iO Theater, Chicago’s home for long-form improv, is turning 45 this year and throwing a three-day party to celebrate: IO45, which runs Nov. 5-7.
iO was founded in 1981 as the ImprovOlympic, the brainchild of Charna Halpern and improv pioneer David Shepherd. Originally created to stage team-based comedy competitions (hence, “Olympics,” which remained in the name until the International Olympic Committee sent the theater a cease and desist), Halpern reached out to comedy guru Del Close after Shepherd left Chicago in the ’80s. Together, Halpern and Close shifted the company’s focus to long-form, storytelling-based improv — specifically, a form called the “Harold,” in which disparate scenes weave together over the course of a show to form a narrative.
“The art form … has really been pushed forward in the past 45 years,” said Brad Pike, iO’s current creative director and a performer on the long-running Harold team Devil’s Daughter.
That evolution is a driving force behind IO45. The nightly selections highlight how much the theater community has grown over its four decades. For many years, the theater (and comedy in general) was known as a boys’ club.
“It used to be sort of a little bit of a joke that every Harold team had ‘the one woman’ on the team,” Pike said.
Now, however, iO stages better reflect the makeup of the world.
“We have all different kinds of improv for all different kinds of people,” he said, “and I think that’s what people really love about improv, is that it’s so accessible and has so many different voices kind of coming together to make this piece.”
IO45 will highlight both the veteran performers, Pike said, “who pioneered long-form improv,” as well as more recent additions to the iO stage who “are continuing to push the art form forward.”
While past anniversary shows have heralded iO alumni who made the jump from stage to screen, IO45 will be shining a light on the performers who keep the comedy going nightly on Kingsbury Street. (In disclosure, this reporter has taken classes and performed at iO Theater but has no connection to any performers mentioned in this article.) The weekend will feature performances from teams such as Improvised Jane Austen, an all-femme troupe that invents a new Regency romance every performance; Escándalo, which celebrates the voices of Chicago’s Latin comic community; and Stir Friday Night, a long-running team highlighting Asian American comedians and whose alumni include Danny Pudi, Steven Yeun and Mary Sohn.
Stir Friday Night has been a part of the iO story for many years, beginning with a sketch show directed by longtime iO performer and teacher Jason Chin. Since then, the team has been a mainstay across iO stages, performing both sketch and improv. When iO reopened in 2022 after having been closed during the pandemic, Stir Friday Night was on the opening weekend’s bill. This year, the team performed at the summer’s iO Fest, as well as The Fest Vol. 2, a BIPOC festival at the theater. Starting in November, the team will be hosting an AAPI-focused improv jam on the second Sunday of every month at the theater.
Jonathan Lee-Rey, the team’s executive artistic director and himself a teacher at iO, said Stir Friday Night’s festival set will use a form that Julia Morales, iO’s house teams and specialty programming director, helped them “engineer with modifications over time of … our own form.”
For Lee-Rey, Stir Friday Night’s presence at the theatre is vital. It shows AAPI players that there is a “community where you can also like jam and get to know the … Asian community … and then hopefully, you know, lead to connections outside of that as well.”
Those live connections are what set improv apart from sketch comedy shows, where the shows are written and audience involvement is limited. According to Pike, improv is in the cultural conversation once more because, in a world where people are “exhausted by the artificiality and mediated quality of everything they’re consuming all the time,” with improv, those on stage are “there with the audience.” The art is being created in real time, fully by humans.
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Festgoers can also look forward to The Scene with T.J. Jagodowski, which Pike described as “basically the most stacked improv team I’ve ever heard of”; 3 Square featuring John Lutz, Peter Grosz and Rob Janas; and Frank Booth, a classic ’90s Harold team. The weekend will also include a stand-up show from Chicago’s Maggie Winters and a Saturday panel featuring Halpern in conversation with performers from iO’s early days. (Halpern herself is no longer a part of the theater’s operations, having closed and then sold the theater post-pandemic.)
Part of the weekend’s allure, Pike says, is having so many iO players back on their home turf. Sketch shows can be remounted time and again with new cast members; an improv scene can never be repeated.
“At iO, our content is the talent,” Pike explained. “They are the performers.” It’s imperative for Pike that the theatre remain community-driven.
“If you take that away, we can’t just replace them.”
Ryan P. C. Trimble is a freelance contributor.
If you go
IO45 will be Nov. 5-7 at iO Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury St.; tickets and more information at ioimprov.com/io45