Stuart Bruce Greenwood is a Canadian actor and producer. He is known for his role as the American president John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days, for which he won the Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, and as Captain Christopher Pike in J. J. Abrams's Star Trek reboot series. He has been nominated for three Canadian Screen Awards, once for Best Actor and twice for Best Supporting Actor. In television, he starred as Gil Garcetti in The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, and has appeared in Mad Men, St. Elsewhere, Knots Landing, and John from Cincinnati. He currently stars as Dr. Randolph Bell in the Amy Holden Jones-created medical drama The Resident.
The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise and is the first ongoing improvisational theater troupe to be continually based in Chicago, with training programs and live theatres in Toronto and Los Angeles. The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959, and has since become one of the most influential and prolific comedy theatres in the world. In February 2021, ZMC, a private equity investment firm based in Manhattan, purchased the Second City.
Del Close was an American actor, writer, and teacher who coached many of the best-known comedians and comic actors of the late twentieth century. In addition to an acting career in television and film, he was one of the influences on modern improvisational theater. Close is co-founder of the iO, or iO Chicago,.
Matthew Gregory Besser is an American actor, comedian, director, producer, and writer, best known as one of the four founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade sketch comedy troupe, who had their own show on Comedy Central from 1998 to 2000. He currently hosts the improvisation-based podcast Improv4humans on the Earwolf podcasting network.
Charna Halpern is an American comedian who is co-founder of the ImprovOlympic, now known as iO. Upon iO's founding, in 1983, with partner Del Close, she began teaching Harold to many students in the Chicago theater community. Many prominent comedians performed at iO, from Neil Flynn to Jack McBrayer. Also appearing were up and coming comedic minds such as Craig Cackowski.
Megan Cavanagh is an American actress, who is best known for portraying Marla Hooch in A League of Their Own and the voice of Judy Neutron in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
iO, or iO Chicago, was an improv theater and training center in central Chicago, with a former branch in Los Angeles called iO West and in Raleigh, North Carolina called iO South. The theater taught and hosted performances of improvisational comedy. It was founded in 1981 by Del Close and Charna Halpern. The theater has many notable alumni, including Amy Poehler and Stephen Colbert.
Peninsula Players is a summer theater located in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Founded in 1935 by Richard and Caroline Fisher, it is known as "America's Oldest Professional Resident Summer Theatre."
Richard O'Donnell is an American playwright, composer, lyricist, poet, actor, and stand-up comic. He has worked and lived in New York City and Chicago, where he has written and performed for the stage and television. O'Donnell co-wrote the ASCAP award-winning Off-Broadway musical comedy One & One, and Radio City Music Hall's Manhattan Showboat. He founded the New Age Vaudeville theatre company, the New Variety cabaret, the Black Pearl Cabaret, and St. John's Conservatory Theater. As a stand-up comic, he was the executive producer and host of the Fox, Chicago comedy variety television show R. Rated.
The New Variety is an American cabaret created and produced by Thomas Goodman and Richard O'Donnell. It was a fast-paced, ever-changing volley of acts that included jugglers, fire-eaters, stand-up comics, singers, musicians, and sketch comedy troupes. It was hailed by June Sawyer of the Chicago Tribune as a cabaret for the '90s.
Rick Kogan is a Chicago newspaperman, a Chicago radio personality and a noted author.
Chicago City Limits (CCL), is the longest running improvisational theatre company in New York City, New York.
The Practical Theatre Company was a Chicago-based theatre company founded by Northwestern University students and active throughout the 1980s. Its productions included new plays, satiric agitprop, rock and roll events, and a series of successful improvisational comedy revues. The PTC, whose motto was "Art is Good", is notable for the fact that the entire cast of its 1982 improvisational comedy revue, The Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee was hired by Saturday Night Live.
Chicago Live! is an hour-long stage and radio variety show hosted by Chicago newspaperman and radio personality Rick Kogan. The multi-platform show is produced by the Chicago Tribune in partnership with The Second City and broadcasts on WGN Radio 720-AM Saturday nights at 11 p.m. It is taped in front of a live studio audience. Short, individual segments from each show are distributed in video and podcast format.
Amy McKenzie is an American producer, director, and actress. She is one of the founders of the New Age Vaudeville theatre company and the Third Avenue Playhouse.
An Evening With Elmore & Gwendolyn Putts, The Neighbors Next Door is an American musical comedy, with a book, music, and lyrics by Richard O’Donnell, directed by Amy McKenzie, and performed by the New Age Vaudeville theater company in Chicago.
The TV Dinner Hour is an American sketch comedy review written by Richard O’Donnell, directed by Amy McKenzie, and performed by the New Age Vaudeville theater company in Chicago.
Brazillia R. Kreep is a Gothic poet, playwright, composer, lyricist, and illustrator in the tradition of Edward Gorey, and is the nom de plume of writer R. O’Donnell.
Tom Purcell is an American television writer and executive who is notable for his work with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He is the winner of 7 Primetime Emmy awards.
Black Pearl Cabaret is an American troupe of actors, variety artists, and musicians founded by Richard O'Donnell. They performed only original musical comedies of a Gothic, humorous and macabre nature, and were located in the Victorian seaport of Port Townsend, WA..
