The Compass Players

Founding in Hyde Park (1955)

The Compass Players was founded in July 1955 by David Shepherd and Paul Sills, operating as a storefront theatre in the back room of the Compass Tavern at 1152 E. 55th Street near the University of Chicago campus. Shepherd, who had spent two years developing an idea for a working-class political theatre that could improvise with its audiences, provided the conceptual framework and initial funding of $10,000. Sills, who had directed the Playwrights Theatre Club since 1953, brought the ensemble relationships and the rehearsal methods that the new format required. The core opening company included Roger Bowen, Andrew Duncan, Elaine May, and Barbara Harris; Sills, Mike Nichols, and Shelley Berman joined shortly after.

The Scenario Format

The Compass worked in a format Shepherd called the scenario: a barely scripted storyline providing performers with locations, character motivations, and dramatic conflicts, without prescriptive dialogue. Performers used Viola Spolin's theatre games, which Sills had learned from his mother, to develop improvisational skills, and the company expanded into fully improvised scenes suggested by audience members. Named scenarios included Elaine May's "Georgina's First Date," depicting a young woman's sexual initiation, and "Enterprise," set in a used-car business. The company presented new shows weekly, performing multiple times on Friday and Saturday evenings.

St. Louis and Dissolution (1957–1958)

The original Hyde Park company dissolved in autumn 1957, after roughly eighteen months at the Compass Tavern. The Compass Players also operated for a period at the Crystal Palace in St. Louis, where Theodore J. Flicker directed a company that included Nichols and May and, briefly, Del Close. The St. Louis company developed further principles for improvisational ensemble work before it too closed. By 1958 the Compass Players had ceased operations entirely, its ensemble scattered across separate career paths.

Dispersal and Successors

Mike Nichols and Elaine May left after the Chicago dissolution to form their celebrated duo in New York, performing material developed during their Compass years. Paul Sills, recognising that a more disciplined version of the Compass format might sustain a permanent company, partnered with Bernie Sahlins and Howard Alk to found The Second City, which opened on Chicago's North Side in December 1959. David Shepherd eventually returned to improvisational work in other cities, later co-founding the ImprovOlympic (now iO Theater) with Charna Halpern.

The Compass Players invented professional improvisational theatre as a distinct form. Its central innovation was the scenario: a narrative structure that gave performers enough context to sustain a full scene without scripted lines, requiring them to listen, respond, and build collectively. The scenario format occupied a position between traditional scripted theatre and fully improvised performance, and the company moved progressively toward pure improvisation as its skills developed.

The method Sills brought to the Compass drew on Viola Spolin's theatre games, which emphasised sensory awareness, ensemble attention, and the discovery of reality through play rather than through preparation. These principles gave performers a common vocabulary for the work that distinguished Compass training from conventional acting instruction. The resulting aesthetic prioritised genuine surprise, ensemble discovery, and immediate engagement with the audience over performed cleverness or pre-planned comic moves.

Shepherd's political ambition for the Compass, which he imagined as a theatre for working-class Chicago audiences, did not survive the practical demands of running the company. The ensemble that actually gathered around the project was largely university-educated, and the work it produced reflected the social observations and intellectual register of that community. Elaine May's scenarios in particular engaged critically with gender, class, and American social convention in ways that pointed toward the satirical identity The Second City would later formalize.

The Scenario Programme: The Compass's signature format, in which named scenarios provided the structure for weekly rotating performances. The company presented new programmes regularly across its Hyde Park run, developing dozens of scenarios across categories that ranged from domestic situations to political commentary.

Elaine May's Scenarios: May wrote and performed several of the company's most praised scenarios, including "Georgina's First Date," which addressed sexual initiation with a directness unusual in American performance of the period. Her scenario writing established a model of socially observant, character-driven improvised narrative that influenced The Second City's revue format.

The Crystal Palace Company (St. Louis): The Compass's St. Louis extension at the Crystal Palace, directed by Theodore J. Flicker, presented its own roster of improvisational programmes and served as the context in which Del Close first encountered professional improvisational practice. Close's later influence on the long-form tradition traces in part to his St. Louis Compass experience.

The Compass Players originated professional improvisational theatre in the United States. Every major American improv institution, from The Second City to iO Theater to the Upright Citizens Brigade, traces its lineage directly or indirectly to the Compass Players' 1955 invention of the scenario format and the audience-suggestion methods that accompanied it.

The alumni the Compass produced across its three years of operation shaped American comedy across the second half of the twentieth century. Mike Nichols went on to become one of the most celebrated directors in American theatre and film. Elaine May became a major playwright, director, and performer. Shelley Berman's character-driven stand-up work, developed through Compass ensemble performance, helped establish the introspective, observational style that later defined the post-Compass comedy generation. Severn Darden became an influential character actor and improvisational teacher. Barbara Harris developed into a respected stage and film actress.

Paul Sills founded The Second City with Bernie Sahlins and Howard Alk in 1959, carrying the Compass's ensemble improvisation methods into a durable institutional form. David Shepherd continued to develop improvisational formats for decades after the Compass closed, eventually co-founding the ImprovOlympic in Chicago in 1981. The arc from the Compass Players through The Second City to iO Theater represents the foundational lineage of American long-form improvisation.