improv comedy Tag

Boom Chicago Book Review
July 4, 2023 In Blog

Boom Chicago Book Review

Book Release Today! The first Boom Chicago book review is in: “30 years in the history of a comedy club in a way that totally defies expectation.”

4 July, 2023

As a contributor to this book, I can say I’m very happy with the way it came out. And here’s a review that agrees with me. Reviewer Jack Helbig wrote about Boom Chicago years ago in The Chicago Reader in the theater’s early days. And here he is reviewing the book Boom Chicago Presents the 30 Most Important Years in Dutch History. Helbig writes: “It is at once a book hard to put down, and hard to read straight through from start to finish.  (I did a lot of skimming; you will, too.)”

Jack, you have no idea. This book first appeared with a Dutch publisher in 2018 for the 25th anniversary, and it was even more of a mismatched patchwork. This new version is totally revised, by author Matt Diehl. He went to great lengths to create a readable oral history of Boom Chicago’s first 30 years.

Helbig: “Large swatches of the book look and read like an oral history, in which prominent and not so prominent BookChicago alums prattle on, reminiscing  about moments in BoomChicago’s rise from a ragtag group of improv comedians performing in 1993 in the back of dive bar to hothouse for creating future celebrities to a bone fide part of Dutch comedy world. As oral histories go, it’s not bad stuff.”

I’m glad he remembered to mention the “not so prominent.” I feel included. Indeed, I was a contributor to this book, along with Rob Andristplourde. Since we both arrived at Boom Chicago in the early days, we were there for many signature Boom Chicago events. Hence, Yes we took part in the interviews. And we contributed the ‘Meet the Cast’ section, full of anecdotes about all the “prominent” as well as “not so prominent” alumni.

Here’s a link to the review:

https://bookandfilmglobe.com/uncategorized/the-most-important-30-years-in-dutch-history-boomchicago/

Buy the book here:
https://boomchicago.nl/search/book/

 

Join us in Amsterdam for the book launch at American Book Center 11 July 15.00 –
https://abc.nl/events/event-details/book-launch/3190

And I also talk about some Boom alumni in my book The American Netherlander: 25 Years of Expat Tales.
https://gregshapiro.nl/greg-shapiros-new-book/

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Boom Chicago 30th in NYT, Seth Meyers Greg Shapiro
July 3, 2023 In Blog

Boom Chicago 30th in NYT

Boom Chicago 30th in NYT

3 July, 2023

As I like to say in my show, yes I have worked at Boom Chicago alongside many talented people – some of whom have found huge success in the US. Seth Meyers started his career in Amsterdam in 1997, Jason Sudeikis played at Boom in 2000, and Jordan Peele started his career at Boom Chicago in 2001. Together we played improv comedy, where it’s all about teamwork, and the Golden Rule is “make your partner look good.” …I think I did my job maybe too well.

This week, Boom Chicago celebrates 30 years with a whole weekend of shows at the Boom Chicago Comedy Festival.
https://boomchicago.nl/boom-chicago-comedy-festival-2023/

And we even got a write-up in the New York Times :

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/arts/amsterdam-boom-chicago-comedy-club.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Here are some excerpts from the NYT:

This Little Amsterdam Improv Club Launched Big American Careers

By Nina Siegal
June 19, 2023

Seth Meyers had no idea what to expect when he got a job in 1997 performing at a fledgling comedy club in Amsterdam called Boom Chicago. He was in his early 20s, and had never traveled outside of the United States. He had to apply for a passport.

“I knew not one thing about the Netherlands,” he said in a recent interview. “My first thought was to get some good hiking shoes, I guess because I thought I was going to Switzerland. And then I showed up in literally the flattest place I ever lived.”

On the occasion of the company’s 30th anniversary, its current cast and famous alumni — including Meyers, the “Ted Lasso” co-creator Brendan Hunt and the comedian Amber Ruffin — are celebrating by staging a two week festival in Amsterdam next month. They’re also releasing a book, “Boom Chicago Presents: The 30 Most Important Years in Dutch History.”

“We got to be onstage four or five nights a week, and that was never happening for us in Chicago,” Meyers said, “Also, we got to be in Amsterdam in our early 20s, and surrounded by all these other talented people. It felt like a time of ascension, not just for me but for everyone around me. It felt like a really special thing we were doing.”

Seth, I totally agree.

FYI – the NYT article is by Amsterdam’s own Dutch-American author Nina Siegal. Her book The Diary Keepers is amazing:
The Diary Keepers 

For the Record here was the first time Boom Chicago was in the New York Times (here in the NYT Int’l edition), in 2003:

And I also write about Seth Meyers’ early Amsterdam days in my book The American Netherlander:
https://gregshapiro.nl/greg-shapiros-new-book/

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