Upright Citizens Brigade founders Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the mass layoffs and closures of their facilities amid the coronavirus pandemic, which led to serious blowback from staffers and fans alike. The layoffs happened in March, but the physical shutdown didn’t happen until this week.
On Monday, the foursome issued an email that read: “Given the indefinite shutdown of all theaters and schools in both Los Angeles and New York City and the anticipated slow and uncertain return to normal when restrictions are lifted, we cannot afford to continue on in our New York City leases. Terminating the New York leases is not a cure-all for the financial health of the organization, but one of many changes we will need to make as we restructure our organization moving forward."
Poehler tells THR that they want UCB to have a future: “Every move is to make sure UCB survives and hopefully, in the future, thrives. We're not ruling anything out. But, really, the short-term goal is to be transparent and communicative with our community — because our community is what makes the theater. The people at UCB, we've known some of them for 20 to 25 years. Everyone from the them, to the person taking their very first improv class, we want to take care of them. We're really trying to keep it alive, because it means a lot to so many people and we want them to know it means a lot to us.”
She adds: “We can't control many things, but we can control being transparent. We've watched so many different business try to figure out how to navigate this, and we're trying our best to be human. This [second] letter is an attempt to do that. UCB, at the end of the day, is a human organization made up of people. I think we did make mistakes, and we're trying to do better.”
Besser says they just want everyone to be safe: The shutdown is scary for everyone. But we shut down our schools and theaters before we were told to. It's like putting it in the hands of amateurs. We're all amateurs out here when it comes to virus control. We've had great leadership from governors in New York and California, but all of these these theaters were making these decisions before the president even made any.