Back in 1998, most people expected the Chicago Improv Festival to crash and burn in its first year.
“Conventional wisdom at the time,” said founder Jonathan Pitts, “was that Chicago never had an improv festival and that it never, ever would.”
The budget that first year was less than $30,000. There was only one venue and no corporate sponsors. The founders–Pitts and Frances Callier–lacked any kind of international profile or experience. They weren’t even leaders of the notoriously factious Chicago improv community.
But most damning was the inauspicious history that showbiz festivals have both in Chicago and beyond.
Sure, festivals sound like a good idea. And if, like the Aspen Comedy Festival, you can get the likes of HBO to come up with $2 million to fund a comedy festival it subsequently can use as a kind of corporate farm-team, then maybe you have a chance.
In practice, people tend to prefer to work in their own companies and buildings. Festivals are chronic losers of money and drainers of time. Check out the detritus from, say, the Chicago International Theatre Festival or the Chicago Fringe Festival.
But six years later, the Chicago Improv Festival not only is still very much around, it also has become the leading such festival in the country, if not the world. The ambience retains the air of barely controlled chaos, but the improv world is unusually tolerant of late starts and last-minute program changes. The budget now is up to $125,000 and the festival uses 10 venues, mainly on and around the Belmont Avenue corridor on the North Side.
Performers arrive from all over the world. And improv-comedy fans from across the country plan their Chicago vacations around this thing. Festival organizers expect 8,000 people to attend this year’s festival, which opens Friday night and runs through May 9.
That’s not bad for a festival that still operates almost entirely on ticket revenues and without the kind of subsidies enjoyed by, say, the Chicago Humanities Festival or any number of other city-blessed cultural festivals.
Of course, touchy-feely community fetes are one thing; marquee names are another.
Yet over the last five years, the Chicago Improv Festival has attracted plenty of famous players. The list of festival alums includes the white-hot Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Jeff Garlin, Mo Collins, Greg Kotis, Mark Hollmann, Horatio Sans, Seth Meyers, George Wendt and Fred Willard.
This year’s slate includes the Los Angeles-based troupe The Groundlings, Dan “Homer Simpson” Castellaneta and the entire MAD-TV cast.
“I never, ever expected,” said Kelly Leonard, the producer of the Second City, “that Jonathan would ever get to this level.”
“Jonathan pulled it off,” said Charna Halpern, who runs the ImprovOlympic in Chicago. “More power to him.”
So how did he do it?
First, he started small, kept control of the money, and worked like crazy.
“Isn’t that the lesson of the Chicago theater?” Pitts asked rhetorically. “You work your way up. And then when you get big, everyone suddenly wants to be a part of you.”
Second, there always was a big idea in play.
“We started out with a five-year plan,” Pitts said. “We believed in the festival and in ourselves. By the fifth year, people started calling us, instead of the other way around.”
Third, he has taken care of all the people in town who need and expect to be taken care of.
Callier, who currently is an actor/producer with Black Entertainment Television in L.A., worked at Second City when she and Pitts started the festival. Therefore, Second City was ready and willing to help. “Frances was one of our own people,” Leonard said. “That was why we first went along for the ride.”
Even now, Pitts is careful not to overshadow the local powerhouses like Second City and ImprovOlympic, who consequently tend to view the entire festival as a massive promotional and community-building campaign that costs them little or nothing to produce. Thus, they’re happy to make those big phone calls, if asked. Yet Pitts has avoided being too connected to any one company–which can mean curtains with one of the competitors. The lack of a big media name might mean less money, but it creates the right mood. If HBO were above the title, other networks would be running away. But that’s not the case in a grassroots festival that gives off the genuine vibe of the homegrown and the utterly sincere.
In short, Pitts is a very shrewd player.
“Jonathan always is very respectful,” Halpern said. “He always gives me free rein in what I choose to do at the festival.”
Similar good relationships are in place with the likes of Comedy Central, MAD-TV and HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which troll for talent at the festival.
And then there’s the matter of Chicago. Without the city, the festival wouldn’t fly. In no small part, the difficulty of attracting name actors to town is why Austin’s Big Stinking Improv Festival and Kansas City’s improv festival bit the dust. Chicago, though, has certain built-in advantages.
International groups from, say, Tel Aviv or Amsterdam typically regard Chicago as the motherlode of their art, so they love to come and worship at the shrine. And most of the performers (who typically get only expenses from the festival, if that) keep coming back because they like to hang out in the old haunts.
“I have a lot of incentives to come back to Chicago,” said Castellaneta, who attended Northern Illinois University and used to work with Second City. “I started out there. I have family there.”
As a rule, the bulk of the performances at the Improv Festival feel warmly nostalgic toward the city where they feel they did their best work. After all, it’s not so long since Jeff Garlin, now a hot property on the West Coast, was doing his shtick at the old Annoyance Theatre for a tiny clutch of his old fans.
“They’ve made it an event rather than a show,” said Leonard. “People love the idea of coming back to Chicago while the Cubs are playing. And they all want to see their old friends.”
And once a couple of big names are snagged, other celebrities tend to loosen up and be more willing to appear. That’s the nature of the comedy business.
So what of the future?
Castellaneta points out that the festival still doesn’t have a high profile among industry types in L.A. “It’s not there yet,” he said, observing that any improv festival actually is competing against all comedy festivals–which are including more and more improv.
Pitts knows that. He says he’d like to push that budget up to $250,000 and build a full-time staff. He hopes to attract some really big names–the likes of Dan Ackroyd, say, or Bill Murray. He’s hoping Mike Nichols and Elaine May might reunite on one of his stages. There have been some missteps–Pitts tried to extend the festival’s stand-up component last year, but he says that was like mixing oil and water.
After all, Chicago comedy mainly means improv and sketches.
And thus Pitts would like the City of Chicago to wake up to a major (and now a non-profit) tourist attraction that still floats somewhere below most official radar-screens.
But most of all, he’d just like to keep building. And keep going.
“Chicago improv now has a 40- or 50-year history,” Pitts said. “Almost all of the people involved know about us now. We want to be the place they come every year to honor their history.”
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How the Improv Fest became comedy central
1997
Jonathan Pitts and Frances Callier conceive of the Chicago Improv Festival, and planning begins. Incorporates under the name Chicago Comedy Syndicate.
1998
Highlights: Upright Citizens Brigade performs–just before they started their Comedy Central show.
Budget $30,000
Number of shows 11
Number of performers 162
1999
Highlights: Second City, Improv Olympic and the Annoyance Theatre all appear in the same show for the first time ever.
Budget $45,000
Number of shows 15
Number of performers 302
2000
Highlights: Last national performance from Avery Schreiber (he died in 2002); Seth Myers performs and gets discovered by “Saturday Night Live” casting agent.
Budget $60,000
Number of shows 18
Number of performers 452
2001
Highlights: Tribute to Martin de Maat; Jeff Garlin (right) does a Q&A.
Budget $75,000
Number of shows 25
Number of performers 405
2002
Highlights: Festival dedicated to Byrne Piven and Avery Schreiber (right). Lo Roim Mi’Meter from Tel Aviv, Israel performs.
Budget $90,000
Number of shows 40
Number of performers 437
2003
Highlights: Fred Willard plays with Bassprov, the 1979 Second City cast reunites, and there’s a reunion of Cardiff-Giant, with Tony Award winners Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann.
Budget $125,000
Number of shows 100
Number of performers 850
2004
Highlights: Becomes non-profit entity. Cast and writers of MAD-TV to be featured on mainstage.
Budget $125,000
Number of shows 120
Number of performers 700
Chicago Tribune
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The best of the fest
With more than 100 shows at this year’s Improv Festival, we narrow the field to four recommendations:
8 p.m. Friday, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave., $25
A rare chance to see the aging, angst-ridden denizens of Chicago’s Annoyance Theatre on a triple-bill with the much-maligned ComedySportz and Boom Chicago, Europe’s leading sketch-comedy theater.
8 p.m. Thursday, Athenaeum Theatre, $25
The entire MAD-TV cast from Los Angeles–replete with the terrific Second City alum Keegan-Michael Key–makes a rare Chicago appearance.
10 p.m. May 7, Athenaeum Theatre, $25
Paired with Neutrino from New York, Totally Looped is a group featuring Dan Castellaneta, whose talents extend far beyond the voice of Homer Simpson. Totally’s gimmick: improvised, live dubbing of selected movie clips.
10 p.m. May 8, Loop Theatre, 8 E. Randolph St., $15
A downtown evening of international sketch comedy featuring such new faces as Troop! (Los Angeles), 3 People @ The Cinema (Auckland, New Zealand) and the locally based Whoopsa Daisy.
For more information, including the entire festival schedule, see www.cif.com or call 773-935-9810.
— Chris Jones
