John Oliver & Rob Riggle | DCM 2008

Actors and writers from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report prove they can quit their day jobs

Every year the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York sponsors a huge 48-hour non-stop improv festival in New York City to honor the memory of Del Close, the revered father of long-form improvisational theatre. Actors and writers from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report put on a wildly popular show each year in which they perform an hour’s worth of improv based on a one-word suggestion from the audience. For this year’s show, held on 9 August, the first word they heard shouted out was “broccoli.” Someone in the lineup then gets an idea about broccoli or thinks of something broccoli reminds him of (which perhaps actually has nothing at all to do with broccoli). That person then steps forward and does a 3-5 minute monologue while the rest of the cast listens and then they move into performing a short play–created on the spot, no prep, no script–based on what was said in that monologue. Most people who have never seen long-form improv before can’t believe they make this up as they go along with no discussion whatsoever amongst themselves as to who is going to be which character or what the game of the scene is going to be.

Performing this year were:

From The Daily Show: John Oliver, Rob Riggle, Wyatt Cenac, and former correspondent and now series regular on The Office, Ed Helms.

From The Colbert Report: writers Barry Julien, Peter Gwinn, and Rob Dubbin.

I did not realize that the stage was about 1 foot away from the front row, where I was sitting, and had brought several longer lenses thinking that I could well be 15-20 feet from the stage. In fact I did not bring my 17-55mm f2.8 lens because I assumed it would be unneeded. How wrong I was! I was so close I could see the pores on their faces. I ended up using the 24-70mm f2.8 for most of the show, with a few minutes of the 70-200mm f2.8 so that I could really zoom in. I also had my Canon G9 with me and took a few with that, both to practice with it (it’s fairly new for me) and because I knew it would go pretty wide. The lighting was very good; I don’t think I had to go over ISO 800 and got some with I think ISO 400. I actually think I would have liked the pictures to come out a little darker; sometimes I felt like I was shooting in broad daylight instead of inside a dimly lit theatre. Man do I love those f2.8 lenses!

I have more pictures to put up in a day or two, so the gallery will change. Come back and check!

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