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move up out of tourco (another “second try”), I got on the mainstage, where I performed eight shows a week for almost four years.
    The Second City started up in Chicago in 1959 and, in the early days, produced such esteemed alumni as Fred Willard, Joan Rivers, Alan Arkin, and Peter Boyle. Second City eventually became a feeder to SNL : John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Chris Farley all came out of Second City Chicago. Out of the Toronto branch of SC came Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and Martin Short. The shows at Second City are mainly sketch comedy, like SNL sketches, with some improv thrown in. After the show every night but Friday, there’s an improv set in which the cast gets suggestions from the audience and just makes stuff up for about a half hour. If an improv scene happens to go really well, the actors in it might make a mental note and remember it for later, to incorporate it into the next written show.
    I was there in the early to mid nineties, which felt like a special time to be in Chicago. So many people there ended up being on your TV or movie screens today. While I was in the touring company, on the mainstage were Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, and Amy Sedaris, all in the same cast. Even backthen, Amy Sedaris was this pretty little girl who would screw her face up into the ugliest expressions. I learned a lot from just watching her perform, because she was so fearless and bold in her choices. She wasn’t content to be the girly-girl who would play the “Honey!” parts—the trap it was easy for women improvisers to fall into. As in “Honeeyyyyy! I told you to take out the trash!” “Honeeyyyyy! I thought we were going out tonight!!” “Honeeyyyyy! Were you flirting with the waitress?!” (I had learned early on at Improvolympic that it was easy to “cast” yourself into these roles in an improvised scene and let the guys have all the fun. All of the really good women improvisers I knew avoided the “Honey!” parts because it meant they would be relegated to the sidelines of a scene, occasionally stepping in to pour imaginary coffee.) Amy Sedaris would play these little squirrel-like characters and goofy oddballs. Stephen Colbert was the twinkly-eyed, good-looking smarty-pants who actually performed a song about the conflict in the Balkans and managed to make it hilarious. (“We’re talkin’! We’re talkin’! We’re talkin’ ’bout the Balkans!”) And Steve Carell could make anything funny. I don’t think I ever saw him die onstage. In one scene, a couple had a ton of kids, and the cast kept running through the stage, each one playing a different unruly child. Steve Carell simply walked through, holding up a piece of foam mat and said, “I found foam!” and could bring the house down with just that line. Adam McKay, later the head writer of SNL and Will Ferrell’s writing partner, was with me the whole time from Improvolympic to the mainstage and was always thinking of new ways to do sketch, to screw with the audience and to mess with their heads, or touse comedy to challenge corporate America. I was there just to get some yucks, but he was always thinking with a higher goal in mind. Also on the mainstage with me for two shows: Tina Fey. Amy Poehler was my understudy for the touring company. Horatio Sanz, Nia Vardalos, and many of the eventual writers for Conan O’Brien were at Second City when I was there, as well as a bunch more people you may never have heard of but you should have because there was so much talent going on there in that time. I mention a lot of the people who became famous because you know who they are, but I learned something about comedy from every person I worked with at Second City. Everyone brought their own self to the work, so I was always delighted by my cast mates and laughing along with the audience, wondering, “How’d they think of that?!” Improvising every night after the show, I would sometimes forget I was supposed to go out and participate too