Joe Janes

Joe Janes is a Chicago-based improv and sketch comedy writer, director, actor, and educator who has taught at The Second City Training Center since 1997, making him one of the longest-serving instructors in the school's history, and serves as Improv Program Coordinator at Columbia College Chicago. He undertook the 365 Sketches project, writing one new comedy sketch per day for an entire year and co-producing all three hundred sixty-five across eleven performance nights at the Strawdog Theatre with twenty-six directors and nearly two hundred actors. He is an Emmy Award winner for his writing on Jellyvision's You Don't Know Jack video game series and wrote for Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update.

Career

Joe Janes began his teaching career at The Second City Training Center in 1997, a year that predates most of the significant expansion of Chicago's improv education infrastructure in the 2000s. His instructional tenure of nearly three decades makes him one of the longest-serving faculty members in the Training Center's history, placing him within a small cohort of educators who have taught continuously across the transitions from analog to digital production, from the pre-podcast to podcast era, and through the successive generations of performers who have passed through the school.

Janes serves as Improv Program Coordinator at Columbia College Chicago, where he holds a position on the part-time faculty and teaches Improv I, Improv II, Improv III, Comedy Workshop I, Comedy Workshop II, Character and Ensemble, and Auditioning for Improv. Columbia College Chicago's Comedy Studies Program, which includes his position, represents the formal academic institutionalization of improv and comedy writing as subjects of university-level instruction in Chicago, integrating the city's living comedy tradition with academic credentials.

He also serves as Senior Writer and Director at Fig Media, Inc. His television writing credits include work on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update segment, connecting him to the tradition of political and satirical sketch comedy that SNL's Weekend Update segment represents. His writing for Jellyvision's You Don't Know Jack video game series, which presented quiz game formats within a comedic persona driven by fictional hosts, won an Emmy Award, confirming the quality of his comedy writing across formats that extended beyond theatrical performance into interactive media.

Janes undertook the 365 Sketches project, the defining individual creative undertaking of his public career, in which he committed to writing one new complete comedy sketch per day for an entire calendar year. Upon completing the writing phase, he co-produced all three hundred sixty-five sketches across eleven performance nights at the Strawdog Theatre in Chicago, engaging twenty-six directors and nearly two hundred actors to realize the full year's output in staged performance. The project was subsequently published in book form as 365 Sketches by Lulu Press, with the complete text accompanied by director and actor credits. The project's scale, requiring sustained daily creative production and then the organizational work of mounting hundreds of new sketches in public performance, represents one of the more ambitious individual productivity experiments in comedy writing.

He has also authored 50 Plays and Seven Deadly Plays, collections of short theatrical works, extending his published output beyond the improv-specific curriculum resources that comprise most of the improv literature.

Historical Context

Janes's twenty-five-plus-year tenure at The Second City Training Center spans a period in which the school expanded dramatically, moving from a local Chicago institution to a nationally known training program with alumni in every sector of American comedy. His sustained presence across that institutional transformation provides continuity for students who might otherwise encounter the school only at moments of change or transition. The Training Center's position as one of the primary pipelines from improv training to professional comedy writing, particularly television, makes the quality and consistency of its instruction consequential for the careers of hundreds of students annually.

His position at Columbia College Chicago's Comedy Studies Program reflects the broader institutionalization of comedy as a subject of academic study that accelerated in the 2000s and 2010s across American universities, following the establishment of Harold Ramis Film School at DePaul and comedy studies programs at other institutions. Janes's role at Columbia places him within this development as a practitioner-educator bridging the working comedy community and the academic setting, bringing the authority of sustained professional experience to a curriculum that might otherwise be developed by scholars without comparable practical backgrounds.

The 365 Sketches project engaged the Strawdog Theatre, a significant Chicago storefront theater venue, in a community-scale comedy production that involved nearly two hundred actors and twenty-six directors in the realization of work that a single writer had generated alone over a calendar year. The scale of this collaboration gave the project a community dimension beyond individual creative achievement, demonstrating the organizational and productive capacity of Chicago's comedy and theater community when directed toward a sustained collective effort.

Teaching Philosophy

Janes's teaching draws on his experience across improv, sketch writing, and professional comedy production to offer students a practical grounding in the craft elements of comedy as a working discipline rather than as a talent-dependent mystery. His multiple courses at Columbia College, which span improv performance levels, character and ensemble work, and comedy workshop formats, reflect a conviction that comedy can be taught through structured practice and analysis rather than discovered spontaneously. His sustained presence at The Second City Training Center alongside his academic position gives him a perspective that bridges the practitioner's workshop approach and the academic emphasis on systematic instruction.

Legacy

Janes's nearly three decades of continuous instruction at The Second City Training Center have made him a defining presence in the education of multiple generations of Chicago improvisers and comedy writers, many of whom have gone on to television writing, SNL, and other professional comedy contexts where Second City training is a recognized credential. His longevity as a faculty member gives him an institutional memory of the Training Center's development that few other instructors share.

The 365 Sketches project has remained one of the more visible examples of sustained individual creative productivity in the contemporary comedy writing community, a proof-of-concept demonstration that a comedy writer can produce a full year's worth of theatrical material and mount it in performance within a single project's frame. The project's publication and its community-scale production at the Strawdog Theatre gave it a life beyond the immediate year of writing, preserving its scope as a documented creative achievement.

His Emmy Award for You Don't Know Jack and his SNL Weekend Update credits connect his teaching career to professional comedy production achievements that give his instructional authority a confirmed external validation beyond his institutional affiliations alone.

Early Life and Training

Joe Janes is based in Chicago and developed his career in the city's comedy writing and improv community. He began teaching at The Second City Training Center in 1997, early in what would become a multi-decade instructional career.