Anthony Leblanc

The Second City's 2020 crisis, which produced Andrew Alexander's resignation and LeBlanc's appointment as Interim Executive Producer, was among the most publicly visible reckoning with institutional racism in American improv's history. The crisis emerged from a letter signed by hundreds of alumni and current performers documenting specific incidents of racism, including dismissal of complaints and inadequate responses to documented incidents. LeBlanc's appointment represented an institutional acknowledgment that leadership by a Black director with deep Second City roots was a necessary signal of intent rather than a cosmetic adjustment.

LeBlanc's observation that he was one of only two Black performers on the iO schedule during his training period documented a pattern that multiple Black improvisers from the same period described: the institutional infrastructure of Chicago's major improv schools in the early 2000s concentrated Black performers in marginal scheduling positions. His subsequent rise to Second City's executive leadership over seventeen years traced a career inside the same institutional structure he had identified as exclusionary, positioning him as a practitioner with firsthand knowledge of both the exclusion and the institution's capacity to change.

The Helen Hayes-nominated Nothing to Lose (But Our Chains) at Woolly Mammoth and the Kennedy Center production of Generation Gap represented Second City reaching into Washington, D.C.'s institutional theater circuit with productions under Black directorial leadership, a departure from the institution's typical touring profile.

LeBlanc has articulated a philosophy of institutional responsibility in comedy education, framing The Second City's role not only as a training organization but as a model for the broader field. His public statements during the 2020 transition emphasized that Second City's position as the flagship of comedy theatrical institutions created an obligation to demonstrate what equitable institutional practice looked like for other schools and theaters to observe and replicate.

His statements on access in the pandemic period identified how digital performance formats opened improv training to participants who could not access in-person programs, framing the disruption as a forced discovery of how comedy education could reach broader communities. He has spoken publicly about neurodiversity in comedy, self-identifying as autistic and advocating for accessibility in comedy programming and institutional culture.

LeBlanc's appointment as Interim Executive Producer of The Second City in June 2020 made him the most senior Black executive in the institution's history to hold that role. His seventeen-year career inside the institution, from iO training to Mainstage performer to Training Center director to executive producer, documented a career arc that had not previously been traced by a Black performer within Second City's leadership structure.

His directing credits, particularly Nothing to Lose (But Our Chains) at Woolly Mammoth (Helen Hayes-nominated) and Generation Gap at the Kennedy Center, represent the most prominent Washington, D.C.-facing work in Second City's modern directing history and were produced under his directorial and curatorial leadership at a time when the institution was actively reconsidering its relationship to Black performance and audiences.

His public advocacy on racial equity in improv institutions, including his documented account of being one of two Black performers on iO's schedule during his training period, contributed to the public record of how Chicago's major training institutions structured access during the early 2000s.

LeBlanc was born and raised in Beaumont, Texas. He earned a BS in Computer Science and Physics from Loyola University New Orleans. During his time at Loyola, while working as a Resident Assistant, he organized a short comedic sketch show inspired by the television program Whose Line Is It Anyway? for fellow RAs in a dormitory common room. After the performance, the acting students on his floor invited him to join their sketch comedy group, Boxaganga, described at the time as the only sketch comedy ensemble in New Orleans. The group's position as the city's sole dedicated sketch company gave it an unusually high volume of performance opportunities. After graduating, LeBlanc pursued improv training at iO Theater (ImprovOlympic) in Chicago.

LeBlanc was born and raised in Beaumont, Texas, and is based in Chicago. He identifies publicly as autistic and as a Blerd (a self-description combining Black and nerd), and has advocated for neurodiversity and accessibility in comedy training and institutional programming.