Poehler: “I copied what people I loved did.” Photograph: Lee Pelligrini

The 10 members of My Mother’s Fleabag, BC’s 26-year-old student improv comedy troupe, were in the main hall of O’Connell House on upper campus, distractedly rehearsing a campaign debate (pirates were involved) on a sunny Friday afternoon in late April, when one actor glanced out the window and hissed, “She’s here!” There was a quick agreement to keep rehearsing, and as they did, Amy Poehler ’93, a Fleabag veteran, Saturday Night Live star, and the recipient of this year’s Arts Council Alumni Award, walked through the door. A clamor of introductions followed, and then the Fleabaggers and Poehler closed themselves off in a side room for 90 minutes to prepare for two performances scheduled the following night, on the last day of the University’s eighth annual Arts Festival.

Poehler has been a cast member of SNL, the long-running sketch comedy show on NBC, since 2001. She has also appeared in several films, including 2004’s Mean Girls, and for two seasons was a guest star on the critically lauded TV comedy Arrested Development, playing the wife of her real-life husband, the actor Will Arnett, who accompanied Poehler on campus throughout her two days of activities. These included a public “Inside the BC Studio” interview, more rehearsals, autograph signing, an awards banquet, media sessions, after-parties, and a reunion. Tickets—more than a thousand of them—to the back-to-back Fleabag performances under a big top on O’Neill Plaza sold out quickly.

The Fleabag actors, five women and five men, provided an entourage as Poehler walked to Devlin Hall to meet with the local press, her face hidden behind a pair of Jackie O. sunglasses and framed by tousled blonde hair. Told about the larger-than-life-size posters of herself plastered about campus, Poehler was aghast as Arnett laughed, then assured her, “It’s a good picture.” While Poehler took 15 minutes for a wardrobe change, Laura Raposa of the Boston Herald and a photographer waited in a first-floor conference room; Joe Kahn of the Boston Globe arrived later. (Poehler, Kahn would report, told him, “Please describe me as a complicated brunette.”) The next night Poehler would be graceful in her acceptance speech at an alumni dinner in the basement dining facility of Lyons Hall—reappointed as a French bistro—thanking University President William P. Leahy, SJ, for her award plaque, a “beautiful cheese plate.”

While Poehler was meeting with reporters, students began to line up in Devlin’s main hallway for “Inside the BC Studio.” By 4:00 the line snaked from the entrance of the basement lecture hall, up the stairs, and down the length of the first floor.

Poehler’s “Inside” interview was conducted by Luke Jorgensen ’91, a member of BC’s theater faculty who as a student auditioned for Fleabag (he didn’t make it, but—last laugh—he’s now the group’s faculty advisor). On a cue from Jorgensen, the program began with a surprise: Ten Fleabag alumni and friends of Poehler’s from her student days poured in from the hallway, all dressed in custom white Fleabag softball shirts with red sleeves. Poehler responded with hugs and a few asides to the audience: “I dated all these people!” And, “This is a nightmare.”

Wry and even-keeled during the day’s quiet moments, Poehler calls herself “a junkie for live performance,” and from the interview’s start she crackled with a frenetic humor. Between jokes and reminiscences about early-nineties campus life (Fleabaggers pooling money to buy a steak at the Ground Round, or eating in the Golden Lantern, a “fancy” dining hall formerly located in Walsh Hall), Poehler emphasized the live nature of her work on SNL—which averages 6.5 million viewers a week. “As the show goes on it collapses,” she said, meaning that you could be backstage “dressed as a slice of pizza,” only to find out, “We’re not doing the pizza sketch.” She noted that her profile has risen since the fall of 2004, when she became coanchor, with Tina Fey, of SNL’s weekly news spoof, “Weekend Update”: “The difference on ‘Update’ is that you say your name.”

Poehler spoke about her career in improv, which she pursued after college in Chicago. She admitted that “I copied what people I loved did,” acting and directing under the late Del Close of Second City, whose other disciples have included Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, and John Belushi. While in Chicago, Poehler joined three other comedians in the improv group Upright Citizens Brigade, and after a move to New York, they opened their own successful theater in 1999. (Poehler noted that she “waited tables for 10 years” to support her comedic strivings.) The Brigade specializes in long-form improv (as opposed to the short takes of Fleabag), a form Poehler studied in Chicago that involves scenes “played very real,” with elaborate “connections and callbacks and reoccurring themes,” like the variations old friends spin off an inside joke. The form is called the Harold, and according to Poehler, Arrested Development, although tightly scripted, exemplified its structure. At interview’s end, she encouraged students to stop by the Brigade’s theaters in New York or L.A., to take in the craft for themselves.

There were follow-up questions for Poehler, from the students and Jorgensen: Does she get recognized on the street? “People think I’m [fellow SNL cast member] Rachel Dratch.” What character would she have been at this year’s BC-sponsored, SNL-themed Middlemarch Ball? “Frozen Caveman Lawyer.” Any resistance facing a woman in comedy, in what has been a male-dominated field? “Those barriers were broken down before me. . . . I’ve never felt anything but genderless support.” How do you generate character ideas? “[Put] some wigs on, look in the mirror. I promise you, you’ll have five bad characters.” Future plans? She’s producing and providing the main voice for a new Nickelodeon cartoon, Super Scout, based on a Brigade character. It’s about a Girl Scout “who skateboards through San Francisco solving crimes. . . . I wanted to do a show for girls where they’re not mean to each other [and] they’re not boy crazy.” She and Arnett will also be together in two upcoming films, the indie On Broadway (see related story) and Blades of Glory, with Will Ferrell. Any last words? “Feel free to deface the 10-foot posters around campus.”

After the interview, Poehler signed autographs and posed for cell-phone pictures with students as her parents, William and Eileen Poehler, of Massachusetts, looked on. An enterprising student unrolled one of Poehler’s posters on the table in front of her, and she happily defaced it with a mustache; a female student entrusted Poehler with a folded fan letter she said was meant for one of Saturday Night Live’s new cast members.

As an exhausted Poehler, friends, and family walked through the twilight to a closed reception in Burns Library, William Poehler, who frequents the campus for football and basketball games, was contemplative at the head of the pack. Stressing his pride in both his children—his son Greg is a ’96 BC graduate—he said of the day’s large and exuberant crowds, “It’s mind-blowing. They’re all here to see Amy.”

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