The Second City
Comedy Club · Chicago, Illinois
The theatre in Old Town where modern American improvisational comedy was worked out, opened in 1959 above a Chinese laundry and now the closest thing the form has to a national institution. Its alumni are most of a century of American television comedy — Belushi, Aykroyd, Murray, Radner, Candy, Levy, O'Hara, Myers, Farley, Colbert, Carell, Fey, Poehler — and the mainstage revue is still built the same way, by writing it on the audience night after night.
1616 North Wells Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60614, United States
Show nights year-round, usually several productions running on the same site. Book ahead; weekends sell out. Free improv set after the mainstage show most nights.