Upright Citizens Brigade Tour Company, an improvisational comedy group based in the cities of New York and Los Angeles, is coming to Syracuse University on Friday. Amy Poehler, Bobby Moynihan, Jack McBrayer and Ellie Kemper are just a few of the comedians who started out in the business through UCB TourCo.

This is the fifth time that Zamboni Revolution, a long-form improvisational comedy group run by SU students, has hosted the renowned improv comedy group. Tickets are on sale for $2 at the Schine Box Office. The show will take place at Panasci Lounge at 8 p.m.

“The whole show will be totally improvised,” said Jay Kling, a senior entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises major and the president of Zamboni Revolution. “They’ll ask a lot of questions to the audience beforehand to try and get a feel of what’s going on around campus for stuff to improvise off of.”

UCB was founded by Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh. Know as the UCB4, the group produced the sketch “Upright Citizens Brigade” for three seasons on Comedy Central from 1998-2000. Because of the show’s success, the comedians opened the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and Improvisational and Sketch Comedy Training Center in New York City. UCB now boasts four theaters, two in New York City and two in Los Angeles, according to its website. The theatres hold daily shows, and are considered some of the best training grounds for improv comedians, according to its website.

Kling said Zamboni Revolution will have a workshop with UCB before the show so the student comedians can get some tips and work on improv techniques. Zamboni member and sophomore finance and television, radio and film dual major Jason Tuckman said it is always helpful to be watched by fresh eyes and get pointers from people who know their craft — especially the members of UCB.

Later in the day, the student group will open the show with a short set, warming up the audience for UCB.

“Doing a great opener for them and really getting the crowd psyched for the show. It’s usually really, really good so if we can get everyone psyched for that, we have done our job.” Tuckman said.

Kling said the show could last anywhere between an hour to an hour and a half, completely improvised based off of audience interactions. Because this will be the fifth time Zamboni has hosted UCB, Kling also said the show may sell out.

With long-form sketches based off of audience suggestions, content can get crazy, but Kling said they try not to limit themselves to boundaries in terms of content.

“It depends on the show. For our shows, a lot of the audience will have seen an improv show before, which is helpful and we don’t censor ourselves very much,” Kling said.

Zamboni Revolution was created in 1999 and performs sets up to 20 minutes long, based off of one-word audience suggestions. The student comedy group has two practices a week, one of which is run by their coach and former UCB performer Jaime Castillo III. However, the group has not had any rehearsals specific to the performance on Friday.

Castillo said that improvisation is not a process of rehearsing specific material but rather practicing the skills and understanding when a pattern emerges in a show to stay in the moment.

“The skills that you learn when I’m coaching them and when we’re working and giving feedback to each other is you’re learning how learning to identify patterns organically,” Castillo said.

Despite coaching the team every week, Castillo rarely goes to watch Zamboni perform. He said that he doesn’t like to put the extra pressure of having someone watching on the group, but said he may make an exception this weekend to see Zamboni open for UCB.

Published on March 25, 2015 at 9:42 pm

Contact Rachel: rcgilber@syr.edu