The Players Workshop
Encyclopedia
Created in 1971 by Josephine Forsberg
, The Players Workshop was Chicago's only official school of Improvisation
for over a decade. Although it was never officially a part of The Second City
cabaret theater, The Players Workshop was often referred to as Players Workshop Of The Second City, due to the school's close affiliation with the famous sketch comedy stage. From 1971 through the mid 1990s, performers flocked to The Players Workshop to study improv with Josephine Forsberg
, Linnea Forsberg, Martin de Maat
, or one of the school's many other instructors, in the hopes of eventually getting onto The Second City
mainstage.
Players Workshop was also one of Chicago's largest family entertainment production companies, producing original plays and musicals for The Children's Theater of The Second City for over 30 years. Its production of the one act musical Knat Scatt Private Eye
later went on to be expanded into a full Broadway style two act musical which was mounted at The Theater Building and featured an up and coming actor named Steve Carell
. The production arm of Players Workshop also produced shows for The Body Politic
, Candlelight Dinner Theater, Six Flags
, Bristol Renaissance Faire
and Taste of Chicago
. In 1981 Josephine Forsberg
hired David Shepherd
to teach select students at The Players Workshop his new method of improv competition games. He called his new format "The Improvisational Olympiad"". This was later to grow into the Improv Olympic, better known as the I.O.
. The Improvisational Olympiad continued to be performed at The Players Workshop for over a year before PW alum, Charna Halpern
moved it to its own space in 1983.
The Players Workshop closed its doors in the late 1990s, as Josephine Forsberg
retired, and the improv classes at The Second City Training Center and the Improv Olympic grew too large to compete with.
Doug Voegtle
Lee Houghton
Martin de Maat
Linnea Forsberg
Ben Hollis
Geoffrey Baer
Eric Forsberg
Judy Morgan
David Murphy
Charlie Silliman
Debbie Jett
Tony Alcantar
Jim Schipp
Mary Beth Carewicz
Meagan Moore Burns
Marc Blumberg
Harold Ramis
Amy Sedaris
Bob Odenkirk
Robert Smigel
Robert Townsend
George Wendt
Charna Halpern
Betty Thomas
Shelley Long
Brian Doyle-Murray
Bobby Max Oehme
Joe Flaherty
Mark Howell
Will Clinger
Neil Giuntoli
Jeff Michalski
Steve Rudnick
Leo Benvenuti
Doug Dale
Richard L. Tenace
Josephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg , ex-wife of film director Rolf Forsberg was hired by Paul Sills and Viola Spolin to join the original Second City in 1959 as the female understudy and Spolin's teaching assistant...
, The Players Workshop was Chicago's only official school of Improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
for over a decade. Although it was never officially a part of The Second City
The Second City
The Second City is a improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood.The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles...
cabaret theater, The Players Workshop was often referred to as Players Workshop Of The Second City, due to the school's close affiliation with the famous sketch comedy stage. From 1971 through the mid 1990s, performers flocked to The Players Workshop to study improv with Josephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg , ex-wife of film director Rolf Forsberg was hired by Paul Sills and Viola Spolin to join the original Second City in 1959 as the female understudy and Spolin's teaching assistant...
, Linnea Forsberg, Martin de Maat
Martin de Maat
Martin de Maat was a teacher and artistic director at The Second City in Chicago. He also taught at Columbia College and Players Workshop. He studied under Viola Spolin...
, or one of the school's many other instructors, in the hopes of eventually getting onto The Second City
The Second City
The Second City is a improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood.The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles...
mainstage.
Players Workshop was also one of Chicago's largest family entertainment production companies, producing original plays and musicals for The Children's Theater of The Second City for over 30 years. Its production of the one act musical Knat Scatt Private Eye
Knat Scatt Private Eye
A two act, 1930's style film noir musical, featuring a young Steve Carell which played for an extended run at The Theater Building in Chicago in 1985. It was based on a one act musical with the same title which was originally produced earlier that year by Players Workshop for The Children's Theater...
later went on to be expanded into a full Broadway style two act musical which was mounted at The Theater Building and featured an up and coming actor named Steve Carell
Steve Carell
Steven John "Steve" Carell is an American comedian, actor, voice artist, producer, writer, and director. Although Carell is notable for his role on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he found greater fame in the late 2000s for playing Michael Scott on The Office...
. The production arm of Players Workshop also produced shows for The Body Politic
The Body Politic
The Body Politic was a Canadian monthly magazine, which was published from 1971 to 1987. It was one of Canada's first significant gay publications, and played a prominent role in the development of the LGBT community in Canada.-History:...
, Candlelight Dinner Theater, Six Flags
Six Flags
Six Flags Entertainment Corp. is the world's largest amusement park corporation based on quantity of properties and the fifth most popular in terms of attendance. The company maintains 14 properties located throughout North America, including theme parks, thrill parks, water parks and family...
, Bristol Renaissance Faire
Bristol Renaissance Faire
Bristol Renaissance Faire is a Renaissance fair held in the village of Bristol, Wisconsin, near Kenosha, Wisconsin, that recreates the visit of Queen Elizabeth I to the port city of Bristol in the year 1574. The Faire plays in a permanent park with most buildings permanent year-round structures,...
and Taste of Chicago
Taste of Chicago
The Taste of Chicago is the world's largest food festival, held annually for ten days in Grant Park, in Chicago starting the Friday before the 4th of July and ending the Sunday after . The event is the largest festival in Chicago...
. In 1981 Josephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg , ex-wife of film director Rolf Forsberg was hired by Paul Sills and Viola Spolin to join the original Second City in 1959 as the female understudy and Spolin's teaching assistant...
hired David Shepherd
David Shepherd
David Shepherd may refer to:* David H. Shepard , American inventor* David Shepard, Democratic member of the Tennessee House of Representatives* David Shepard , American film preservationist...
to teach select students at The Players Workshop his new method of improv competition games. He called his new format "The Improvisational Olympiad"". This was later to grow into the Improv Olympic, better known as the I.O.
I.O.
iO, or iO Chicago, is a theater located at 3541 N. Clark St., in Chicago, Illinois, one-half block south of Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. The theater both has performances of, and teaches improvisational comedy. It was founded in the 1980s by Del Close and Charna Halpern...
. The Improvisational Olympiad continued to be performed at The Players Workshop for over a year before PW alum, Charna Halpern
Charna Halpern
Charna Halpern is a co-founder of the ImprovOlympic, now known as The iO. She was born and raised on the North Side of Chicago. In 1984, with partner Del Close, she began teaching The Harold to many students in the Chicago theatre community. She and Close co-authored the book Truth in Comedy: The...
moved it to its own space in 1983.
The Players Workshop closed its doors in the late 1990s, as Josephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg , ex-wife of film director Rolf Forsberg was hired by Paul Sills and Viola Spolin to join the original Second City in 1959 as the female understudy and Spolin's teaching assistant...
retired, and the improv classes at The Second City Training Center and the Improv Olympic grew too large to compete with.
Directors and Instructors
Josephine ForsbergJosephine Forsberg
Josephine Forsberg , ex-wife of film director Rolf Forsberg was hired by Paul Sills and Viola Spolin to join the original Second City in 1959 as the female understudy and Spolin's teaching assistant...
Doug Voegtle
Lee Houghton
Martin de Maat
Martin de Maat
Martin de Maat was a teacher and artistic director at The Second City in Chicago. He also taught at Columbia College and Players Workshop. He studied under Viola Spolin...
Linnea Forsberg
Ben Hollis
Geoffrey Baer
Eric Forsberg
Eric Forsberg
Eric Forsberg is the writer and director of the feature film Mega Piranha, as well as the writer of the feature film Snakes on a Train, a mockbuster produced and released by The Asylum. He also wrote the screenplays for 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea and War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, also for...
Judy Morgan
David Murphy
Charlie Silliman
Debbie Jett
Tony Alcantar
Jim Schipp
Mary Beth Carewicz
Meagan Moore Burns
Marc Blumberg
Famous alumni
Bill MurrayBill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
Harold Ramis
Harold Ramis
Harold Allen Ramis is an American actor, director, and writer, specializing in comedy. His best-known film acting roles are as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters and Russell Ziskey in Stripes , both of which he also co-wrote...
Amy Sedaris
Amy Sedaris
Amy Louise Sedaris is an American actress, author, and comedian. She is known for playing the character Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central television series Strangers with Candy. Sedaris regularly collaborates with her older brother, humorist and author David Sedaris...
Bob Odenkirk
Bob Odenkirk
Robert "Bob" Odenkirk is an American actor, comedian, writer, director and producer. He is best known as the co-creator and co-star of the HBO sketch comedy series Mr...
Robert Smigel
Robert Smigel
Robert Smigel is an American actor, humorist, comedian and writer known for his Saturday Night Live "TV Funhouse" cartoon shorts and as the puppeteer and voice behind Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.-Early life:...
Robert Townsend
George Wendt
George Wendt
George Robert Wendt III is an American actor, best known for the roles of Norm Peterson and Tug Clarke on the television shows Cheers and Modern Men.-Early life:...
Charna Halpern
Charna Halpern
Charna Halpern is a co-founder of the ImprovOlympic, now known as The iO. She was born and raised on the North Side of Chicago. In 1984, with partner Del Close, she began teaching The Harold to many students in the Chicago theatre community. She and Close co-authored the book Truth in Comedy: The...
Betty Thomas
Betty Thomas
Betty Thomas is an American actress and director in television and motion pictures.-Life and career:Born Betty Thomas Nienhauser in St. Louis, Missouri, Thomas graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree...
Shelley Long
Shelley Long
Shelley Lee Long is an American actress best known for her role as Diane Chambers on the sitcom Cheers, for which she won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress and two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress...
Brian Doyle-Murray
Brian Doyle-Murray
Brian Doyle-Murray is an American comedian, screenwriter, actor and voice artist. He is the older brother of actor/comedian Bill Murray and has acted together with him in several films, including Caddyshack, Scrooged, Ghostbusters II, The Razor's Edge and Groundhog Day...
Bobby Max Oehme
Joe Flaherty
Joe Flaherty
Joe Flaherty is an American-Canadian actor and comedian. He is best known for his work on the Canadian sketch comedy SCTV, from 1976 to 1984, and as Harold Weir on Freaks and Geeks...
Mark Howell
Will Clinger
Neil Giuntoli
Neil Giuntoli
Neil Giuntoli is an American actor active since 1987, whose most famous role was in Child's Play . Giuntoli is also the author and lead actor of the play Hizzoner, a fictional account of former Chicago mayor Richard Daley...
Jeff Michalski
Steve Rudnick
Leo Benvenuti
Doug Dale
Richard L. Tenace