned what I find funny. Not what is funny, just what I particularly like. And that’s the great thing about UCB. If you are hard-working, if you shut up about writing that show you’re gonna write and just actually write it, if you take advantage of things like School Night (where anyone can try out a bit on stage in front of an audience) and if you really just work, work, work, you can figure out what you think is funny by putting up your own stuff and watching it either succeed or fail on one of the best, most famous, most important comedy stages in the world. That sounds hyperbolic, but it’s true.

So what did I learn that I find funny? The way people talk. The way my aunt goes on and on about this energy wand she bought that can cure people and also make wine taste better. The way my grandpa talks about how Indians bought his old house and then three months later the roof caved in because “that’s what Indians do”, the way insecure, petty teenage girls talk to each other on the phone. I found that, to me, the funniest, most satisfying comedy comes from the saddest things I’ve ever experienced. The way people talk during a tragedy, the tiny sentences people say to fill the silence during an awful day, a well-placed FART joke. And through UCB, I got to figure all that out; I was able to write shows and sketches around things that I found funny side-by-side with people who were trying to figure out what they found funny, as well. Sometimes it was the same, sometimes it wasn’t.

What don’t I find that funny? Gross-out humor. Sketches that start with an intent to shock, then work their way backward to find a joke or point-of-view. A character that feels too vague and doesn’t sound like the way a real person talks. Seeing a “slutty high school girl” or an “annoying aunt” on stage drives me crazy, because no one is just “slutty” or “annoying”, they’re slutty or annoying for reasons A-Z, and I want to hear what those reasons are, especially because I bet reason L is really fucking funny and specific, and worth writing a whole sketch about. I hate the phrase, “I just threw up in my mouth a little”, and it drives me crazy when a sketch has a really funny line that brings the house down, and then a characters says, “Okay, back to work, everyone.”, and then the sketch ends. Always black out your sketches on a laugh-line, people! And preferably one that’s real stupid! I hate a poorly placed or overly done FART joke. I don’t like it when there’s a straight man for no reason; I think in 90% of sketches, the straight man doesn’t need to be there. I don’t think jokes with “cancer” as the punch line are funny. Not because I have personal experience with cancer, but because there are a lot more funny, specific ailments that a character can have, like muscular dystrophy or spina bifida.

But none of the things I don’t find funny are things that are not funny, just things I don’t particularly love. And I know there are obviously people that don’t think the things I write are funny. And to each their own. Unless you are a studio executive reading this, and then I will change what I think is funny to suit FART your needs!

Aside from what I find funny itself, the most important thing I have learned at UCB is to always remember that you want to be a person that other people want to work with. Now, I am the last person to write about how to be a perfect person. I’m a wreck. I’m too tightly wound, I can be real Type-A about things, and I have the amazing ability to tangle myself up in the most complicated web of lies while talking to my landlord about the weather. I’m also always walking faster than you’re running and when someone compliments me on a show, I think they’re pranking me. I’m a fucking nightmare person. That being said, I think I have learned a few things in my time at UCB about being a good, decent person. Because comedy isn’t competitive warfare with one winner, it’s a team effort, and when one wins, we all win.

This isn’t to say I’ve learned to be friends with people so that one day they will help me out. But God knows that for me, if I was ever in the position to get people jobs or hire people or get friends work, I would, and I’d draw primarily from my family at UCB. Who knows if that will ever happen, but the thought of getting that kind of success makes me excited mostly for my ability to help my friends. And I know a lot of people in my life who feel the same way. Because when you’ve been on a sketch team with people for years, helping them punch up their jokes, and taking their notes on yours, sitting with them during 3am tech rehearsals, scrambling to make a sketch that is not working work, drinking after a great show or a terrible show or a great show you’ve decided was terrible, you become family. You develop a weird love for each other. And if you’re a good person, and they’re a good person, and you work hard together, how fucking fun would it be to get successful and then help them out? Or vice versa?

So this is what drives me crazy: when I hear about people throwing fits at rehearsal or crying during a tech because they didn’t get enough parts that month or complaining about how tired they are or blah blah blah blah blah. It drives me crazy because it is uncalled for and you are working at one of the best comedy theatres in the world, so stop it. And it drives me crazy because I want to pull those people aside and say, “Crying in front of people about you having a small part in such-and-such show doesn’t convince them to give you a bigger part next month, it convinces them that you are a crier.” Maybe that sounds like a dick thing to say, but it’s true. And I’m no saint, myself. I’ve been at my share of late-night techs for a show that’s only sorta working, and I know I have to be up in four hours for work, and I’ve been less-than-happy about it. I remember during one particularly late and ornery tech, my friend Caitlin Tegart addressed the entire team because we were being whiny, and she said something along the lines of “Deal with it, you chose this.” Maybe she said it nicer, I don’t know. But she was goddamn right. We chose to be in that basement, working our asses off, and all we needed to do was look around! We were lucky enough to be working with some of the funniest people in New York City, and in a month or year or twenty years, we’d probably all look back on nights like that with nostalgia.

And that’s the cool thing about the UCB right now. It is one of the most – if not the most - exciting places to be doing comedy today. I always think about that when I read memoirs by older comedians, who write fondly about how they came up doing comedy for free in their twenties. They talk about the rehearsals and the parties and how they all lived in shitty apartments together and ate food off the floor and struggled to get by before really making it big. And I think about how in twenty or thirty years, my contemporaries will be writing their books about this time at UCB, about the late night techs, the bit shows, the drinks at McManus. And sure, I’m not gonna lie: I definitely worry that I’m gonna be the Doug Trunk or the Larry Clearwater of our generation, that random comedian you always see in the pictures of famous comedians’ memoirs but don’t recognize. You know the one. There’s always those glossy photos in the middle of the book with young versions of now-famous, recognizable comedians, and then in the back of every picture, there’s always that guy named Doug Trunk or Larry Clearwater that no one has ever heard of.

But to be honest, I would be more than happy to be my generation’s Trunk (they probably called him just “Trunk”, right? That makes sense.), because everyone at UCB right now is so goddamn talented. And because I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not all about “success” “down the road”, it’s about getting to have a really incredible time right now at a really incredible place with a really incredible group of people. I have been so honored and overwhelmed by the amount of talent I have gotten to work with. The writers, comedians, improvisers, directors, and teachers I have met and collaborated with at UCB have been some of the smartest, most hilarious, and kindest of my entire life. So if any of you are reading this, thank you, thank you, thank you (times a million billion).

The UCB is a real special place. A real goddamn special place, and I will miss not being at the one in New York on a regular basis anymore. (But I do hope to visit a whole hell of a lot!) So to all of you still at UCB after I leave, keep taking advantage of it. And if you’re one of the young people (gross!) that occasionally and randomly find this blog and ask me advice about things as if I know anything either, I say this to you: Go to UCB. Learn there. Make a name for yourself there. Use its stage - one of the very best there is! - to figure out what you find funny and then make it as much as possible. In the meantime, if you’re not at the point where you can be performing there, go see shows, and then go see more shows. Because on any given night, you can go to UCB and see amazing shit. Some of it you will like, some of it you might hate, and one of the shows will be the most inspirational thing you have ever seen, and it will make you go home right after and say, “OH FUCK, I WANT TO DO THAT!

So do. Go home, and figure out a way to do just that, only in your voice with what you find funny. And with as many fart jokes as you like!!! And then, in forty years, when you’re famous, please refer to me in your comedy memoir as “The Dump Trunkkkk”, and tell people I died at the age of thirty-eight of complications from muscular dystrophy.

FART.

Indulgently reblogged IN FULL, because Chris says it all here. Like everyone at UCB, I can whine with the best of them, but at the end of the day, I am truly, truly honored and grateful to be a part of this amazing community. UCB is not only where I’ve met some of my very best friends in New York, but it’s also where I get to hang out with the smartest, funniest, funnest (most fun?) people I could ever imagine - including Chris. I will very much miss being on a team with him.