Jeff Griggs

Jeff Griggs is a Chicago-based director, author, and educator who studied at ImprovOlympic under Del Close, served as Artistic Director at iO Chicago, and authored Guru: My Days with Del Close (Ivan R. Dee, 2005), the primary memoir documenting Close's final two years of life and the performers he shaped. He directed productions for Second City, the Annoyance Theatre, and Norwegian Cruise Line, and teaches comedy history and episodic narrative at DePaul University's Harold Ramis Film School and Columbia College Chicago's Comedy Studies Program. He also co-wrote and directed the independent feature film Chalk Hill.

Career

Jeff Griggs enrolled at ImprovOlympic (now iO Chicago) to study under Del Close, who had co-developed the Harold with Charna Halpern and was widely regarded as the theoretical father of long-form improv. Griggs distinguished himself sufficiently that the aging, emphysema-stricken Close, who needed assistance with daily transportation, asked Griggs to drive him around Chicago on weekly errands in exchange for private acting classes. What began as a logistical arrangement developed into a close friendship and sustained mentorship that continued until Close's death on March 4, 1999. The two performed public improvisational exercises together during this period.

Griggs went on to serve as Artistic Director at ImprovOlympic, overseeing the theater's programming during the period of iO's institutional consolidation after Close's death. He directed numerous productions at iO, including Red, White and Blaine. He directed The Soap Box Derby King at the Annoyance Theatre, and directed productions for the Second City Training Center and Second City Theatricals, building a directorial practice that spanned the three major institutions of Chicago improvisational comedy.

He served as Director for the Second City National Touring Company, taking Second City revue-format productions to touring engagements across the country. He also directed productions for Second City on Norwegian Cruise Line, a significant component of Second City's international commercial programming. He holds the role of Director-at-Large for The Second City.

Griggs authored Guru: My Days with Del Close, published by Ivan R. Dee in 2005, a memoir constructed from his close personal observations of Close's final two years. The book covers Close's working relationships with performers including John Belushi, Bill Murray, Chris Farley, and Mike Myers, documenting how Close's teaching method operated at the individual level over decades of iO instruction. Booklist described the book as honest and riveting. Kirkus Reviews called it a wild and fascinating ride.

He co-wrote and directed Chalk Hill, an independent feature film, with Jean-Christophe Jeauffre, a Western thriller about the 1896 disappearance of attorney Albert Fountain and his son in New Mexico. He has taught extensively in academic settings: as Adjunct Faculty at DePaul University's Harold Ramis Film School, where he teaches Episodic Narrative, What Makes Us Laugh, and Evolution of Comedy; and as an instructor in Columbia College Chicago's Comedy Studies Program, where he teaches History and Analysis of Modern Comedy. He also serves on the faculty of iO's training center.

Historical Context

Jeff Griggs's relationship with Del Close during Close's final two years produced the most detailed personal account of Close's working method and daily intellectual life that exists in the improv literature. Close, who had been largely responsible through his decades at iO for shaping the theoretical framework of the Harold and long-form improv, did not produce a comprehensive memoir of his own, and the accounts of his teaching that have entered the historical record come primarily from students and collaborators. Griggs's Guru occupies a distinctive position in this literature because it documents Close at the end of his career, when the accumulated weight of his institutional influence was most visible and when his physical decline created an intimacy that his active years had not.

Griggs's subsequent teaching at DePaul's Harold Ramis Film School represents the formal institutional connection between the improvisational tradition Close built at iO and the academic comedy film and television curriculum that the school was founded to deliver. The Harold Ramis Film School, which Ramis himself had endorsed before his death in 2014 and which opened in 2018, explicitly grounded its curriculum in the tradition of performers and filmmakers who had passed through Second City and iO. Griggs's presence on its faculty as someone who had directly studied under Close and served as iO's Artistic Director placed him within that lineage in a formally recognized institutional context.

Teaching Philosophy

Griggs's teaching practice operates at the intersection of improv performance training and academic comedy analysis. His courses in comedy history, episodic narrative, and the evolution of comedy reflect a conviction that improvisers and comedy writers benefit from understanding the historical and structural contexts from which their forms emerged. His experience directing across the full range of Chicago's major improv institutions, from iO to Second City to the Annoyance, informs a directorial approach that treats each institution's aesthetic as a distinct tradition with its own conventions rather than as interchangeable components of a unified comedy practice.

Legacy

Guru: My Days with Del Close stands as the most personal documentary account of Del Close's character, working method, and intellectual life in his final years. While other books address Close's long career and theoretical contributions, Griggs's memoir provides the sustained first-person observation of how Close functioned day to day as a teacher, collaborator, and thinker during the period when his illness required him to rely on others for basic mobility. The book preserves an account of Close that his many students and admirers could not have assembled without Griggs's proximity.

Griggs's faculty positions at DePaul's Harold Ramis Film School and Columbia College Chicago's Comedy Studies Program have extended the iO pedagogical tradition into university comedy education, transmitting the history and theory of improvisational comedy to students who encounter it as an academic subject alongside its practitioner training. His role at the Harold Ramis Film School in particular places him at the intersection of the Chicago improv tradition and the academic legitimization of comedy as a subject of serious study.

Early Life and Training

Jeffrey Ray Griggs grew up in Quincy, Illinois. Before pursuing improv, he worked as a radio host and weekend television weather forecaster. He gave up his media career to study at ImprovOlympic in Chicago under Del Close, a choice that defined the subsequent arc of his professional life.