Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent.
The Upright Citizens Brigade is an improvisational and sketch comedy group that emerged from Chicago's ImprovOlympic in 1990. The original incarnation of the group consisted of Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh, Adam McKay, Rick Roman, Horatio Sanz and Drew Franklin. Other early members included Neil Flynn, Armando Diaz, Ali Farahnakian and Rich Fulcher.
The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise and is the oldest 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 English-speaking 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.
The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre is an American improvisational theatre company and training center founded by the Upright Citizens Brigade troupe members Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh.
Matthew Paul Walsh is an American comedian and actor, best known for his role as Mike McLintock in Veep for which he received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He is a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade sketch comedy troupe, with which he co-starred in the original television series and the 2015 reboot. He also previously starred in short-lived comedy programs such as Dog Bites Man and Players, and was a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He has also appeared in films such as Road Trip (2000), Bad Santa (2003), School for Scoundrels (2006), Role Models (2008), The Hangover (2009) and The Do-Over (2016).
Dudley Riggs was an improvisational comedian who created the Instant Theater Company in New York, which later moved to Minneapolis to become the Brave New Workshop comedy troupe.
Ian Michael Roberts is an American actor, comedian and writer. Roberts is a founding member of the famed Upright Citizens Brigade improv and sketch comedy troupe.
Friday Nite Improvs, or Friday Night Improvs (FNI), was a long-running weekly improvisational comedy show staged on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The show functioned as an improv jam, performed by improv actors who don't normally work together. FNI was unique in that, in addition to the audience's providing improv suggestions, the performers are all pulled from volunteers in the audience. FNI ended in 2014. A student improv group, Ruckus, has succeeded FNI as a resident improv group on the University of Pittsburgh's campus.
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, is 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.
New Age Vaudeville was an American professional theater troupe founded by Richard O'Donnell and Amy McKenzie, and was part of the Chicago comedy boom of the 1980s.
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.
R. Rated was a late 90s American comedy variety TV show executive produced and hosted by comic R. O'Donnell. It aired on Fridays at midnight on WFLD Fox 32, Chicago, and featured sketch comedy troupes, theater companies, musicians, stand-up comics and other independent film and video makers.
The Flaming Idiots were a comedy juggling troupe of three performers: Jon O'Connor, Rob Williams and Kevin Hunt. Their stage names were Pyro, Gyro, and Walter. They began their act as a busking routine in the early 1980s in Dallas and they performed their last show at the New Victory Theater on Broadway in New York City in 2004. The Flaming Idiots created and produced their show as well as performing it.
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.
The Kiss Kiss Cabaret is a live weekly variety show presenting vaudeville and neo-burlesque on Friday nights at the Uptown Broadway Building in Chicago, IL.
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..
