Day: June 2, 2008

The Chicago Improv Festival would start on a somber note as the Chicago improv community learned that Paul Sills, a founding member and original director of Second City as well as its predecessor Compass Players (where he worked with Nichols and May), had died earlier today. Sills was 80. A tribute is up on The Second City page, where they write: "The Second City extends its condolences to Carol Sills and the Sills’ family. Paul will never be forgotten and the inspiration of his work will certainly live on forever." He also co-founded the New Actors Workshop in 1987 with Mike Nichols and George Morrison. The AP obituary notes that Sills created the "Story Theatre" format in the late 1960s that emphasized characters as their own narrators, as storytellers. His own site, Paul Sills’ Wisconsin Theater Game Center, continued offering one-week improv intensives every summer. And his mother, Viola Spolin, literally wrote the book on...

The Bastion tells me, and therefore you, as well, that there’s plenty of talented comedians coming home to roost at the 11th annual Chicago Improv Festival, which begins tonight and runs through June 8. Chicago’s grand improvisational comedy tradition attracts a lineup that includes Paul Scheer and Jack McBrayer kicking things off tonight at the Lakeshore Theater, and future shows with BASSPROV, Scott Adsit, TJ Miller, Frank Caeti, Keegan-Michael Key, Ike Barinholtz, John Lutz, Peter Grosz and many many troupes. Click here for the full...