Will Hines and Neil Casey, stars/writers of "Small Men."
(click image for a hi-res version)

"Small Men" Debuts at UCB Theatre

New sketch comedy show about city government

Hines and Casey invite any writers for government, civic or land use blogs to see the show for FREE. Any employees of municipal governments interested in tickets should contact Will Hines at whines@gmail.com

Next show:

MANHATTAN, NY - "Small Men," a sketch comedy show by two veterans of the UCB Theatre about the epic passions and disappointments of those who work for municipal governments, announces new dates for August.

Why you should care: Well, Neil Casey and Will Hines have been senior performers and teachers at the UCB Theatre for more than 10 years, for heaven's sake. Their director, Michael Delaney, has been there for 15 years. The UCB Theatre is a special place where leagues of creative people who self-identify as comedians (sometimes deservedly, sometimes not) perform, work, socialize, find their creative voices, fall in love with each other, ruin their emotional priorities, get crazy about the possibility of TV/movie parts and just generally spend their lives. Without exaggeration, anyone who has been part of that community since the year 2000 knows, likes and respsects Neil Casey, Will Hines and Michael Delaney. Seriously, go find your annoying friend who took an improv class there four years ago and ask him/her.

Neil and Will have been part of many improv teams which have blown away audiences, despite their almost always disrespectful team names: ASSSSCAT (both), Death By Roo Roo (Neil), The Stepfathers (Will), Monkeydick (both, what a terrible name).

Neil has directed dozens and dozens of sketch shows there, and is a guy that everyone runs to when they're scrambling to put a packet together to submit to Saturday Night Live. The sketch shows have silly names too: Stone Cold Fox, Neil Casey's Sentimental Irish Christmas Radio Special, Your Favorite Thing, Game Face.

Will directs sketch shows too, but does more work with videos, including these videos which if you look up you will like: Checkmates, What If There's Bears?, Stripmall Photographer. He worked with Mo Rocco for two years (!) at AOL making great man-on-the-street videos which despite being great got buried in the incredibly confusing, content devouring mess that AOL's website is.

Michael Delaney is the sketch advisor for the enter theater, the senior improv teacher, and maybe the most respected man in at UCBT! Even more than Neil and Will, which as you see from the above paragraphs, is a goddamn lot! He was in Adam McCay's movie The Other Guys and had a part on the HBO show Veep and was in Curb Your Enthusiasm and is really just great.

The show Small Men is about people who work for mid-sized city governments. Hilarious, right?

Except that it is! Will spent three years working for small town newspapers in the early 90s and he was struck by the intense passions people felt about local issues, far more than they generally feel about national ones. He's seem people scream and cry at zoning board meetings, make dramatic pleas to school boards, and straight up lie to boards of selectmen.

Neil Casey is a huge fan of Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and many other books on the nature of cities, and how their design affects the happiness and life of the people in them. It's fascinating stuff.

To sum up: This sketch show is the product of two guys (three counting the director) who have made funny things for more than 10 years at one of the coolest comedy theaters in the history of America. It reflects the things they've learned there: be specific, be honest, act, be surprising, be passionate, know your goddamn lines but be able to improvise new one. It is good stuff.

"We wanted a big show about small men, or at least overlooked men," said Hines. "Neil and I like people who take their lives and jobs very seriously, regardless of whether the world is paying attention." I am quoting myself.

The sketches focus on employees of an unnamed medium sized city and their concerns. For example, the opening sketch shows two members of an unnamed town's planning department getting into a passionate argument over the approval of an upcoming left-turn lane into a shopping plaza.

"I think it's best two-person sketch show in a long, long time. And I mean of the quality of Nichols and May, of (Jason) Mantzoukas and (Jessica) St. Clair," said Delaney. Jason Mantzoukas and Jessica St. Clair as alumni of the UCB Theatre who performed extremely popular sketch shows before heading to LA to pursue television and film roles.

The shows costs $5 and is 45 minutes long.

Will Hines and Neil Casey, stars/writers of "Small Men."
(click image for a hi-res version)