Welcome UCB!
The worlds greatest comedy institution, the Upright Citizens Brigade, is teaming up with Bottlerocket to open the first full scale UCB Training Center outside of NY or LA, right here in Pittsburgh!
Led by experienced instructors in a supportive and creative environment, UCB provides students with the skills and knowledge needed to excel in the world of comedy - or just have fun!
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Now Enrolling
UCBurgh is Now Enrolling Improv 101 and 201 level 8 week classes! It's the same world famous Upright Citizens Brigade education - now with Fries on top! (because it's in Pittsburgh, get it?)
Improv 101 - Wednesdays 6pm
Students will learn the fundamentals of improvisation including agreement, active listening, portraying characters, playing to the top of your intelligence, and group mind. These concepts will act as the building blocks for subsequent classes as students learn to develop their comedic voice.
Improv 101 - Sundays 11am
Students will learn the fundamentals of improvisation including agreement, active listening, portraying characters, playing to the top of your intelligence, and group mind. These concepts will act as the building blocks for subsequent classes as students learn to develop their comedic voice.
Improv 201 - Sundays 11am
Students build on the lessons of 101 and begin finding the game (what’s funny) of their scenes. By learning how to identify, play and heighten the game of the scene, students can further utilize their unique comedic sensibilities to make their scenes their own.
Workshops
We're getting ready for UCBurgh's launch with a series of one day workshops hosted by some of UCB's best performers and instructors, for entry level students and folks wanting to learn more about UCB style! Enrolling now!
Into the Writers Room - August 23
Ceara Jane O’Sullivan has written on Saturday Night Live for seasons 48, 49, and 50, including co-creating the instantly iconic Domingo character, and is currently filming a movie she co-wrote for Netflix and Happy Madison. She has more than a decade of experience teaching improv and sketch.
This workshop is for writers and performers with some improv and sketch experience. It will cover elements of the sketch process such as developing new premises, building sketch characters, the improv-to-sketch process, and how to punch up existing sketch materials.
Disrupter: Intro to Modern Clown - October 4 & 5
For most people, the word clown evokes images of white-painted faces, red noses, kid’s birthday parties and serial killers.
Modern clown strips the work down to its bones. We focus on the principles that have made this art form popular for over a millennia. Taking huge risks, celebrating failure, getting in trouble and winning the audience back with our tricks, joy, mischief and desperation. We don’t perform shows for an audience. We create shows with them — making them willing co-conspirators to our dumbest ideas.
This two-day intensive explores all these ideas — while also challenging performers to always be present, both in their bodies and with the audience. How can you create work that’s wholly unique to you, find pleasure in simplicity and discomfort and reconnect with your most primal sense of play? A great class for aspiring clowns, but also improvisers, stand-ups, writers and actors.
All levels welcome.