History
Before the troupe formed, Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney were working together doing Theatresports in Calgary, performing in a group named "The Audience". Norm Hiscock, Gary Campbell, and Frank Van Keeken were co-members and later became writers on the show. At the same time, Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald were performing around Toronto (along with Luciano Casimiri) as The Kids in the Hall (KITH). In 1984, the two pairs met in Toronto, and began performing regularly as KITH, with a rotating band of members, including Paul Bellini for a short time. When Scott Thompson was invited to join in January 1985, the group had its final form. The same year, McCulloch and Foley appeared in the Anne of Green Gables series, as Diana Barry's husband and a former classmate of Anne's from the fictional Queen's College, respectively.
Not long afterwards, the Kids broke up for a short time when scouts for Saturday Night Live invited McKinney and McCulloch to New York to become writers for that show, Foley made a poorly received movie debut with High Stakes and Thompson and McDonald worked with the Second City touring group. They were reunited in 1986. After SNL's Lorne Michaels saw them perform as a troupe, plans began for a TV show. In 1987 Michaels sent them to New York to what was essentially a "Comedy Boot Camp", and in 1988 their pilot special aired on CBC Television and in the United States on HBO before debuting as a series in 1989.
Read more about this topic: The Kids In The Hall
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)