{"id":106031,"date":"2025-08-29T16:57:44","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T21:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=106031"},"modified":"2026-01-01T16:04:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T22:04:36","slug":"at-65-the-second-city-tries-to-practice-what-it-teaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/at-65-the-second-city-tries-to-practice-what-it-teaches\/","title":{"rendered":"At 65, The Second City tries to practice what it teaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes<\/span><\/i>, the funny business that launched Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert and Tim Meadows challenges power onstage. <\/span>And <\/span><\/i>today, the comedy theater is striving to reflect that offstage as well.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By Emma Urdangen
\n<\/b>Medill Reports<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

A scene from The Second City Chicago\u2019s recent mainstage show \u201cThe Devil is in the Detours\u201d features an apparent father and daughter playing in an arcade. The girl seems to be begging her dad for more tokens, but it turns out she\u2019s representing Israel, and she is begging the U.S. for more money for weapons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Controversial commentary and strong reactions to it are par for the course for the 65-year-old theater, said Kelly Leonard, vice president of creative strategy at The Second City Chicago.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had audience members rush the stage in anger during this show,\u201d Leonard said. \u201cIt\u2019s always been about challenging power.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Historically, the training ground for comedy legends such as Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and Keegan-Michael Key embraces social and political controversy onstage. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of an obligation,\u201d said Mick Napier, a Second City director since 1990.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But backstage, sometimes, The Second City struggled to prioritize social equity over turning a profit, said Anne Libera, the former artistic director and current touring company director. Today, the baby boomer organization\u2019s leadership is trying to shift its culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we want to be equitable, we have to be institutionally systemic about it,\u201d Libera said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In December 1959, Paul Sills, Bernie Sahlins and Howard Alk founded The Second City Chicago as a “rebel leftist reaction to what was happening in the world,” according to Napier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since its first show or \u201crevue,\u201d “Everybody’s in the Know,” with 120 audience members paying $1.50 each, the company has expanded to include touring, E.T.C., and mainstage ensembles. Today, the mainstage theater seats 290, with tickets costing up to $75.95.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through this growth, Leonard said, each ensemble maintains Sahlins’ motto at the center of their work: “always play to the top of their intelligence and never assume the audience is stupid.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite changes in ownership, the company’s commitment to comedy that confronted social issues remained constant. In 1974, Sahlins sold the company to television producers Andrew Alexander and Len Stuart. Under their leadership, this approach continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leonard produced a sketch from the 1995 revue, \u201cPi\u00f1ata Full of Bees,\u201d with Adam McKay, which had Noam Chomsky teaching third graders about \u201cthe real America.\u201d The students in the scene left class crying after learning about the Native American genocide. A decade later, in Napier\u2019s 2005 show, \u201cIraqi Break,\u201d Stephen Colbert performed a song, \u201cOur God is better than your God,\u201d about religious tension during wartime.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDealing with current social and political events is sometimes a creative burden,\u201d Napier said. \u201cI\u2019ve had to make casts read the newspaper.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Similar sketches receive more audience pushback since President Donald Trump\u2019s election, Leonard said. \u201cIt\u2019s a troubling shift toward zero-sum thinking, which makes the work more important than ever.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the historically straight, white and male-dominated theater, Alexander \u201cpushed \u2018diversity\u2019 before I\u2019d even heard that word,\u201d Napier said. After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Libera said Alexander realized they couldn\u2019t comment on relevant issues with their current makeup.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They adjusted their casting, hired a director of diversity and inclusion, and began hosting Black History Month shows. In 2014, the company implemented the Bob Curry Fellowship, designed to train comedians of color. The fellowship is named after the first Black comedian to join The Second City\u2019s resident company.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn many ways, Andrew\u2019s heart was in the right place,\u201d Libera said. \u201cBut as a popular art form, comedy is about money.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The casts gradually shifted from \u201cfive guys and one woman\u201d to \u201cmaybe four guys and two women with one person of color,\u201d said Andy Eninger, former writing program director and performer. This made finding an understudy difficult for that one member and discouraged them from taking days off, he said. And, he added, at the time, there was no HR system to raise a red flag.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1996, the first equal gender show \u201cCitizen Gates\u201d opened, featuring Fey and directed by Napier.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a gay person, Eninger said he thought he\u2019d never get on stage. He remembers playing \u201cfreeze tag,\u201d an improv game in which a scene starts from a frozen pose.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was constantly put in, like, blow job positions,\u201d Eninger said. \u201cLike \u2018gay sex is funny.\u2019\u2026You had to just laugh. You couldn\u2019t name it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He admired Martin Garcia, one of the first gay performers he saw onstage. \u201cHe was unabashedly himself,\u201d Eninger said. \u201c(It) helped change the temperature.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2014, Alexander hired his son Tyler Alexander and Stuart\u2019s son Darcy Stuart as producers, turning the theater into a family business.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two years later, in November 2016, Tyler Alexander co-produced \u201cA Red Line Runs Through It,\u201d directed by Matt Hovde. With just one white man in the cast, Scott Morehead, the show \u201cwas meant to be a new, confrontational commentary on race,\u201d Libera said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the primarily white, Old-Town-resident and tourist-filled audience, each paying up to $75.95 for their tickets, didn\u2019t change. The show ran during Trump\u2019s first candidacy, and the crowd started offering racially targeted suggestions during the audience interaction section.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cast felt unsafe, the house staff didn\u2019t know how to intervene, the actors fought and the show\u2019s management failed to fully grasp the matter they were selling on stage, Libera said. In one instance, the cast proposed a show fundraising for Black Lives Matter, and the company agreed on the condition that half the proceeds go to the Chicago Police Department, former cast member Dewayne Perkins <\/span>tweeted<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The show resulted in Morehead’s suspension and his suing of the company for <\/span>racial harassment<\/span><\/a>. Alexander took a <\/span>leave of absence<\/span><\/a>, and actors Lisa Beasley and Aasia Lashay Bullock <\/span>quit,<\/span><\/a> with Bullock <\/span>tweeting<\/span><\/a> the company forced her resignation. Despite the controversy, the revue received a <\/span>Jeff Award nomination<\/span><\/a> for theater excellence in Chicago.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, the entertainment industry oftentimes provides resources to actors, such as on-set counselors or intimacy coordinators when tackling traumatic material. During the 2016 Second City show, the actors and producers navigated these scenarios on their own. Libera said the revue reflected the company\u2019s underlying problem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have clarity on how we were training people or what diverse voices meant,\u201d she said. \u201cThe setup was designed not just to fail, but to cause maximum harm.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2020, in the aftermath of the revue, a group of 19 Black alumni and current employees, including Bullock, Sam Richardson and Amber Ruffin, signed a <\/span>letter<\/span><\/a> calling for \u201ca thorough investigation and removal of \u2026 staff guilty of microaggressions, racial transgressions, cultural appropriation, mental and verbal abuse against the Black artists.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Andrew Alexander, then 75, stepped down, <\/span>writing<\/span><\/a> he \u201cfailed to create an anti-racist environment \u2026 and that is one of the great failures of my life.\u201d<\/span> Later that year, ZMC, a private equity firm, bought the company for an estimated $50 million, according to <\/span>The Financial Times<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The current leadership is focusing on changing the culture in a meaningful way, Libera said. In 2020, they established a DEI council, and in 2021, staff unionized as the Association of International Comedy Educators, becoming full-time employees with a human resources department. In 2023, they launched \u201cThe Black Excellence Revue,\u201d featuring an all-Black cast intended and intended for a Black audience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, transgender performers, including E.R. Fightmaster and Ruby Avi\u00f1a, perform nationwide, and creative director Tyler Dean Kemp mindfully casts the revues. He focuses on expanding opportunities beyond just a select few, Eninger said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut there’s still this push and pull of the art and the business,\u201d Eninger said. The venture-capital-owned theater charges $26.25-$75.95 per ticket, and thousands of writing and improvisation students pay $365 per eight classes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In May, The Second City staff announced they would strike under their Actors Equity Union if ZMC did not meet their wage increase requests. ZMC agreed to raise their pay, beginning with an 18% increase the first year and compounding to 40.5% over the next five years, according to <\/span>WBEZ<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And the actors confidently address this push and pull onstage. In a recent Sesame Street-themed sketch, \u201cFinancial Street,\u201d \u201cthe cast rips to shreds the new owners,\u201d Leonard said. Adisa Williams, as the host, visits various puppets on the street \u2014 each represents a satiric point about capitalism. At the end, the puppets turn on Williams, implying she’s the real capitalist puppet because The Second City is owned by ZMC.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the head of ZMC laughs the loudest from the audience, Leonard said. \u201cIn that position, you’re hiring artists to take shots at people in power.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Second City community members said they feel the impact of the organization\u2019s recent efforts. Mugsie Pike, a nonbinary 2024 improv and sketch student, said they\u2019ve been \u201cpleasantly surprised\u201d to feel comfortable and supported by teachers and peers throughout their time at the theater. \u201cI\u2019m glad I came when I did.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pike recently attended a show with a classmate, and when the cast made a \u201ctrans joke\u201d that they thought was very funny, their friend turned to them for confirmation before laughing. \u201cThat moment represented everything I love about (The Second City),\u201d they said. They\u2019re making jokes about these things on the mainstage, but it’s not punching down, and my classmate supported me first and foremost.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes<\/span><\/i>, \u201cWhen you do things the hard way, it\u2019s hard,\u201d Libera said. <\/span>And, <\/span><\/i>she added, \u201cI think we are getting there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Emma Urdangen is a graduate student at Medill in the magazine specialization with a concentration in podcast journalism. You can find her on LinkedIn at <\/span><\/i>www.linkedin.com\/in\/emmaurdangen<\/span><\/i><\/a> and see the rest of her work at <\/span><\/i>emmaurdangen.com<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note, Sept. 1, 2025, 9:30 a.m.: This story has been updated to clarify that after The Second City cast proposed a show fundraising for Black Lives Matter, the company agreed on the condition half the proceeds go to the Chicago Police Department, according to a former cast member\u2019s tweets.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, the funny business that launched Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert and Tim Meadows challenges power onstage. And today, the comedy theater is striving to reflect that offstage as well.\u00a0\u00a0 By Emma Urdangen Medill Reports A scene from The Second City Chicago\u2019s recent mainstage show \u201cThe Devil is in the Detours\u201d features an apparent father and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1032,"featured_media":106032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,5251,5542,5521],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-chicago","category-msj25","category-summer-2025"],"yoast_head":"\nAt 65, The Second City tries to practice what it teaches - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/at-65-the-second-city-tries-to-practice-what-it-teaches\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At 65, The Second City tries to practice what it teaches - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yes, the funny business that launched Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert and Tim Meadows challenges power onstage. 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