Photo-Illustration: by Vulture; Images courtesy of Andrew Moskos It’s late 1997. Seth Meyers is not yet Seth Meyers, but you can see the outlines of him in the skinny 23-year-old onstage at a scruffy Amsterdam theater. In a white button-down, dress pants, and a dark tie, with his hair pulled back tightly into a small ponytail, he looks a bit like a high-schooler whose parents made him dress up nice for Dad’s company Christmas party.
The theater was a training ground for many hugely successful comedy minds, including Meyers, Jordan Peele, Kay Cannon, Jason Sudeikis, Ike Barinholtz, and Amber Ruffin. But perhaps more impressive is the roll call of comedy lifers who’ve spent time there. Of the 100 or so performers in Boom’s 26-years-and-counting history, six went on to work for Saturday Night Live. Eight worked at MADtv.
From left: Boom members at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Back row: Boom co-founder Andrew Moskos, Seth Meyers, Ken Schaefle, Jamie Wright. Middle row: Liz Cackowski, Rob AndristPlourde, Ike Barinholtz. Bottom row: Gerbrand van Kolck, Holly Walker, Josh Meyers. Photo: Courtesy of Liz CackowskiFrom right: Clockwise from Boom co-founder Jon “Pep” Rosenfeld on the right: Rob AndristPlourde, Seth Meyers, Greg Shapiro, Jill Benjamin.
Moskos proved to be a master of street-level marketing. It was his idea to create an irreverent city guide that cast members distributed for free near the train station and other highly trafficked spots. Along with snarky recommendations for things to do in Amsterdam, it directed people to Boom’s shows. “It was pre-internet,” says Moskos. “We were the underground information source.” The Boom Paper, as it was called, was passed from one incoming backpacker to the next.
The show was designed to jolt the audience into paying attention. Barinholtz recalls a Friday late-night show soon after he arrived in 1999 that blew him away. “Three or four of the cast members came out, took a few pieces of information from an audience member, and launched into an incredibly impressive improv rap that incorporated this information they’d just learned,” he says. “I was truly like, They’re going to fire me. This is so removed from my skill set. I simply cannot do that.
Back: Josh Meyers, Brendan Hunt. Middle: Juliet Curry, Liz Cackowski. Front: Ike Barinholtz. Photo: Courtesy of Liz Cackowski As Meyers sees it, “it helped you as a performer having to comb out the crutch of pop-culture references. Those were sometimes the easiest laughs you’d get in the States. You had to find more universally human things for people to enjoy.” It helped, he adds, that you also had to slow down.
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