X-Nico

4 unusual facts about The Second City


Byrne Piven

Byrne Piven (September 24, 1929 – February 18, 2002) was an influential American stage actor, director, and co-founder of the Playwrights Theatre Club, a forerunner of The Second City.

Ed Sahely

Sahely spent seven years performing and writing with The Second City and received a Dora Mavor Moore Award for work on the Toronto Mainstage.

Faith Soloway

She studied theater at Indiana University and performed improv comedy regularly, along with leaving school to tour with Second City.

Ted Vogt

From 1995 until he entered the United States Air Force in 2000, Vogt spent time chiefly in the private sector as an investment banker in the New York metropolitan area, advertising executive at Leo Burnett in Chicago, (beginning during the U.S. presidential election, 1996) executive assistant to then-former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and at night a member of The Second City comedy troupe (1997–2000).


Dan Dion

He attended Santa Clara University, where he was the campus comedy director, producing shows such as The Second City, P. J. O'Rourke, and Greg Proops.

Ellen Schreiber

She studied Shakespearean theater at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and comedy at The Second City of Chicago, which is where she lived for five years.

Jim Zulevic

Zulevic hosted the weekly radio show "Second City Radio" on WCKG-FM, and taught improv classes at Columbia College Chicago and The Second City.

Josh Lawson

He also spent one year studying improvisation techniques in Los Angeles at The Second City, The Groundlings, ACME Comedy Theatre and I.O. West.

Mark Patinkin

Sheldon Patinkin, author, teacher, director, and one of the founding fathers of The Second City, is his second cousin.

Melina Paez

She has trained for improvisation at Chicago's The Second City, performed in several sketch comedy shows, plays and in non-commercial radio (DJ Slothgirl, 89.1fm WIDR, Kalamazoo).

Monika Smith

She has performed at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre Los Angeles and UCBNY, The Second City Toronto Touring Company, and at The Second City L.A., Chicago Improv Festival, iO Chicago, iO West, Del Close Marathon, and more.

Monika Smith is a Canadian actress and comedian from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and The Second City in Los Angeles .

Monteith and Rand

Suzanne Rand and John Monteith are Second City graduates; Suzanne was in the famed company that included John Belushi and Bill Murray in Chicago, and John performed with John Candy, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner in Toronto.

Playwrights Theatre Club

The Playwright's Theatre Club led to the creation of The Compass Players and later The Second City.

The San Francisco Improv Co-Operative

The SFIC produced master classes by some improv teachers including Charna Halpern (IO Theater), Mick Napier (Annoyance Theatre), David Razowsky (Second City Los Angeles), and Ian Roberts and Matt Besser (Upright Citizens Brigade).


see also

Cincture of the Theotokos

The second city was Yekaterinburg where about 150 thousand of people from nearby territories came, including regional governor Alexander Misharin.

Dunedin cable tramway system

It is significant as Dunedin was the second city in the world to adopt the cable car (the first being San Francisco).

Karen Abbott

She has written Sin in the Second City, which tells the true story of the Everleigh Club brothel and the nation-wide battle to shut it down, and American Rose, about stripteaser Gypsy Rose Lee and American culture during the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression.

Penelope Peterson

From May 13–16, 2009, Peterson traveled to Beijing, China with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, as part of a cultural and business exchange between the Chinese capital and the Second City.

Ron Pederson

He was discovered in Hollywood while improvising at The Second City with Martin Short, Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard In Joe Flaherty's The Soap Also Rises in March 2002.