I've never been to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater

The UCBT is a small theater in chelsea that presents improv shows. I don't know about the history of the theater, but I had heard about it because some of my favorite cast members of Saturday Night Live (including Amy Poehler) are known to moonlight there on Sundays. There are two shows, one at 7:30 which requires pre reserved tickets, and one at 9:30 which accepts no reservations, but which you have to line up for about 2 hours before they give the tickets away. Since I didn't do any advance planning, I was stuck with the wait in line for two hours option, but luckily I had the good company of my friend Jenna and we even smuggled a bottle of wine and some tortilla chips into the line, so the two hours zoomed right by.

Once we got into the theater for the show, I realized that I was probably the oldest audience member by about 675 years. As we waited for the show to start I felt like I had snuck back into a college frat party, and should be walking around scolding these youngins' for their foul language. My feeling old around college kids is now compounded by the fact that I'm a University Professor, so I feel both old and responsible around them, like I should be whipping them into shape. Luckily, the improvers were all my age or older it seemed, so I didn't feel like the grandma at the sorority rush once the show started.

The show featured two Saturday Night Live cast members; Horatio Sans, who has dropped 50 pounds and is almost unrecognizable, and Jason Sudeikis, who is the guy who currently plays Bush on SNL. They were joined by 5 other guys, and the improv was witty and quick. They would take one word suggestions from the audience, one of the guys would do an improvised monologue about some true story from their life that somehow related to the suggested word, and then they would all jump in and present improvised skits about the material in the monologue. It's a good system because it allows a lot of tie-ins and they can bring all the material together in the end for a satisfying punch of hilarity. It wasn't the funniest improv I've ever seen, but I did laugh out loud several times, and I find Jason Sudeikis particularly funny. Horatio Sans couldn't always keep from laughing, just like on Saturday Night Live, but the guys were pretty bright and spot on and quick in their ability to keep things alive and jumping. Some of the jokes were even targeted at the fact that the audience was so much younger than the players (like a joke about texting and how keystrokes are now too important to waste on entire words) and those jokes particularly appealed to this ol' lady.

And in case you were wondering about my progress on music learning, I've already learned all of Musetta, which is actually only about 20 minutes of music, and I managed the run the whole thing a couple of times in a coaching today. I think my plan of having daily activities to encourage my schedule to allow for music learning is working! I may be old, but I ain't dumb.