Chicago Improv Associates

During the Christmas season, you can expect Santa (and Mrs. Claus) to show up and interact with children and adults in a kind, playful and professional manner.

For comedy shows, Chicago Improv Associates will perform an extremely interactive comedy show based on your group's wants and needs. Improv Comedy is comedy made up on the spot. The audience shouts out suggestions and the Agents instantaneously turn them into hilarious scenes, games or songs. Since the audience is making the suggestions, all shows are different, topical, and deal with what the audience wants to see.

CIA has performed, directed and taught at the best improv theaters and schools all across the country and the world.
- Second City
- TheatreSports
- ComedySportz
- Humana Festival
- Just For Laughs

Since the suggestions come from the audience members, they have the sense that they are "writing" the entire show, yet control is actually in the hands of the improvisers. Experienced and mature improvisers, like our Agents of Comedy, can adeptly lead the suggestions away from inappropriate content while still creating exciting and uproarious comedy.

Our Comedy Agents experience has made them experts at reading and handling individual audience members and audiences in general. They've done comedy long enough that it seems effortless to the audience. A less experienced comedy actor often is not totally comfortable on stage so the audience can get uncomfortable and edgy.

CIA brings more audience members up on stage than other comedy groups, because CIA knows that it's gold - for the audience AND them!

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“You guys are great! Keep up the good work!“
-Charles Beck, Beck Institute for the Arts

“We really enjoyed your show! I was bombarded with compliments and one of the funniest comments that I heard was ‘they must have spent a week at our offices to find out all that information.’ Thanks so much for an Improv well done and in great taste!“
– Tami Ison, Comcast Cable

In 2001, Marshall Stern and Nancy Howland Walker formed Chicago Improv Associates, a one stop shop for all your improv-based entertainment and training needs! With decades of improvisational comedy experience, they perform, teach, lead corporate trainings, write, produce and direct improv theater.

During the holiday season, Marshall and Nancy are Santa and Mrs Claus, spreading joy, love and laughter at private parties and corporate events.

The Chicago Improv Associates comedy show contains hilarious improvisation centered around your group. They have been professional improvisers for almost three decades each, and know how to deliver the laughs and the fun! If you’ve seen the hit television show “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?” you’ve got a starting reference point, although seeing it done live and actually participating is much more exciting and fun. Our Agents of Comedy take facts and suggestions gleaned from the client and interweave them to produce an extremely interactive and fun comedy show which consists of fast-paced, spontaneous improv games, scenes, and songs.

CIA has been performing improv comedy shows on Celebrity Cruise Line ships since 2009, delighting audiences by getting volunteers on stage with them to hilarious results. (No one is ever forced to come up on stage, and all volunteers are treated like the stars they are!) Our Agents love giving people the thrill of making an audience laugh.

Our Comedy Agents also are professional comedy writers, so they can research your company or group and write custom sketches to add into the show. The process is very simple – they send out a questionnaire which a few secretly appointed people fill out and return. Then they turn that information into hilarious sketches. That’s it. Well, they may call you to ask some follow-up questions (such as name pronunciation, or details to make the comedy even funnier!).

Improv Comedy can work with pretty low tech. We need a stage/area for performing, lighting for the stage, mics if the venue/audience is large enough to warrant it, and a sound system where pre-show and post-show music can play, and if the Doofi are performing songs.