It has been almost eight years since the last episode of the Upright Citizens Brigade aired on Comedy Central. But beginning well before the series took to television—from its roots as an improv and sketch comedy troupe in Chicago to the opening of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatres in New York City and Los Angeles—the Upright Citizens Brigade has been in the process of constructing a comedy empire.

By most accounts, they’ve succeeded. When the Upright Citizens Brigade came to the Alamo Ritz in November, it wasn’t as the cast you'd recognize from the television show—Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts, Amy Poehler, and Matt Besser. It was the Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company; the troupe of UBC players that are poised to become the next Bessers, Roberts, Walshes, and Poehlers. The next Rob Riggles or Rob Huebels. The next Ed Helmses or Paul Scheerers.

Which makes the fact that the original Besser, Walsh, and Roberts are coming to Austin to perform a series of shows this week noteworthy, at the very least. On Wednesday, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh, and Matt Besser begin a three-day marathon of improv and sketch comedy at the United States Art Authority, with shows following at ColdTowne Theater and the Alamo South Lamar. We spoke with Matt Besser recently about his political-prank television show Crossballs, the UCB improv method, and the UCB’s run of shows in Austin this week.

What exactly are you showing at the Alamo—the F’d up and illegal videos?

Videos that are very F’d up. Not necessarily illegal, but probably never seen by most people. For instance, we have this video of this kid—made an actor reel where he did a monologue as Adolf Hitler, doing like a one-man show as Hitler. Another video we’re showing—we pranked the Today Show several years ago with a guy jumping around with a dildo. You’ve probably seen that on YouTube—it’s called Little Donny Pranks the Today Show. A public service announcement for Christian films. Star Search audition tapes. How-to videos on how to use a penis pump.

That’s all video, right? Will you be performing at that show?

Yeah, we’ll be performing.

The first night is all improv—that’s A.S.S.S.S.C.A.T. The second night is sketch and videos—a lot of the stuff that is on UCBComedy.com or will be. And the third night is F’d up and Illegal Videos.

What was it like working with Method Man and Redman on Stung?

It was a lot of fun. It was a long time ago. It was before Punk’d was on the air—there wasn’t a really a hidden camera show on TV, and those guys were really into doing camera pranks. We had done a lot on Upright Citizens Brigade—there was always at least one prank per episode.

I think the pranks ended up being a little more difficult—the whole hidden-camera thing was a little more difficult than those guys thought it would be, so they didn’t want to continue with the whole series. But the special was cool—it taught me that you can get high and still perform.

Is UCB’s label planning to release more of the stuff that’s recorded at the theatre in LA?

Yeah—and New York. That is a plan.

We look at UCBComedy.com as what we’re doing right now. That is only UCB performers on it, and hopefully we can release compilations of the best stuff from that. A lot of that is going to be live stuff, too.

I wanted to talk to you about Crossballs. Do you think the political environment now would be more conducive to that show being better received?

It was pretty well-received. The reason it didn’t go on was that we got into a lot of legal brew-ha-ha—you’ve seen my website, obviously. We explain the trouble we got into on that.

We did 24 shows, each of those shows, we had two real guests. That’s 48 guests in the period of a summer that we really pissed off. I’d say at least half the people, I didn’t mind pissing off because I thought they deserved to be fucked with one way or another. Some of those people, including this anti-gun control guy, got so mad that—he was for real going to sue us. And Comedy Central decided that it wasn’t worth continuing the show, even though they had nothing to really sue us about except for being embarrassed on TV.

Our show wasn’t like one of the Candid Camera or Punk’d kind of, “Ha ha! You’ve been pranked!” At the end, it’s like, “Ha ha! You’ve been pranked—go fuck yourself.” It wasn’t a happy show; I felt like we were fighting a war against conservatives and uptight people in a way. At the end of the show we didn’t put our arm around them and ask them to be a good sport; we said, “you got pranked, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” That’s not very conducive to a show continuing on. I don’t have any regrets about that; even as we were doing the show, I was wondering how the show was going to keep going because we were pissing off so many people.

You’re doing workshops in Austin, correct?

Yes.

Having taught improv, obviously, for years and years, and having learned improv for even longer, do you still get the same amount out of it as a teacher as you did when you first started?

I guess I don’t look at it that way. I don’t look at a class in terms of what I’m getting out of it; I look at what I’m giving. Or what our theatre is giving.

What we’re proud of at the UCB is that we have a tangible improv methodology, which maybe a lot of improv schools don’t have. We really think that there are certain techniques and methods you can use to become a better improviser. We don’t teach people to be funny, we teach people how to be funny with other people. How to bring an idea together. I think as the years have gone along, we’ve gotten better and better at that. We’re proud of the curriculum that we’ve built up through the years and we continue to work on it. As with any school, you’ve got to figure what to teach and in what order to teach those things. That’s the constant philosophical discussion that we’re always going through, and we continue to go through it even now as we expand our school in LA.

I’m not one of those guys that goes, “I get great joy in my heart seeing someone improvise well.” Whatever. We—I don’t think of it as I—we know how to teach people to improvise better. I enjoy proving that and I enjoy seeing people have the methodology work for them.

We’ve never had really big plans of what we’re going to do next. It always sort of happens organically. We didn’t plan, once we did well in New York, now let’s go conquer LA. A few of us—me, Ian, Walsh—moved to LA to start working there. We wanted a place like we had in New York, so we opened the theater; you open a theater, you open a school. It all kind of just happens versus, “Let’s go to this city and start doing something.”

Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, and Ian Roberts of the Upright Citizens Brigade

Wednesday, March 12th at the Art Authority Austin with opener Terp 2 It (8pm and 10pm, tickets)

Thursday, March 13th at Coldtowne Theater with opener Coldtowne (8pm and 10pm, tickets)

Friday, March 14th at The Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar (11:59pm, tickets)