The Second City

The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise, best known as the first ever on-going improvisational theater troupe in the United States (Chicago) and Canada (Toronto). It also has programs that run out of Los Angeles. It began in 1950s, as small groups of undergraduates, including young actors such as Mike Nichols and Elaine May, who met at Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap, a bar on the University of Chicago campus, which later became the Compass Players, a 1950s cabaret revue show.