1) Your troupe is unique in its degree of experience and theatrical training. How do you think this has influenced your work as writers, as performers, and as a working team?

Our experience as individuals and within the comedy world has generally made us our own hardest critics. We all have very strong opinions about what’s good in comedy—writing, performing and film-wise—and so it really keeps us working towards a very high bar. We always know if we can get a laugh out of each other, the audience will be no problem. So basically, it’s made us opinionated jackasses who don’t respect the audience. Be our friends on MySpace!

2) How many incarnations has your troupe gone through? Meaning: How many different sets of performers/writers have you had? Do you maintain a strong family-like history?

The further back you look, the harder it is to really keep track, but [deep breath] here we go…. We started as a sprawling, 17-person sketch troupe/school club based out of NYU Tisch’s Dramatic Writing Department. Over the next year and half, through various additions, subtractions and graduations of both writers and performers, we eventually became an eight-performer, two-director troupe at the prestigious Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, running generally intact for close to two years. Just recently, the group transitioned again, and has downsized to a sleek, shiny, new four-performer, one-director troupe which will actually make its world debut at THIS YEAR’S NYC SKETCHFEST!

3) What kinds of methods do you use to put together sketches or characters? Does one typically develop before the other? Do physicality and language tend to develop together or apart?

We’re all pretty heavily trained improvisers, so a good number of ideas spawn from improv rehearsals we hold weekly. Even more ideas come from the marathon bullshit sessions we hold after rehearsal when we can’t agree where to go get lunch.

4) Would you love to perform sketch-comedy-in-the-round?

No! If the audience can see our backs, they’ll know how we do all our tricks.

5) What can you say you've learned from working in the fields of staged and filmed comedy? Does one speak to you all more strongly? Do you think one is preferable as a creator vs. as an audience member?

One of our former members, DC Pierson, just said this: “Five-minute Internet videos are the new movies.” And as dumb as that sounds, it’s actually pretty true. Audience attention spans are shorter than ever, the industry only consumes ideas in five-minute snippets anyway, and people spend about two hours a day devouring internet crap. As much fun and exhilaration as you get out of doing good live comedy in front of an audience, film is where comedy is at. In two years of running highly successful stage shows at the very popular Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, Hammerkatz still wasn’t able to reach nearly as many people as one week of showing some of our films on CollegeHumor.com [Two of their films here and here]. We even got more hits than a frat dude getting hit in the face with plywood!