Amsterdam’s own comedy theatre has landed on American prime time. 60 Minutes, the most-watched news programme in the United States, devoted a full segment to Boom Chicago, the English-language improv troupe that has performed near Leidseplein for more than thirty years.
Correspondent Jon Wertheim travelled to the city to profile the theatre for a national audience of millions.
The pull of the story, for CBS, is Boom Chicago’s record as a talent factory. The Leidseplein stage has been an early home to a remarkable run of American comedians: Seth Meyers, Jordan Peele, Amber Ruffin, Jason Sudeikis, Ike Barinholtz and Brendan Hunt all cut their teeth there.
Sudeikis and Hunt began shaping the characters that would become Ted Lasso in the theatre’s rehearsal rooms, a detail the segment lingers on.
Boom Chicago was founded in the early 1990s by Northwestern University graduates Pep Rosenfeld, Andrew Moskos and Ken Schaefle, joined by Dutch producer Saskia Maas.
What began with the takings kept in a pair of boots, as the founders tell it, has grown into a professional company: a resident ensemble of about ten performers on year-long contracts, six shows a week, and an academy that teaches improv to more than two hundred students a year.
The 60 Minutes piece also catches the culture clash that has always driven the comedy. Meyers, recalling his years on the Amsterdam stage, describes the particular rhythm of a Dutch audience: a quick, sharp laugh followed by immediate silence.
Three decades in, that mix of American improv and a Dutch crowd is exactly what a national American audience tuned in to watch.
Source: 60 Minutes / CBS News
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