r/improv • u/sdtsanev • Dec 02 '25
Discussion Chicago Schools of Improv
So I've been lurking in the IS DEVIL'S DAUGHTER RUNNING IO WITH AN IRON FIST OF DEATH?!?!!!!1 thread, and a lot of the comments were about the general vibe of teaching styles at the various Chicago schools.
I am just starting out and I only have experience with Second City, but I notice people have very strong opinions on the different styles of teaching at each school, so I was wondering, what would you say are the biggest distinctions? I know the surface level - SC is for improv-to-sketch pipeline, iO and Annoyance are long form, etc. - but on a more granular level what do you see as the philosophical differences?
I am planning on branching out once I feel comfortable with what SC is teaching me, and my instinct is to take classes at iO next, but this isn't me asking for advice on that. Just providing context.
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u/natesowell Chicago Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25
Okay, here is my personal experience after moving here in early 2024 and going through a couple programs/dipping my toes in to multiple communities after living here in late 2000's and participating in community:
iO: when I went through classes in like 09, it was very Harold focused. Improv was all about making your fellow team mates look like geniuses and discovering hilarity and pathos through leaps of faith with your fellow players. Very thematic play styles with a premium on discovering the overall piece as it presents itself.
Current iO still has Harold in the background but it's not as prominent. I have also noticed a LOT more genre prov, which makes sense, cause normies don't know what a JTS Brown or Decon is, but will spend 10 bucks on Star Trek. I cannot speak to their teachers outside of who I worked with back in the day, but those instructors rule and I'm sure that pattern continues to this day.
The Annoyance: I took their Weeklong intensive in 2015, and did level 2 when I first moved to town. Really enjoyed that class, but wasn't wanting to focus on what they offer at that time.
Annoyance is great at helping you get out of your head and trust your comedic voice and instincts. It's a great program to go through after you have had your head filled with all the "improv rules". Really supportive and fun community out of the "big three".
The Home: I'm biased. I had my eyes on this program prior to even moving back here. Its own and run by people who ran the iO Theater I fell in love with on Clark. Big emphasis on group play and Harold, which most theaters avoid these days.
AMAZING TEACHERS. Seriously. You get to learn from people who learned directly from the creators of the artform we all spend our time and money on constantly.
CIC Theater: A refreshing and fun as hell approach to long form improv taught by some amazing instructors in town. CIC puts an emphasis on momentum of your show and letting small, detailed choices lead to fun discoveries to play with.
It's often been likened to "Improv Grad School". I think that can take away from how fundamental the skills you work on are to long form improv as a whole. Highly highly rec classes here and the Thursday Open Stage is fun as hell.
Logan Square Improv: This place puts the improv before everything else. It is a fantastic space full of electricity. The community rules. Shows are 5 bucks. It's byob. Improv for the people.
I can't tell you what classes are like because they have sold out so fast every time they open up since I have moved here. All of my friends tell me the classes are beyond delightful. The instructors are all fantastic performers and the nicest people. Go here.
There are still so many more that I haven't gotten in to: Bug House, The Playground, and don't even get me started on all the amazing indie shows all over the city like Tuesday Good Show. Feel free to to DM if you have any qs!
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u/sdtsanev Dec 02 '25
This is so very much t he type of info I was hoping to get! Thank you! I may take you up on that down the line. I am still too new to the craft to branch out, but I love absorbing knowledge in the meantime.
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u/Turkstache Dec 02 '25
For a guy only in Chicago (and other cities with improv) sporadically, best i can do is drop-in classes. I've taken 2 at IO and one in San Diego. Any advice on how to go about this so I can get meaningful experience while I suffer my work schedule for the next few years? I'm not in a position to take vacation during this time for an intensive.
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u/natesowell Chicago Dec 03 '25
A lot of the theaters have one off electives or workshops with really good instructors.
iO currently has a weekly free workshop every Saturday at 2pm.
The Home has same amazing workshop deals with crazy good instructors: https://homecomedytheater.com/classes/workshops/
Biggest rec is to follow all the theater on Instagram. They regularly post about upcoming workshop opportunities, or join their newsletters if that is your thang.
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u/Turkstache Dec 03 '25
That sounds amazing. I was always worried these require completing the various levels of their programs. Is it worth asking at a drop-in if they see me ready for a workshop?
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u/natesowell Chicago Dec 03 '25
In my experience, most theaters want your money and are not quick to turn you away if you want to participate.
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u/asek47 Dec 08 '25
There are a lot of options for online improv as well, which is a godsend to get your fix or do classes/workshops when you’re travelling. Second City is great esp for working folks - most classes would be weekends or nights - huge selection of classes (improv, voice over, writing, etc); UCB tends to have more online classes during traditional work hours; WGIS for folks with a strong core background. But lots of online options these days. There are transferable skills across virtual and IRL but also some specifics for each to maximize success in each approach.
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u/Turkstache Dec 08 '25
Thanks for the advice. The other issue i have with my schedule is it has zero consistency or predictability and i'm liablento be working or needing sleep at any hour in any time zone(international airline pilot). I looked at some schedules i've had in the past year and for all the online courses schedules I've seen, at best I'd be able to attend 20-30% of a regular course. And that's stringing together everything in hindsight.
My schedule is so variable that when i'm on a trip i never have certainty where i'll end up more than 3 days out, and often that changes too. "5-7pm every Wednesday", for example, is something impossible for me to commit to right now.
But I didnt consider one-offs and workshops. I could possibly get some in.
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u/asek47 Dec 08 '25
Also travel a lot for work (though not as much as you!) so some of the online drop-ins have been great and not something you have to commit to well in advance - Second City Online has weekly online improv jams - alternating weeks are short form and musical - free and a great community and terrific hosts/MDs/SMs. You usually can sign up day of if needed. Some of the other online single day workshops (like WGIS 1000 Scenes or 1000 Characters) sell out so would need to be signed up in advance - but if you have to drop out not sure if they transfer the $ to another workshop or if you’re SOL.
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u/Kipta Dec 02 '25
Have you taken classes at CIC? If so what exactly are threads?
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u/natesowell Chicago Dec 03 '25
Yes! I went through full program. I highly recommend taking level 1 even if you have gone through classes elsewhere. It was one of my favorites.
The Thread is the signs form or play style of CIC. Happy to take a stab at explaining it, but hoping Kyle B jumps in at some point to pontificate further.
The Thread typically begins with an agreed on opening by the group. It could be anything from a group scene to an individual monologue to an organic opening. It's a content generator.
From there we begin our first Thread. Typically a 2-3 person scene establishing a base a reality while improvisers are making sure to always answer the why's behind the statements their characters are making.
As an ensemble we should be listening intensely to the details being stated onstage to assist us in following the momentum of our show.
Every edit to the next scene should be logical, using the context of the very last scene to inform what scene is next being discovered.
It's not narrative improv, as much as it looks like it may be. I would say it is more a thread of energetic slice of life scenes that we are delving into and discovering together. We do that until we get to crazy town, and then we wipe it away and start a second Thread using the same opening as our starting point.
Once it feels like we have come close to the end of our show, we start folding in the reality of the first thread into the reality of the second thread and end up in call back city. Population US.
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u/HotTechnician8061 Dec 02 '25
Hot take: I’m kind of honestly not even starting to see a difference? Might just be me. I think the most aesthetic difference I’ve ever really seen is CIC defining “today is the day” as “I just tried a new slice of cheese” vs Second City scenes taking that as “divorce, dog thing, etc”. Maybe you’ll see some extra bits and SLIGHT variations in tempo or energy at some places here or there but you’ll hear “play the relationship” so many times across all these institutions and see so much improv done by at all these places by people doing classes at all these places either at the same time or sequentially with no gaps and they’re trying to implement the new things they’re learning on top of the old that like……it really blends.
Actually, I did a scene at LSI level something once where we all just talked about doing our taxes and that felt pretty different.
This might not be representative of what other people see, I might’ve just watched too much improv at this point.
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u/wtf_thea Dec 02 '25
I think part of this is due to a lot of Chicago improvisers taking several programs, often concurrently, so there may be some unintentional overlap/code-switching happening
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u/HotTechnician8061 Dec 03 '25
""and see so much improv done by at all these places by people doing classes at all these places either at the same time or sequentially with no gaps and they’re trying to implement the new things they’re learning on top of the old"" I think so too :)
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u/ArTooDeeTooTattoo Dec 02 '25
I think the schools are far more similar than they are different. Maybe iO clings to the Harold because it truly is the only thing that makes them different? I don’t think I’ve spoken to one member of a Harold team that actually likes the form - it seems like a stepping stone to eventually do the forms they want to do (whirled News, Armando, etc)
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u/sdtsanev Dec 02 '25
It seems - purely based on excessive listening to Yes, Also that the Harold is a bigger deal for UCB and maybe especially in LA still? And that pretty much everyone is ready for it to die out... I am yet to see an actual Harold on stage.
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u/wtf_thea Dec 02 '25
They do Harold nights every Friday at the Home! The house teams over there are mostly Harold-focused!
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u/HotTechnician8061 Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25
As someone that’s been in and out since 2015 and has also read a lot of stories and heard a lot of stories I’m willing to believe that at some point the three places were all very different aesthetically.
However.
In the same way “culture” can feel flat to some people now because of how fast information and life have become, you could argue those parts of the zeitgeist have bled into improv.
Also, I think a ton of institutional knowledge has been lost. People with 20 plus years of experience went to LA and never got to hand things down or just the natural flow of life like that. There are people who teach at some of the is institutions now, really well respected, incredibly talented people that have never studied there. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I just wanna point out cause and effect. Because improv isn’t as academized to the extent that something like piano or clarinet or vocal training is, you don’t have extensive giant bodies of people passing down pedagogy or writing “cookbooks”, pedagogy books, or accidental video of them captured like with Sanford Meisner or Uta Hagen (acting teachers) that it makes it hard for something like that to happen.
A really great example of this is Kristin Linklater Voice Training or Alexander Technique. Those people pioneered their own kind of speaking and vocal technique/physical pedagogy that’s used across acting conservatories today and developed their own teacher training program, etc etc, that cost money and time and you’d have to stay in Scotland for months to learn it and it would take like four years to become certified, then to train to teach that, you’d have to ask or enroll in another thing so that someone like Kristin or Alexander could watch you teach, give you notes on teaching this very specific thing, etc.
It’s why if you take a class with Aretha Sills, Viola spolins grand daughter and do spolin work, even if you’ve studied at Second City, she doesn’t let you just hop into Spolin 2 or 3. Second City teaches MANY of the Spolin games and but things get lost to time. This could just be age, but there was a pretty pronounced difference in how the game was taught that even though the instructions were exactly the same, the somatic/emotional experience was fundamentally different.
Again I’m a young gun and maybe stuff like this has happened but improv has not been academized so it was fated to change over this and even as I write all this part of that ephermalness is baked into the art form itself. Who’d of thunk.
Maybe 20 years from now all the improv will feel like today’s TikTok videos….. Or maybe in the 90’s all the schools felt very similar still and it was fundamentally the same experience we’re all having today.
You can’t really know unless you lived through it all and even then you can be affected by things like rose colored glasses, hindsight bias, or “not wanting to be ‘back in my day’ guy/gal syndrome” because you like having friends.
All I know is if you try to talk to Mick about it he’d rather show you a magic trick….
And that’s just fine by me bb.
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u/sdtsanev Dec 02 '25
As someone coming from classical music, this always hits me - the lack of structural body of academia around an art form that is now at least 75 years old in its current recognizable form... I am reading Anne Libera's Funnier and it feels wild that there doesn't seem to have ever been an attempt to create a unified system of comedy, let alone improv.
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u/iheartvelma Chicago Dec 03 '25
This is why we’re funding the Long Harold Collider at FermiLab. One day we will find that elusive Wiigs Bozon, the theoretical particle that gives callbacks mass
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u/sdtsanev Dec 04 '25
I don't know if that's a responsible use of science. Sounds like too much concentrated power to me.
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u/sethklowery Dec 04 '25
Yeah, the Chicago schools of thought have a lot in common when compared to what you'll find in other cities.
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u/natesowell Chicago Dec 02 '25
You just described art!
If we look at painting, there are a thousand ways to do it, and a lot of those mugs over lap.
Our job as artists is to take the tools from each institution that works best for ourselves and create our own unique interpretation of the form. Breaking the rules we find useless, and cherishing the ones that help us most.
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u/McbealtheNavySeal Dec 02 '25
Current Annoyance student here and while on paper the Annoyance says "fuck the rules", I've noticed that in practice (at least in class exercises) we end up following a lot of the classic rules without really thinking about them.
For example, a classic rule is "don't ask questions". We haven't been explicitly told to follow this, however when you have your own character at the top of the scene and are "taking care of yourself", you're less likely to ask too many questions out of uncertainty regarding how to react.
Just my limited experience, but it's made me wonder if maybe we aren't so different and sometimes reach the same end point through different methods.
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u/johnnyslick Seattle Dec 04 '25
Meaning to reply to this but I'm so late now that OP will probably be the only person who sees this OH WELL:
Second City: Uses improv as a means to discover sketch ideas and to flesh out sketches. If they have a philosophy beyond that it's more about not trying to be funny so much as using the building blocks of what leads to humor to find it (at least, that's what I learned there).
iO: Group mind, which means, basically, "don't really think about yourself outside of the ensemble, follow along with everyone, and even when you're leading you're really following the Greater Spirit of Improv". It can be a little... weird at its heart and I don't think all the teachers are quite geared into this. Oh, and also "follow the fear": if something about a scene freaks you out, you're almost required to go after it.
Annoyance: You support others best by supporting yourself. Instead of giving gifts to other improvisers to use, give yourself those gifts. Sometimes and from some people this can go as extreme as "never bestow gifts" and honestly sometimes that's good advice, but most of all it's about supporting through strength, not being "second banana".
CIC: Does semi-narrative, "thread" based improv in which the next scene is the first logical thing that comes after the scene before. Do the thing. Get to the point. Come in with a want for sure but never ever ever come in with the ending mapped out.
The Home: Mostly it's hitting group mind even harder than current iO does, which is by design: Home was created by former iO people who want to rekindle that magic which they believe went away in the 20+ years between Del's death and the closure of iO. Which, yes, absolutely means doing even more weird avant garde stuff both in classes and in shows.
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u/sdtsanev Dec 04 '25
Well, even if only I saw it, I appreciate it! I read Mick Napier's Improvise, so I kinda know what to expect from the Annoyance. I love how each school was basically people from the previous school going "this one fucking thing tho!"
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u/Choice-Parsley-5021 Dec 02 '25
Annoyance is literally the most fun form of improv. Just go up and do whatever you want for yourself and figure it out while you’re up there. I’ve done groundlings labs/UCB and I 10/10 recommend annoyance over any of them.
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u/McbealtheNavySeal Dec 02 '25
This might be why the Annoyance has been a great fit for me. I'm not an actor, have no real ambitions related to improv, and started classes earlier this year just because I've been an improv fan for a long time and thought it might be fun to try. I chose Annoyance mostly because it worked with my schedule and budget and it's been a lot of fun. The environment is super supportive, my classes have had people from all sorts of different backgrounds, and while I've met professional actors there I don't get a sense of cutthroat competition amongst performers that I hear can be common at other theaters.
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u/sethklowery Dec 04 '25
There are definitely different emphases, but ultimately what I've seen is that the skills that aren't emphasized up front are usually brought in at the higher levels to balance and add nuance. For example, at the annoyance I spent the first three levels working on my own initiations/deals/povs and then I got to level 4 and realized, "Oh, I can be better about listening and giving names," which is really emphasized early on other places.
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u/sdtsanev Dec 04 '25
That's a good point. And even after just two levels at Second City, I can already tell that EVERYONE is using UCB terminology for everything.
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u/Legal-Cry1270 Dec 02 '25
Following the same thread and I felt so dumb reading it because of the clique names. Don’t show up your gatekeepers, leads, teachers. Don’t try to dazzle and win anyone over with your talent. Refuse the opportunities to make an ass out of yourself. People in power can and will be assholes often enough for everyone else. Until you’re in a position of power, you eat $h!t and learn to like the way it tastes until you move up knowing that, in spite of your best efforts sometimes you may never move up in certain circles.
Live it up at SC and have fun. Start your own circle.
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u/sdtsanev Dec 03 '25
Yeah, I'm not interested in the drama. It's too early for me to care about cliques when I don't even perform yet. It was just a starting off point to ask about the types of improv being taught at different places.
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u/Pumplekins Dec 03 '25
Whichever one gets you the most reps/performance/time for the money is the best one. The best way to get better at improv is to do it and watch it.
Having been to nearly all of them I'd say Second City is easily the worst as they really baby step you and have so so many classes and also charge you out the butt.
Picking between all the others are mostly a taste thing. Go see the flagship teams/shows at each theater and pick based on that honestly. They'll probably be your teachers and are probably doing the style the theater espouses.
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u/fuenvitro Dec 02 '25
Annoyance: Taking care of yourself is taking care of your scene partner.
iO: Taking care of your partner/ensemble takes care of the scene.
Second City: Taking care of the relationship in the scene allows you to identify its core comedic elements and distill them into original written material.
CIC: Paying attention to simple character/relationship discoveries creates space for compelling line-by-line improv.
Malarkey/ComedySportz: Improvising within sets of rehearsed games allows you to create a coherent, accessible, and reliably funny show for any audience.
I’m not familiar with the other schools, and I agree with another comment saying that all the styles basically blend in practice, because everyone is learning all of them, and they internalize the parts that resonate most with their own comedic voice.