The Second City’s e.t.c. Stage has shifted its programming to feature only improvisational performances for the first time in its 44-year history. The new show, titled “Improv Supernova,” began last week and will run Thursday through Sunday.
Jen Ellison, vice president of creative at Second City, explained that the e.t.c. Stage has always been more experimental compared to the Mainstage, which opened in 1959. Since opening in 1982, e.t.c. has focused on being “more experimental, edgy and intimate” than other venues within the organization.
“We’ve always had the question of what is e.t.c. beyond just being a different version of what we’re doing on Mainstage?” Ellison said.
Ellison noted that this move is an effort to innovate while staying connected to Second City’s origins. She described how performers originally improvised scenes repeatedly before eventually developing them into sketches: “When we started in 1959, [performers] would get together and improvise, and then they would improvise and improvise and improvise, and then they would just sort of say, ‘You know what, we did that scene last night. Why don’t we do this scene again tonight?’ Because they were just tired of improvising all the time,” she said. “It sort of grew into what we know now, as being like how we develop our sketch.”
Ellison highlighted how live improvisation allows performers to respond quickly to current events: “In a world that’s also moving so quickly, it’s almost impossible for a piece of theater to respond in the moment in a way that improv can.”
She added: “I am not one of those people that believes that satire is going to change the world, but it is going to contribute to the conversation and help us understand what other people are thinking,” she said. “The world is changing minute to minute — you have 18 news cycles in one day, and that’s just exhausting. Part of this is to be in a room responding to the world in a way that is unfiltered, funny and exciting.”
Reflecting on opening night for “Improv Supernova,” Ellison said: “Everybody was excited to be in that room with one another,” she said. “It was truly joyful.”
According to Ellison, each performance will vary due to the nature of improvisation; traditional games with audience participation make up the first act while longer-form scenes comprise the second act.
“We are a Chicago institution, and I think as soon as we do anything differently, then people are just like, ‘What’s going on?’” Ellison said. “I do think that this is a return to our roots in a way that will help us launch into the future. So I think … we’re not giving up anything by doing this. We’re rediscovering ourselves.”
