Oui Be Negroes
Oui Be Negroes is an African-American improvisational sketch comedy ensemble, founded by Artistic Director Shaun Landry and Director Hans Summers. They worked together for many years in Chicago with the Underground Theatre Conspiracy, and had thrown around the idea of an African-American-driven sketch and improvisational comedy troupe, which would be geared specifically toward social and political humor. Before Oui Be Negroes The Underground Theatre Conspiracy (UTC) was founded by Hans Summers in 1985 with performers he had worked with at the Players' Workshop of the Second City. In the beginning, the roster of players looked largely like one of the hundreds that could be found in the 1980s performing at any space available on the Northside of Chicago. But the UTC had one major difference, in that they produced the first multimedia comedy in the city. It blended stage performance with prerecorded video material and a live camera. The show with the unlikely title of "Fooglewoogle-The Multi-Media Comedy" was warmly received. "The evening ranges between the security of canned video segments (theater as television) and the insecurity of improv comedy combined with live video segments. It’s an interesting rush to go from the frozen, two-dimensional hilarity of the comedy videos