Chicago is at peak improv at the moment.
This weekend marks the third annual iO Fest, which is one of the biggest improv events in the world. Next weekend, improv legends TJ & Dave perform at the Goodman Theatre. Then, in August, the Dramatic Improv Festival arrives, heralding a unique brand of the artform.
So if it feels like improv is everywhere this summer, it is.
“When I first started, there weren’t any real improv festivals,” said comedian TJ Jagodowski. He’s set to perform July 30 – Aug. 1 at the Goodman Theatre with his improv partner, David Pasquesi. As the duo TJ & Dave, the pair have been performing improv together for more than 24 years and are a familiar act to many Chicagoans.
“I think there were only two improv festivals in the whole country,” said Jagodowski. When he thought about the landscape of improv in the 1980s, he described Chicago as the center of the artform’s universe. “Basically, you trained in Chicago, and then went to New York. Or you trained in Chicago, and then an iO opened in Los Angeles. It was more centralized back then.”
Today, Jagodowski refers to Chicago as “the mecca of improv.” He said Chicago was the first city where you could see live improv seven nights a week. Over the years that reputation has held true. Bigger venues, like Second City, iO, and the Annoyance have enough shows to fill a weekly calendar.
But there are also smaller venues and companies, such as Logan Square Improv, The Bit Theatre in Aurora, or the weekly bilingual improv show, “¿Cómo se dice….?,” hosted at Collaboraction’s new theater, called the House of Belonging, in Humboldt Park.
As for what it was about Chicago that has allowed improv to flourish, Pasquesi said the answer is in the long standing institutions like iO and the Second City, even if the latter leans more on sketch comedy than improv.
“When I was coming up, there was no other place that one with my skills could go, or acquire those skills,” he said. “It had to be physically in Chicago because you had to be in the same room back then, and this was the only place doing it.”
Jagodowski and Pasquesi perform the traditional brand of improv inspired by legendary Chicago comic Del Close. If you visit iO Theatre, they are still performing the “Harold,” which Close developed with iO cofounder Charna Halpern.
Pasquesi studied with Close around the time the Harold was taking off. “I just happened to be in the room when all that was going on,” he said. “There would not be long form improvisation without him. He taught me more than I’ll ever remember. And in addition to being a genius, he was a certifiable jagoff.”
A term commonly associated with this style of improv is “slow comedy.” But Jagodowski says the description doesn’t have anything to do with pacing of the performance. “It just means you’re not going to sell out the relationship for perhaps a convenient joke,” he explained. “It keeps relationships at the center of everything you’re trying to do, so where some improvisation is designed to be more entertaining, this is designed to maybe make you feel something or care.”
Relationships are of tremendous value to the duo, which has been performing together for over two decades.
“I’m not a big fan of repetition, rewatching things, or rereading or redoing,” said Pasquesi. “The really beautiful part of this is that 24 years into it, we’ve never done, and are never going to do, the same show twice. And that’s sexy to me.”
The weekend before TJ & Dave hit the stage at the Goodman, iO Fest is spinning the artform forward with its own slate of innovative acts, such as The Orbit, which embraces the “punk legacy” of performing in nontraditional spaces, said Gretchen Eng, performer, producer, and the director of education at iO Theatre.
“It is unlike anything else you’ll see,” Eng said. “The performers sit around a round table in the middle of the room. And the audience sits in a concentric circle outside of them. In some of the most inventive physical comedy, as well as just artistic improv that we do, takes place because we don’t have this like fourth wall convention as applied to this show.”
iO Fest’s 2026 lineup also includes Jackbox. Many people will recognize the name as the popular app-based multiplayer party game. At iO Fest, Jackbox will blend interactive party games with improv.
“The people who have devised the games and written for them have been plugged into the Chicago improv community for years and years,” said Eng.
A big shift in iO Fest this year, Eng said, is that programmers leaned into local talent as opposed to having famous outsiders be positioned as the big draw.
“I’m really excited for the bet we have made that our audience really wants to see not just these heavy hitters from out of town, but also the incredible groups that are already part of the Chicago Comedy network,” said Eng.
While Chicago talent is certainly the centerpiece, there are still big name headliners like The Sloppy Boys, a comedy rock band. They host a podcast of the same name, and formerly had a sketch comedy show on IFC called “The Birthday Boys,” produced by Bob Odenkirk.
Eng said Chicago remains a destination for aspiring improv performers around the world.
“People really do make it a lifelong dream to come and study improv in this city,” she said.