The North Aspect has lengthy reigned because the cradle of Chicago comedy. Stand-ups flock to Zanies or The Giggle Manufacturing facility, and improvisers and sketch comics flit between The Annoyance, The Second Metropolis and iO. However whereas these locations are comedy classics for a purpose, the town is replete with choices for Chicagoans to let unfastened and snigger — and extra open on a regular basis.
So get your maps out, order your two-drink minimal and chart a course with us throughout a number of the space’s latest comedy venues.
Comedy Plex Comedy Membership
The brand new yr is often a time when folks decide to a objective for the months forward. However on Dec. 31, 2023, Marz Timms as a substitute celebrated the achievement of a dream when he opened Comedy Plex in Oak Park.
Timms, who toured for years nationally and internationally as a stand-up comedian, had lengthy studied the golf equipment he was booked in, cataloging which options made a venue soar and what made the night sag. So when his enterprise companion Chris Bell proposed a brand new comedy membership within the close to west suburb, he jumped on the likelihood.
They selected a former name middle in downtown Oak Park as their theater’s house. The basement area, vacant for a decade, had an “intimate, speakeasy vibe” that Timms says is ideal for a comedy membership. With downtown Oak Park being “a vacation spot for thus many within the space searching for a pleasant night time out,” Timms says, the placement made sense.
However the location was about greater than advertising. “We wished to be part of the neighborhood we have been positioned in,” Timms says. Their common open mics, in addition to their dedication to reserving each native and touring comics, communicate to this promise.
1128 Lake St. Decrease Stage, Oak Park; 708-665-7539 and comedyplex.com
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Comic Kiki Yeung performs on the Comedy Plex Comedy Membership, July 10, 2025, in Oak Park. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
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Comic Kiki Yeung performs on the Comedy Plex Comedy Membership, July 10, 2025, in Oak Park. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
The Playground Theater
The Playground is each the oldest theater on this record and the one most just lately opened. It’s been round in some kind since 1997, when teams of improvisers performed bars like Cue Membership, Cafe Ashie and Jako’s. In 1999, they moved to their first everlasting house on Lincoln Avenue earlier than relocating in 2003 to 3209 N. Halsted Avenue. They’d keep there for almost 20 years till the pandemic pressured them to vacate the premises in 2021.
Now, nonetheless, The Playground has returned, taking up the upstairs area at My Buddy’s on Clark Avenue.
“This new period will welcome the subsequent era of Chicago improvisers and impartial artists, alongside longtime Playgrounders, mentors, and alumni,” says managing director Kaydee Dolan.
The Playground has lengthy labored to uplift the improv neighborhood, all the time adhering to their motto “Laughter, For All, Endlessly” by making the theater out there to anybody who pitches or produces. This spirit continues to thrive within the theater’s newest iteration.
“When we now have the liberty to decide on, to create, to be a part of one thing larger than ourselves,” Dolan says, “we will notice our true collective energy. Whether or not artist or patron, we’re all displaying up on this new area to be a part of one thing.”
The simplest option to present up is by becoming a member of their weekly mixer, each Monday at 8 p.m. Half workshop, half improv jam, it’s an ideal place for anybody trying to play, snigger and be part of an ever-growing inventive neighborhood.
4416 N. Clark St. Second Ground, 312-574-0911 and theplaygroundtheater.com
The Revival
When John Stoops opened The Revival in 2015, he wished to return Chicago improv to its roots. “Our first theater was constructed on the exact same nook that the Compass Gamers occupied,” he says — the Compass Gamers being the Hyde Park comedy troupe that finally morphed into what we now know as The Second Metropolis.
In the summertime of 2024, The Revival moved to a brand new location within the South Loop, however Stoops’ dedication to providing, as he says, “the very best improvisers — interval,” has not wavered.
Stoops, a veteran of iO, The Second Metropolis and Amsterdam’s Growth Chicago, is The Revival’s govt director. Not like different theaters, which can pepper in a stand-up or sketch present into their choices, each present produced by The Revival is only improvised. July sees improv legends Susan Messing and Rachael Mason workforce up for The Boys, The One Offs options performers like David Pasquesi, TJ Jagodowski and Sue Gillan, whereas Sophia Brazda and Edgar Nevarez’s Camp Whatsitsname whisks company to an improvised summer season camp musical jamboree.
Holding true to its motto — “Unapologetically Unscripted” — The Revival is dedicated to uplifting an American artwork kind, proper within the coronary heart of the town that invented it.
906 S. Wabash Ave.; the-revival.com
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The One Offs ensemble members Kevin Fleming, TJ Jagodowski, Sue Salvi, and Beau Golwitzer carry out on stage at The Revival in Chicago’s South Loop on July 12, 2025. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
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The One Offs ensemble members Kevin Fleming, TJ Jagodowski, Sue Salvi, and Beau Golwitzer carry out on stage at The Revival in Chicago’s South Loop on July 12, 2025. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
BABS Comedy Membership
Emily Ramirez has been a performer her total grownup life. An actress, improviser, director and dancer (notably as a part of the nationwide tour of “The Phantom of the Opera”), Ramirez has now added membership proprietor to her many achievements by opening BABS Comedy Membership in Forest Park.
Ramirez first contemplated opening her personal membership in 2019 after changing into disillusioned by what she referred to as the “rising company power of the bigger comedy establishments in Chicago,” regardless of their “soulful alt-comedy origins.” Nonetheless, it wasn’t till 2021 that she took the primary concrete steps. She created BABS Comedy, liquidating a 401k earned whereas on tour with “Phantom,” and commenced producing comedy reveals beneath the BABS model. In 2023, she bought a century-old constructing in Forest Park, renovating it from prime to backside together with her husband’s assist. The membership opened on Oct. 25, 2024, and has constantly placed on reveals since.
“Individuals have informed me that it appears like they’re at a home social gathering,” she says of the vibes her reveals convey — and it’s clear why. Ramirez, because the booker, proprietor, bartender and occasional janitor, has her arms and coronary heart in each nook of the constructing. Performers and audiences know they’re in loving arms.
7316 Madison St., Forest Park; 773-916-5565 and babscomedyclub.com
The Dwelling Comedy Theater
The Dwelling Comedy Theater has direct connections to a decades-old legend of the Chicago comedy scene. When iO introduced its closure in 2020, Cesar Jaime, a stalwart of the iO universe, felt like he misplaced his comedy house. On the urging of an in depth good friend, he assembled a workforce of fellow iO lecturers and performers with the intent of buying and reopening the theater. The workforce got here near securing a deal however the choice was finally made to promote to an outdoor funding group.
“It felt like my inventive house was actually gone,” Jaime says.
Nonetheless, Jaime acknowledged that the workforce’s imaginative and prescient was legitimate. Along with fellow improvisers Liz Allen, Peter Gwinn, Susan Messing, Norm Holly and the late Noah Gregoropoulos, Jaime took that imaginative and prescient and based The Dwelling. In July 2023, they signed a lease on an empty, century-old constructing on Halsted Avenue and commenced the method of creating their plans actuality.
The Dwelling attracts from the iO custom of long-form improv, aiming to, in response to Jaime, “get again to the fundamentals … the best way it was taught to us.” This implies specializing in assist and ensemble work, centering across the basic kind referred to as The Harold.
Lessons at The Dwelling are open to college students of all ranges, with performances and reveals coming within the close to future.
2843 N. Halsted St.; 312-488-9528 and homecomedytheater.com
Ryan P.C. Trimble is a contract author.
