Splitsider’s Guide to Chicago’s Comedy Scene

Kill All Comedy: On any given night, chances are that there’s a Kill All Comedy-affiliated sketch show going on somewhere around town. This collective of some of the city’s most exciting up-and-coming sketch performers rolls 20+ deep, many of whom perform at their monthly cast showcases at the Upstairs Gallery on the first Wednesday of each month, and at the biweekly standup/sketch showcase Kill All Comedy West at Quencher’s in Logan Square. [MB]

First Wednesday of every month, 8pm • Free • The Upstairs Gallery, Andersonville

Every other Monday, 8pm • Free • Quencher’s, Logan Square

Making Out with Wes Perry and Friends: Wes Perry, a talented singer, comedian, and writer, curates this monthly show with some of Chicago’s funniest, edgiest, and rawest talent. You don’t really know what to expect, but know that you’ll probably see something unlike any other variety show – whether it’s comedy, dance, poetry, stories, improv, burlesque, or whatever else can be done on a stage. [OO]

Third Wednesday of every month, 8pm • Free • The Upstairs Gallery, Andersonville

Finish Your Dinner with Oh Theodora & Drew’s Tumbler: After finishing a two year run of Show Theodora in December, Oh Theodora is moving with the Public House Theatre to the new permanent location in Wrigleyville. Each month these smart sketch groups write new dumb, absurd material. While no longer a variety show format, Oh Theodora and Drew’s Tumbler are a perfect match for each other and they won’t disappoint. [OO]

First Thursday of every month • $8 • Public House Theatre, Wrigleyville

Shame That Tune: The Chicago comedy scene has more than just comedians – there are also musicians. In the monthly music “game show�, three contestants come on stage, spin a wheel to determine the genre of an unwritten-song, tell embarrassing anecdotes, after which co-host Brian Costello interviews them about it, and co-host Ambraham Levitan unveils his extemporaneous song about the story. Got all that? Just see this show. [OO]

Monthly • $5 • The Hideout, Noble Square

Creative Control: The last Friday of every month, Saki hosts this incredibly fun stand up showcase. Up and coming Chicago standups do quick sets hosted by the Late Live Show’s Joe McAdam and a local band closes out the night. Also, there’s free beer from local brewers. To reiterate: a free show, with free comedy, free music, free beer, and a great time. [OO]

Final Friday of every month, 8pm • Free • Saki, Logan Square

The Late Live Show: Since its launch in 2010, The Late Live Show has transitioned from underdog to institution. After its tenure at Second City came to an abrupt end in the middle of its third season, the show has been featured at several comedy festivals and will soon begin its sixth (and final) season at the legendary iO theater. While they regularly pull exciting guests, (Community’s Danny Pudi, the WWE’s Victoria, A.V. Club head writer Nathan Rabin are a few highlights), what sets Late Live apart is the strength of its writers. Each week’s monologue is arguably stronger than most seen on late night TV, and some of the best, dumbest sketches in the city are peppered between more straightforward guest segments. [MB]

Saturdays at Midnight until 5/11/13 • $5 • iO, Lakeview

Collectors’ Edition: Local comedians Conor Sullivan, Sean Rose and Rick Joyce put together this monthly music essay show about their love for music and pop culture. Recent topics include Prince’s weird years, 90s alt rock radio, and pop culture scape goats. Get to know why these guys love music so much and why you should too. [OO]

Every other month, 8pm • Free • The Upstairs Gallery, Andersonville

Venues

iO: Del Close and Charna Halpern’s small Wrigleyville theatre is basically Mecca for improv nerds. Many of the greats and most Chicago improvisers either train or perform weekly on one of the two stages. If you noticed up above, most of the best improv can be seen here throughout the week. It’s well worth it to make it to a few shows if you can. If that’s not enough, iO’s well known alumni often stop by to perform when they’re in town. [OO]

Second City: Second City is synonymous with Chicago and comedy – and rightfully so. Several stages and a training center that boasts an impressive list of alumni (basically a majority of SNL since 1975) make this historic Chicago theatre a stop for tourists, Chicagoans and comedians on their way to stardom. The Piper’s Alley complex hosts a number of stages for Second City:

The Upstairs Gallery: The Gallery is one of hottest venues in Chicago comedy, hosting pay-what-you-can improv and sketch shows nearly every night of the week. While experience levels vary on some lineups – especially early on in the week – the Gallery’s cozy, welcoming vibe and penchant for experimental, genre-bending comedy make it an asset for the city’s writers and performers and those who love them. [MB]

Lincoln Hall/Schubas: Once every few months, the folks behind Lincoln Hall and Schubas Tavern host nationally touring comics like Todd Barry, Hannibal Buress, and Jon Benjamin at one of their usually music-focused venues. These two venues are great spaces for comedy, especially Schubas – the smaller, tighter of the two rooms. [MB]

The Annoyance Theatre & Bar: The dark red walls full of freaky clown paintings may seem unwelcoming to those not already familiar with the scene, but the Annoyance was founded by members of the Chicago comedy scene for their friends. The shows are generally not family friend (Coed Prison Sluts), experimental in nature (Holy Fuck), or simply bizarre fun. While it’s no longer simply an alternative to Second City and iO, but more of a mainstay of the Chicago comedy scene, the Annoyance is a great place to see what Chicago improvers and sketch comedians will do with very few boundaries. [OO]

Jokes and Notes: Veteran comedian club owner Mary Lindsey opened this Southside comedy club in 2006, eight years after her previous club All Jokes Aside closed. Jokes and Notes is not just a continuation of the incredible scene that Lindsey helped incubate in the 90s, but a whole new space for black comedians and anyone else who can tell a good joke. As the only major comedy club on the South side, you can expect some national talent to come through, but watch out for the locals on Wednesdays and Thursdays, too. [OO]

Zanies: An old-school comedy club for better (the walls are lined with headshots they’ve accumulated since their open in 1978) and worse (the two drink minimum plus an average $25 ticket price makes it hard to keep the evening’s price tag below $50 a head), Zanies is the only club in Chicago that survived the rocky years since the 1980s comedy boom. Though often attracting the sort of road dogs that might not appeal to Splitsider readers, Zanies does occasionally book modern underground favorites like James Adomian, Doug Benson, and Jimmy Pardo. [MB]

Training and Classes

Feminine Comique: Founded by former Chicagoan and current Put Your Hands Together host Cameron Esposito, The Feminine Comique offers aspiring female standup comedians the necessary tools to start their standup career. The class curriculum offers students the chance to learn comedy basics like persona development, confidence, and joke writing in a wholly supportive environment. [MB]

iO: iO’s impressive alumni may convince you to train here, but the curriculum can be tough. After it all, you can enjoy a 6 week run in the Del Close Theatre with a possibility to try out for a regular show. If improv doesn’t interest you, iO offers some excellent writing classes. [OO]

Comedy Studies: This academic collaboration between Second City and Columbia College, which was the subject of a comprehensive profile on this very site, was recently upgraded from a semester-long program to a full on bachelor’s degree program. Comedy nerds fresh out of high school now have the opportunity to pursue a “degree in theater with a concentration on comedy writing and performing� in a program unlike any other in the world. [MB]

Second City Training Center: The Second City Training Center is probably the most well regarded improv comedy school in the world if you rank those sort of things. And they offer more than just improv classes. Musicians, writers, directors, and actors can all learn from the years of experience in Piper’s Alley. Classes range from two week intensives to full on bachelor’s degrees (see: Comedy Studies). [OO]

Open Mic Nights

Rathskellar: Lotties, a neighborhood bar in Wicker Park, hosts the Rathskellar open mic each Tuesday night. It’s well known among standups as a reliably solid spot. The show’s low-lit, moderately upscale basement setting lends it a certain classiness that most mics can’t touch, even as performers work out their latest batch of poop jokes onstage. [MB]

Tuesdays, 9pm • Free • Lottie’s Pub, Wicker Park

Wylin Out Wednesdays: Jokes & Notes offers one of the only weekly open mic nights on the South Side. Hosted by Marvin “M Dubs� Phipps, Wylin Out Wednesdays features a huge number of comics of every experience level from all over Chicago. [MB]

Wednesdays, 8pm • $5 • Jokes and Notes, Bronzeville

Cole’s: Shortly after its inception in 2009, the Wednesday night open mic at Cole’s in Logan Square became one of few must-do open mics in the city for up-and-comers and established standup comics alike. The show’s positive atmosphere and hip locale makes it one of the few mics in the city that regularly has a substantial number of non-comics in the audience. [MB]

Wednesdays, 9pm • Free • Cole’s, Logan Square

Two Black Dudes And An Open Microphone: Will Miles and Clark Jones are the titular two black dudes that host this monthly open mic at the always excellent Town Hall Pub on the final Tuesday of every month for over four years. The pair of producers pride themselves in running a show that feels more like a showcase than an open mic. [MB]

Last Tuesday of every month, 9pm • Free • Town Hall Pub, Lakeview

BYOT: Standups have it easy with all of their open mic nights, but iO’s Bring Your Own Team lets improv teams and sketch groups have their very own. Put your team name in the bucket and get called for 10 minutes, or 5 minutes if you’re doing sketch. Either way, up and coming improvisers and sketch comedians finally have a great way to show off what they’ve been working on. [OO]

Saturdays at Midnight • $5 • iO, Lakeview

Three Dead Moose: One of the most beloved open mics amongst the current crop of fledgling stand up comics, 3DM has a dedicated following of regulars, one of whom is tasked with live tweeting/lovingly Twitter roasting the performers each week (follow along each Sunday with the hashtag #3DM).  [MB]

Sundays, 8pm • Free • Will’s Northwoods Inn, Lakeview

Festivals

SketchFest: Chicago’s own SketchFest started in January 2002 and has grown extraordinarily since then. Each January, hundreds of performers flock to Stage 773 to perform 30 minute sets. Never before in Chicago has it been so easy to see so much sketch comedy in one place over a few weeks. Chicago SketchFest has lots of local flavor with a few national acts and it’s a welcome variety of sketch in a city so focused on improv and stand up. [OO]

Just For Laughs: Though Chicago’s second city status feels well-deserved at times, Just For Laughs helps Chicago-based comedy fans imagine what it’d be like if the city was a true-blue industry town. Boatloads of standup both national and local, as well as podcast tapings, improv sets peppered with famous folks, and special hour-long showcase spots given to a select few local performers, make for a very fun, very overstuffed week of comedy in Chicago. [MB]

Video

Local filmmakers are lucky to have such a deep well of talented writers and performers to collaborate with on various web shorts and series. Ted Tremper, an improviser and filmmaker, captures the intangible magic of expertly performed improv in his pair of web series, Breakups and Shrink, the latter of which was selected to run as a part of the New York Television Festival. Mark Colomb’s work with local improv and sketch performers like Conner O’Malley, The Shock T’s, and other Upstairs Gallery regulars on shorts like Fleetwood Mac Men showcases the strength of the scene as a whole (as well as Colomb’s skills as a filmmaker).

The aforementioned Kill All Comedy regularly releases videos as well, the best of which often feature John Reynolds (who may be the heir to Steve Brule’s mushmouthed throne). Shorts like Dadz and World’s Best Burger are undeniable in their polished silliness. Joe Avella wrote and directed Master of Inventions, a remarkable feature length film produced on a Kickstarter-sourced budget of less than $2,000. Videos from the sketch and improv gals behind The Katydids have been featured all over the internet, and their ongoing web series Teachers recently joined forces with The Onion, which relocated to Chicago last year. Since that relocation, many Chicago-based writers and comics, including Cullen Crawford, Daniel Kibblesmith, and David Sidorov, have began contributing to the Onion News Network, whose daily videos are often transcendent in their absurdity and darkness. [MB]

Podcasts

While Chicago’s not short on talented, ambitious performers, the podcast scene (unfortunately) often mirrors the relative inexperience of many of the people involved. A lot of shows start out strong with a regular release schedule and audio quality that’s at least tolerable, before dropping off after six months (sometimes less). Among the shows that have not fallen victim to this recurring issue, there are a few gems. The musically-minded Revolutions Per Minute features local comics Joe McAdam and Nick Rouley discussing artists and playing songs based around a new theme each episode. The pair’s shared love for music and dick jokes make for an enjoyable listen. The similarly niche-y Naked Sports Live is a sports-themed talk show recorded live twice a week by Chicago-based standups Megan Gailey and Joe Kilgallon, who share  their own personal sports-related stories and perspectives on the latest in sports news.

Late last year, the Improv Nerd podcast joined the Feral Audio podcast network, giving it an incremental jump in cred that few other local shows can boast. Improv Nerd finds former Chicago Public Radio host Jimmy Carrane interviewing, and sometimes performing with, various luminaries from the Chicago (and national) improv scene, like Matt Besser, Charna Halpern, and T.J. Jagodowski. Other shows worth checking out include Friesen Point, Wrestling With Depression, The Standup Mixtape, and the recently shuttered Poor Choices Show. [MB]

Things to bookmark

For whatever reason, Chicago comedy is lacking in the independent online resources category. The home pages for iO and Second City offer well-maintained bios and dates for their many performers, as well as up-to-date show information. In the self-promotional department, I maintain a blog called The Steamroller, which features interviews with and creative content from many talented Chicagoans. Earlier this year, two Steamroller features, one from C.J. Toledano, and one from Joe Kwaczala, went viral, to the delight of all involved. The comprehensive list of showcases and open mics on Comedy of Chicago is a well-maintained resource for those in search of Chicago standup. They also occasionally feature interesting submissions from local performers covering the ins and outs of the scene. [MB]

Photo by Ian Freimuth

Owen O’Riordan is a freelance copywriter comedy fan from the suburbs of Chicago. You can see some of his other work here and follow him on Twitter.

Matt Byrne is a freelance writer living in Chicago, you can follow him on Twitter here and should read The Steamroller, his blog all about the Chicago comedy scene.

Check out our other local guides:

-Splitsider’s Guide to NYC’s Comedy Scene

-Splitsider’s Guide to LA’s Comedy Scene

-Splitsider’s Guide to Boston’s Comedy Scene

-Splitsider’s Guide to Austin’s Comedy Scene