To honor the UCB’s 15 years in NYC and the opening of UCBeast, New York Mag checked in with about 50 alumni of the many-headed comedy hydra, who discuss everything from the troupe’s guerilla improv days in Chicago (Horatio Sanz: “My idea was, ‘How awesome would it be to be arrested in front of this audience, and have them thinking, Did they plan this? How did they get that cop car? What’s going on?’â€) to the process of bringing long-form to NYC (Rob Corddry: “In 90 minutes, they changed how I felt and thought about comedy. It was punk rock — super dirty and loose.â€) Says Amy Poehler, “UCB is part high school, part rehab, part training camp, part substitute family, part junior college for life and you have to figure out how to manage this high school without anybody blowing it up.†Oh, and at one point Rob Huebel gets slapped across the face by Chevy Chase (“He just slapped me across the face. He didn’t say anything; he just looked at me for a second and belted me. It was really hard — Âoffensively hard.)â€
