The list of alums reads like a who’s who of influential comedians from the 20th and 21st centuries. The Second City’s brand of improvisational stage comedy made it a feeder for Hollywood and, most prominently “Saturday Night Live,” which populated its casts heavily with veterans of the stage shows. The Second City’s live shows are still taking place in Toronto, where infection rates are lower, and the company says it is closely monitoring the “evolving situations” in Chicago and Los Angeles, where it also has venues. Despite the pandemic, some of the company’s theaters are open. The announcement comes as COVID-19 has upended the live events business that helped define and popularize The Second City. Investment bank Houlihan Lokey will advise on the sale. It marks only the second time in the brand’s 60-year history that it has been on the block. From Steve Carell to Keegan-Michael Key, Stephen Colbert to Tina Fey, Chris Farley to Mike Myers, Second City’s imprint is all over film, television, and beyond.The Second City, the comedy institution that launched the careers of Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray and Tina Fey, is being put up for sale. Today, The Second City is home to a world-class entertainment company, continuing to produce premier talent in all three of its locations–Chicago, Toronto, and Hollywood–and entertaining more than one million audience members a year. Almost immediately, alumni of The Second City, including Alan Arkin, Joan Rivers, Fred Willard, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, launched the theater into the international spotlight.

Rooted in the groundbreaking improvisational games of Viola Spolin, The Second City opened its doors on a snowy Chicago night in December of 1959, and a comedy revolution began.The small cabaret theater has grown to become the most influential and prolific comedy empire in the world, developing an entirely unique way of creating art and fostering generation after generation of superstars.Ĭo-founded by Spolin’s son, Paul Sills, along with Howard Alk and Bernie Sahlins, The Second City was experimental and unconventional in its approach to both theater and comedy. Spend a naughty 90 minutes with our caliente cast of comedians as they (consensually) annihilate everything that turns us on-and off-about love, dating, relationships, and everything else in-between the sheets! It’s love at first laugh with The Second City! Bring your partner, lover, significant other, spouse, friend with benefits, friend with EXTRA benefits, platonic BFF, or your spectacularly single self to The Second City Swipes Right: An Incomplete Guide to The Ultimate Date Night, the brand-new experience you’ve been aching for.

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