ComedySportz Chicago

The ComedySportz Franchise Model

The ComedySportz format was developed in Milwaukee in 1984 by Dick Chudnow. The Chicago franchise opened in 1987 as part of a national expansion of the network that eventually placed independently owned ComedySportz companies in dozens of cities across the United States and the United Kingdom. The Chicago company joined the franchise at an early stage of the network's development, becoming one of the first ComedySportz operations outside Milwaukee.

Chicago Operations

Dave Gaudet joined the ComedySportz Chicago roster in 1988 and served as Artistic Director from 1989 to 1992, building the company's programming and performer base during its formative years. He later returned as Artistic Director in 2006 and 2007, and subsequently became a co-owner, President, and Chairman of the Board of the Chicago company. ComedySportz Chicago's programming has occupied several Chicago locations over its history, including a period at 3209 N. Halsted Street before the building became home to The Playground Theater.

Format and Positioning

The ComedySportz format presents two teams of comedic improvisers in a competition structure, with audience members voting on scenes and a referee enforcing content rules. The format explicitly prohibits adult or offensive material, distinguishing it from the transgressive aesthetic of The Annoyance and the mature-audience programming of iO and The Second City. This positioning has made ComedySportz Chicago a consistent venue for corporate events, school groups, and family audiences throughout its history.

ComedySportz Chicago operates within the game-focused, short-form competitive tradition that Keith Johnstone's Theatresports format pioneered in the late 1970s and that the ComedySportz brand formalised into a franchise format in the mid-1980s. The competitive structure, in which audience votes determine the winner of each round, creates an accessible performance frame for audiences unfamiliar with improv: the competitive stakes provide clear narrative tension, and the referee's interventions generate comedy through their enforcement of rules.

The family-friendly content mandate is both a constraint and a distinctive market position. Where iO and The Second City serve audiences expecting sophisticated, adult-register comedy, ComedySportz Chicago explicitly addresses audiences for whom family accessibility is the primary criterion. The franchise curriculum teaches improvisers to generate high-energy, accessible comedy within the competitive format rather than to develop the ensemble depth and thematic coherence that the Harold tradition values.

ComedySportz (Main Stage Match) has been the theater's flagship production since 1987, running weekly with two competing teams, a referee, and audience judging in short-form improv games. The show runs Fridays and Saturdays and has operated continuously for over three decades, making it the longest-running game-based improv show in Chicago.

Trapped in a Musical is a fully improvised 60-minute musical built with audience input, featuring a random townsperson who finds themselves trapped inside a musical narrative. It runs Saturdays as a companion show to the main stage match.

House Party is a late-night game show format in which a host selects audience members to compete in party games alongside professional company members, with the winning audience participant receiving a prize.

Minor League is a developmental show featuring performers training for the main stage, presented as a two-for-one event: the Minor League performance is followed by a free set from the house team A Bunch of Friggin' Cats.

Rec League features four teams of non-professional participants performing improv games in a competitive format, giving recreational students a public performance context within the ComedySportz competitive structure.

League Night (Thursdays) is a recurring program combining Rec League and Minor League performances, providing an affordable entry point and developmental pipeline visible to general audiences.

The 2012 ComedySportz World Championship was hosted by CSz Chicago at the Athenaeum Theatre (2936 N. Southport Ave.), marking Chicago's first hosting of the tournament in 11 years. The event ran over four days and featured 19 teams and approximately 230 players from the United States and Europe, with an opening-night parade through the Lakeview neighborhood and an All-Star exhibition match preceding the championship finals.

ComedySportz Chicago established a durable model for family-friendly, game-based short-form improv in a city otherwise defined by long-form and character-driven traditions at iO and Second City. Operating continuously since 1987 under a competitive format derived from Keith Johnstone's Theatresports lineage, the company demonstrated that short-form improv could sustain a permanent Chicago venue across multiple decades and locations, from Halsted Street through Belmont Avenue and eventually to its current home at 1501 N. Kingsbury.

Brendan Hunt, co-creator and co-star of the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso (2020-2023), performed at ComedySportz Chicago during his high school years at Kenwood Academy before going on to Illinois State University and then Second City training. The Chicago theater was the site where Hunt first encountered Jason Sudeikis, who had traveled from the Kansas City ComedySportz location. That introduction preceded their later collaboration at Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, which became the creative partnership that eventually produced Ted Lasso. Dave Gaudet, a founding ensemble member and co-owner, trained under Steve Carell's college troupe Burpees Seedy's Theatrical Company at Denison University before joining ComedySportz Chicago in 1988 and purchasing the franchise license in 1990 alongside two partners.

The company's two World Championship titles at the annual ComedySportz national tournament, along with ten runner-up finishes, reflect competitive achievement within the network. Guest appearances documented at the theater include Chris Farley and Bill Maher, with multiple Chicago sports figures also appearing on stage over the years. Founding ensemble member Mark Bolan, who performed with the company for 27 years before his retirement in August 2014, represented the institutional continuity that kept the company anchored through multiple venue transitions.

In 2023, four longtime ComedySportz Chicago veterans, Jesse Gomez, Nicole Devin, Cherise Johnson, and Jason Geis, acquired the rights to operate ComedySportz and simultaneously founded Malarkey Comedy Company, now operating at 1501 N. Kingsbury in the iO Theater building. This transfer of ownership from the Gaudet-era partnership to a new generation of company members represents a direct organizational lineage, with the new leadership having developed entirely within the CSz Chicago training and performance ecosystem.