Second City-ites of the modern era tend toward the yuppie or post-yuppie set: well-clad rabble rousers, well-mannered yahoos and hip good timers with a contemporary, post-”Saturday Night Live” energy and freshness.
But one somewhat unsung attribute of the famed improvisational institution`s history is its early roots at a distinct, distinguished, decidedly pre-yuppie and some might say stoically elitist educational bulwark: the University of Chicago.
The original producer (Bernard Sahlins) and director (Paul Sills), as well as a majority of the members of the first cast, were all graduates of the U. of C., steeped in its academic passions and singular mindset. Many of their contemporaries and influences, Mike Nichols, for instance, hailed from their university days as well, and a great deal of Second City`s early humor-and audiences-were Hyde Park bred and nurtured.
That unique, in many ways all but forgotten element in Second City lore is about to get a special and unusual salute. Sahlins, who first sold his controlling interest in Second City, and then three years ago left his job there as artistic director, has put together a pick-up group, mostly of actual performing alumni of the famed Wells Street playhouse, for a special commemorative show, ”From the Second City,” to play Wednesday through Feb. 2 at the U. of C.`s Court Theatre.
”It`s part of the university`s centennial, and it`s appropriate, because that`s where we started,” Sahlins says. ”The first experiments in the form were there, and the predecessor institution, the Compass, came out of there. And our audiences, which were very different then from what they are now, were primarily university people and from the intellectual set.”
There`s also an important cerebral homeground in that the founding funny people of Second City shared a rich U. of C. passion for drama from an academic viewpoint. As surprising as it might be to the booze-swilling fans of many generations since, Second City didn`t start in stand-up comedy, pop entertainment or burlesque, but in traditional academic theater.
”I don`t like to say that we invented a new form,” Sahlins says, though many have argued that point, ”but that we inherited a tradition that goes back two or three thousand years. It`s the difference between stand-up comedy and a genuine theater scene. We harken back to the Greek satyr plays and later the commedia dell`arte of the Middle Ages.
”All along, from the beginning, we were interested in the short scene as a form. Scenes require a formal theatrical structure, an exposition, a problem, a climax, an ending, and so forth. In a way, it`s a continuation of an old tradition, the theater without heroes. As compared with the greater, larger classics of tragic heroes, this is the theater of the common man.”
Ironically, as such, Sahlins doesn`t mind at all that what he and his contemporaries began three decades ago has evolved and been remade by youngsters who`ve followed. Part of his personal Second City aesthetic has it that this ever-changing, ever-youthful quality is what makes the style and subject matter so continually fresh-not just the shock of recognition, as he puts it, but the joy of it.
”Second City audiences are young and our actors are young and always have been,” he says. ”They range between 18 and 35, and that`s because when you`re in those ages, you`re trying to separate your anxieties from what`s personal and what`s public. You come to Second City, and you`re addressed by your peers, and your randomness is somewhat annihilated.
”As a director, I always listened to the cast, and they told me what we should do and how we should do it. It wouldn`t have worked otherwise. And every four years or so, every school generation as it were, attitudes changed slightly, towards drugs, sex, politics and life. You could see that most obviously from the pairs of brothers, from the Belushis (John and Jim) and the Murrays (Bill and Brian Doyle).
”If I had tried to write the material for any of them, I would have been old-fashioned.”
However, for the upcoming show, Sahlins is willing to forget contemporaneity for a deliberately nostalgic trip back. His cast (Peter Burns, Kevin Crowley, Bruce Jarchow, David Pasquesi, Amy Sedaris, Mitch Rouse and Karol Kent) isn`t made up of longtime veterans, and includes nobody from Second City`s current stages: The 25 or so skits are revivals spanning the years 1957 to around 1987, none of them brand new, and they mostly go back to Second City`s university roots.
Among the choice bits include James Joyce`s birthday party, wherein the Irish novelist excoriates in a nonstop diatribe on the horrors of his homeland, while his hapless and uncomprehending relatives ignore him and wish him many happy returns; a male Hyde Park robbery victim, interrogated by two insensitive female officers, who suggest his provocative clothing is to blame; ”Football Comes to the U. of C.,” one of Second City`s most famous skits of all; and a bit wherein the spinsterly, weirdly gothic Emily ”Wuthering Heights” Bronte makes a stab at stand-up comedy.
Although he hopes to re-enlist longtime piano player Fred Kaz, as a nod to tradition, Sahlins also plans one seemingly anathema of a departure: no blackouts.
”Frankly, I`ve always disliked that aspect. I want to use the larger stage at Court to crossfade lighting and blend scenes more smoothly. It always seemed to me with the blackout that you end a scene, people applaud, the lights go down and you have to win them back all over again.”
He chuckles with his impish, grandfatherly charm that is as much a part of Second City legacy as any of it, and notes, ”I did a show at Second City without blackouts, just to see, a few years ago, with one scene going right into the next. Nobody noticed.”
