2009-2010 Artists

iO Theater - Improvised Shakespeare Company
January 14, 2010

Based on one audience suggestion (a title for a play that has yet to be written) The Improvised Shakespeare Company creates a fully improvised Elizabethan two-act play using the style, language, and themes of the immortal Bard, William Shakespeare.  Each of the players has brushed up on his "thee's" and "thou's" to bring you an evening of off-the-cuff comedy. Any show could be filled with power struggles, star-crossed lovers, sprites, kings, queens, princesses, sword-play, rhyming couplets, asides, insults, persons in disguise, and all that we've come to expect from the pen of the Great Bard. The night could reveal a tragedy, comedy, or history. Nothing is planned-out.  Each play is completely improvised, so each play is entirely new!  For twenty-five years, iO Theater, the birthplace of long-form improvisation, has been providing Chicago with groundbreaking, star-making, world class improvisational comedy and turning out such alumni as Mike Myers, Tina Fey, Chris Farley, Vince Vaughn, Amy Poehler, Neil Flynn, Adam McKay, Rachel Dratch and many more.

"Mind-blowing. It was one of the funniest, most amazing things I’ve ever seen." The Charleston City Paper Online.

“Their experience doing Shakespeare flowers in the language: they relish iambic dialog, execute perfectly timed asides, occasionally utter rhyming couplets, and drop prodic phrases, and well-placed anachronisms. Even the ending echoed the real plays: story lines resolved tidily - and uproariously." The Chicago Reader

You can find out more about the iO Theatre Improvised Shakespeare Company at http://improvisedshakespeare.com

Watch a clip of a previously recorded Improvised Shakespeare show here