Jessica Myerson

Nationalities

Chicago New York City Los Angeles San Francisco United States

Jessica Myerson (born Irene Ryan, performing as Irene Riordan, later known as Latifah Taormina) co-founded The Committee with her then-husband Alan Myerson in San Francisco on April 10, 1963, establishing the West Coast's most significant improvisational comedy theater of the 1960s. Both were alumni of The Second City in Chicago. The Committee, whose name referenced the House Un-American Activities Committee, operated at 622 Broadway in North Beach through 1972 and launched the careers of Howard Hesseman, Peter Bonerz, Carl Gottlieb, Rob Reiner, and Barbara Bosson, among others. Myerson co-authored the memoir Ha Ha Among the Trumpets: An Improvisational Journey with Alan Myerson, published in 2022.

Career

Jessica Myerson co-founded The Committee with Alan Myerson in San Francisco in 1963, following their shared experience at The Second City in Chicago. The theater opened on April 10, 1963, at 622 Broadway in the city's North Beach neighborhood, in a 300-seat cabaret space that had previously served as an indoor bocce ball court. The company name was chosen as a pointed reference to the House Un-American Activities Committee, whose hearings had become a defining cultural confrontation of the postwar decade. Myerson joined the founding company in May 1963, shortly after the theater's opening.

The Committee's founding ensemble included Garry Goodrow, Hamilton Camp, Larry Hankin, Kathryn Ish, Scott Beach, and Ellsworth Milburn alongside the two Myersons. The theater presented satirical political improvised comedy in San Francisco's countercultural milieu, performing thirteen shows weekly and building a reputation as the most politically engaged improvisational ensemble on the West Coast during the Kennedy-era and Great Society periods.

In 1964, producer Arthur Cantor brought the company to the Henry Miller Theatre in New York for a Broadway engagement, the first time a San Francisco improvisational group had received Broadway production. The Broadway run prompted the formation of a second San Francisco company, which drew Howard Hesseman, Peter Bonerz, and Carl Gottlieb into the ensemble. A Los Angeles company was subsequently formed, extending the Committee's reach across the West Coast. Myerson and other core members appeared in Tom Laughlin's counterculture film Billy Jack in 1971, providing the group with a mainstream film credit.

The Committee hosted early performances by The Warlocks, who later renamed themselves The Grateful Dead, providing one of the intersection points between the San Francisco improvisational comedy scene and the concurrent development of the city's rock music community. The theater operated continuously until 1972, when it closed after nine years of production.

Myerson's subsequent acting career included appearances in Mrs. Doubtfire, Thicker Than Water, and The Grasshopper. In 2022, she and Alan Myerson co-authored Ha Ha Among the Trumpets: An Improvisational Journey, a memoir documenting the building of The Committee against the historical backdrop of the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights movement, the early feminist movement, and the emerging anti-war movement, alongside the couple's parallel exploration of Subud spiritual practice.

Historical Context

The Committee occupied a historically significant position in the development of American improvisational theater. Founded in 1963, the same year Del Close was working at The Second City in Chicago and before ImprovOlympic had been conceived, the theater represented the westward transmission of the improvisational tradition that Compass Players and Second City had established in Chicago and transferred to New York. Alan Myerson and Myerson's shared Second City background gave The Committee's founding a direct institutional genealogy from the Chicago tradition, while the San Francisco context, with its distinct counterculture, labor movement history, and civil liberties politics, shaped the political content and tone of the theater's work in ways that differentiated it from the Chicago model.

The Committee's relationship to the development of long-form improvisation has been claimed through some historical accounts to include an early version or precursor of the Harold, though the exact genealogy of the form's development at The Committee versus its subsequent formalization by Del Close at ImprovOlympic remains a contested question in improv historical scholarship. What is documented is that the theater's ensemble developed improvisational structures that went beyond the short-form scene formats typical of the early Compass era, and that these structures influenced performers including Del Close himself in subsequent years.

The Committee's Broadway engagement in 1964 confirmed that improvisational theater had sufficient commercial appeal to sustain a New York production, preceding the later mainstreaming of the form by several decades. Its Los Angeles company extended the West Coast improv tradition to Southern California during the same period that other Chicago-trained performers were beginning to establish footholds in the entertainment industry's center.

Legacy

The Committee's nine-year run from 1963 to 1972 made it the longest-sustained improvisational comedy ensemble on the West Coast during the era in which the form was establishing its institutional identity in American theater. Its alumni included Howard Hesseman (WKRP in Cincinnati), Peter Bonerz (The Bob Newhart Show, director of numerous television comedies), Carl Gottlieb (co-author of the Jaws screenplay), Rob Reiner (director of This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, and When Harry Met Sally), and Barbara Bosson (Hill Street Blues). The scale of this alumni achievement, in which performers trained at The Committee went on to define major works of American film and television comedy, confirms the theater's formative role in the development of the performers who shaped the subsequent generation of American comedy.

Jessica Myerson's co-founding and sustained involvement in The Committee throughout its nine-year existence placed her at the center of one of the most historically significant improvisational comedy institutions of the 1960s. The memoir she co-authored with Alan Myerson in 2022, Ha Ha Among the Trumpets, provides a firsthand account of the political and cultural moment in which the theater operated, adding a primary source record to the historical documentation of American improvisational comedy's West Coast development.

Early Life and Training

Irene Ryan studied at The Second City in Chicago, where she performed alongside Alan Myerson. The two married and shared a commitment both to improvisational theater and to Subud, the Indonesian spiritual practice they were exploring during the founding period of The Committee. She performed at The Committee under the name Irene Riordan during the group's San Francisco years and later adopted the name Latifah Taormina.

Personal Life

Jessica Myerson was born Irene Ryan and performed under the name Irene Riordan during her Committee years. She was married to Alan Myerson, with whom she co-founded The Committee. She later adopted the name Latifah Taormina following her engagement with Subud, an Indonesian spiritual movement. She co-authored the memoir Ha Ha Among the Trumpets: An Improvisational Journey with Alan Myerson in 2022.