Welcome to The Second City Archives, in which we post an exclusive clip each week of some of comedy’s biggest superstars performing early in their careers on the legendary Chicago stage. Second City has generously given us a glimpse into their extensive archive of live performances, and over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some rare and retro comedy never before seen on the web.
For our final Second City Archives post of 2014, we’re going out with a bang: a full 15 minutes of expert improvised goodness from 1997’s revue Paradigm Lost featuring Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Scott Adsit, Kevin Dorff, Jenna Jolovitz, and Jim Zulevic staging a fake Chicago NPR show called Urban Wind. Fey plays the host of the banana-themed Urban Wind episode with Jolovitz as a sociology professor, Dratch as a pretentious creative writing professor, Dorff and Zulevic as folk musicians, and Adsit as a deceased German composer. Check out another clip from Paradigm Lost here.