Craig Uhlir

Craig Uhlir is a Chicago-based longform improviser, teacher, and co-founder of Deep Schwa, described as the longest-running Harold team in Chicago's history, with more than 1,000 performances and 50 members over its run. He trained at all three of Chicago's foundational improv institutions, Second City, iO Chicago, and The Annoyance Theatre, in addition to performing short-form with ComedySportz Chicago. His career includes touring with the Second City Touring Company, performing for American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait through USO programs, and sustaining a residency at Second City at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

Career

Craig Uhlir was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He completed training at all three of Chicago's major improv institutions: Second City, iO Chicago (then operating as ImprovOlympic), and The Annoyance Theatre. He also performed short-form improv with ComedySportz Chicago for approximately four years, developing experience in both competitive game-based formats and the Harold long-form tradition before beginning to perform professionally in 1995.

In 1996, Uhlir co-founded Deep Schwa at iO Chicago, a Harold team that went on to become the longest-running in Chicago. Deep Schwa accumulated more than 1,000 shows and more than 50 members over its history, eventually relocating its home performances from iO Chicago to The Annoyance Theatre. The team's sustained run across multiple decades represents one of the more remarkable examples of an iO-founded long-form team maintaining continuity beyond the institution's standard team lifecycle.

Uhlir also performed with the ensembles Valhalla and Hardcore Parkour, the latter at iO Chicago. He has performed at The Second City Chicago and continues to work there as a teacher.

He toured with the Second City Touring Company for more than two years, performing in locations including Alaska, Hawaii, and Austria. He performed in USO entertainment programs for American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait, bringing short-form and long-form comedy to military audiences overseas.

Uhlir subsequently sustained a multi-year residency performing on the main stage of Second City at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, a satellite Second City production that operated on a nightly format for hotel and tourism audiences. He has described the Las Vegas run as covering 'a few years.'

He has toured internationally with Middle Age Comeback, a two-person project with Jim Carlson, performing in Amsterdam and at the Oslo Impro Festival in Norway, among other international venues. His international performance record extends the Chicago long-form tradition into festival and touring contexts outside North America.

As a teacher, Uhlir has worked at both iO Chicago and Second City Chicago, passing the training he received at all three foundational institutions to students entering the Chicago improv ecosystem.

Historical Context

Craig Uhlir's career spans the full breadth of Chicago's improv institutional ecosystem during a period when the three primary training institutions, Second City, iO Chicago, and The Annoyance Theatre, represented distinct pedagogical traditions operating in the same city. The choice to train at all three rather than committing exclusively to one was a path available to only a subset of the Chicago scene, and Uhlir's record of doing so places him within a small category of practitioners who developed fluency across multiple institutional approaches simultaneously.

Deep Schwa's founding in 1996, one year into iO Chicago's second decade of operation, coincided with a period when Harold teams were proliferating at the institution and many were cycling through within a few seasons. The team's survival across more than 25 years and 1,000-plus performances, and its subsequent relocation from iO to The Annoyance rather than dissolving, is unusual in the history of Chicago Harold teams and represents a form of institutional persistence that the improv ecosystem rarely sustains at the team level.

His USO touring and Second City Las Vegas work represent two specific contexts in which the Chicago improv tradition was exported beyond its founding institutions. The USO work placed Chicago-trained improv within military entertainment programs, a deployment of the form in an audience context radically different from the urban comedy club and black-box theater settings where it developed. The Las Vegas residency operated within a hotel-entertainment context where the Second City brand was translated for tourism markets. Both contexts tested the portability of the form beyond its institutional and demographic home base.

Legacy

Craig Uhlir's primary legacy contribution is the co-founding and sustaining of Deep Schwa as Chicago's longest-running Harold team. The team's more than 1,000 performances and 50-plus members over its history make it a concrete example of how the Harold format can sustain institutional continuity at the ensemble level beyond the team's originating institution, given sufficient commitment from founding members and successors.

His teaching at iO Chicago and Second City Chicago has extended the training he received across all three foundational institutions to students who may encounter only one or two of those traditions. The combination of Second City's revue and ensemble heritage, iO's Harold tradition, and the Annoyance's experimental approach, available to students through a teacher who worked professionally within all three, represents a broader institutional knowledge base than most single-institution instructors can transmit.

His international performance work, including the Oslo Impro Festival and Amsterdam appearances as well as the USO tours in military contexts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait, extended the reach of Chicago longform training into audiences and settings far removed from the urban American comedy venues where the form originated. His Las Vegas Second City residency participated in the commercial translation of the Chicago tradition for entertainment markets operating on different terms than the original artistic context.