For all of my parenting life, I have been bringing my daughter to a place called the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre, in Chelsea, the third-ish location of the then NY-based UCB (Solo Arts could be considered first, the second, the one I went to religiously in the 90s, was on 22nd street). The Chelsea space itself opened in April 2003, and today, November 30, 2017, its lease on the space below the Gristedes supermarket is up. The west side arm of the UCB will now live on West 42nd Street (the other NY location, UCB East, on Avenue A, is where I produce a monthly stand up show, We Hope You Have Fun, hosted by Ruby Karp). The UCB—founded by Matt Walsh, Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, and Ian Roberts in the 90’s—is a community. It consists of performers and behind-the-scenes crew and its ever-evolving audience, comedy nerds and tourists alike. Fans of escaping, of feeling happy, of forgetting and being in the moment. Of people who will sit and stand in the dark, watching their friends and heroes on stage. Of comedy and its nuances. I’d been an audience member since the 90s, when I’d seen Walsh, Poehler, Besser and Roberts at some bar, some other place where the stairs were so very steep. My father fed me my love of comedy in the 70s, and that included improv; finding an improv theatre in the 90s in NY? The best. And while a move is a move is a move, this Chelsea location is embedded in my heart; it’s where I came with my daughter, month after month, year after year, for the past 14 years. My daughter, so young, always in tow, tiny muppet hand in mine. In those early years, when she was 3, then, 4, then 5, she relished in the atmosphere, the laughter, always the laughter. I didn’t know, in retrospect, the impact it would have, that she would be infused with the same fandom as I had; I simply didn’t have the means for a babysitter. Some parents are calculated in what they want their children to have at their fingertips—piano lessons, soccer practice, like that; I had no roadmap. I was winging it. Going to UCB on a wintery night on.
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