Seth Weitberg interviews Andy Cobb

Precocious and political, Seth Weitberg (right) has earned his improv gold star performing at both iO and Second City’s TourCo. This budding satirist’s chat with alumnus Andy Cobb (in photo), a force behind revues like Better Late Than Nader and Holy War, Batman!, and now a writer, director and actor in L.A., was anything but politics as usual.

Seth Weitberg: The revues you were a part of were pretty political. Was that a function of the people who were writing them or more specific to what was going on in society?
Andy Cobb: Probably a little bit of both. If you’re writing your show after 9/11, you’re going to have to respond in some way. I do really enjoy political work. That’s something you can do at Second City. When [else] are you going to learn to stretch those muscles and figure out how far you can push a white suburban audience?

SW: What role does Second City have in the overall political discourse, given The Daily Show and SNL?
AC: It is much more energizing for both the audience and the actors to do it in a live setting; there’s something that’s lost when you’re doing it in front of a camera and a crew. But [Second City] has to work that much harder to stay with that ripped-from-the-headlines feel.

SW: What’s funny about the health-care reform debate?
AC: There’s so much comedy in the tragedy that’s going on right now in our current health-care system…. Within all that is [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel, and I think Rahm Emanuel is hilarious. I was lucky enough to meet him through a Second City gig at the DNC last year and he comes up to us before the show and says, “Hey, motherfuckers, you motherfuckers better not fuck this up, there’s, like, 12 fucking governors out there.”

SW: I heard you were once naked on stage during a show.
AC: That is absolutely true.

Weitberg performs Saturdays with Bullet Lounge and Sundays with Family Tree House Boat Accident, both at iO. Find Cobb’s work on Funnyordie.com.

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