Linda Gelman

Nationalities

Linda Gelman is an American improviser, producer, director, and educator who is a founding member and producer of Chicago City Limits, New York City's longest-running improvisational comedy revue. Originally a dancer with an MA in dance education from Columbia University Teachers College, Gelman transitioned from choreography and dance to acting and improvisation, performing with The Second City in Chicago before co-founding Chicago City Limits in New York. She has taught improvisation for over twenty-five years across educational, corporate, and community settings.

Gelman began her performing career in dance, earning an MA in dance education from Columbia University Teachers College. She worked as a dancer, choreographer, and artistic director of the Gelman/Palidofsky Dance Theatre, and performed as an actor, singer, and dancer in plays, musicals, cabaret shows, and on television. This diverse performing background gave her a physical and theatrical foundation that would inform her approach to improvisation.

While living in Chicago and working in advertising, Gelman became a member of The Second City, the legendary improv and sketch comedy theatre. Her experience at Second City connected her to the institutional tradition that has trained more comedy professionals than any other American theatre. It was through Second City that she met the fellow performers who would become her co-founders at Chicago City Limits.

Gelman co-founded Chicago City Limits in New York City, becoming one of the original New York cast members. Chicago City Limits went on to become New York's longest-running improvisational comedy revue, performing continuously for over four decades since its founding. In addition to performing, Gelman directed the company's National Touring Company, expanding Chicago City Limits' reach beyond its New York home base to audiences across the country. She serves as producer and director of the CCL Training Program, overseeing the company's educational mission and ensuring that the next generation of performers inherits the company's audience-interactive improv tradition.

As a professor at Purchase College (SUNY), Gelman teaches acting and improvisation, bringing her decades of professional performance experience into the academic setting. She has taught improvisation for more than twenty-five years at colleges, schools, senior centers, youth organizations, and at corporate events. Her teaching work through the UB Coast to Coast program has included presentations on improvisation as a tool for thinking on one's feet, connecting improv skills to broader communication and problem-solving applications.

Gelman's role at Chicago City Limits encompasses both creative and administrative leadership. As producer, she has guided the company through decades of programming, maintaining the quality and consistency that has sustained one of New York's most enduring live comedy institutions. Her ability to balance creative direction with business operations reflects the dual skill set required to sustain a performing arts company across multiple economic cycles and cultural shifts in the New York entertainment landscape.

Historical Context

Chicago City Limits was founded by Second City alumni who brought the Chicago improvisational tradition to New York. At a time when New York's improv scene was far less developed than Chicago's, the company established a permanent home for improvisational comedy in the city. Gelman's involvement from the founding gave her a role in building one of the East Coast's earliest dedicated improv companies.

The company's longevity as New York's longest-running improvisational comedy revue reflects the sustained audience appetite for live improv in a city more commonly associated with stand-up comedy and Broadway theatre. Gelman's dual role as performer and producer helped maintain the institutional stability necessary for this multi-decade run. Her direction of the National Touring Company extended Chicago City Limits' influence beyond New York, bringing its brand of improvisational comedy to audiences across the country.

Teaching Philosophy

Gelman's approach to teaching improvisation draws on her multidisciplinary performing background in dance, choreography, musical theatre, and acting. Her training in dance education informs a physically engaged teaching style that emphasizes ensemble awareness, spatial dynamics, and the kinesthetic communication that underlies effective scene work. Her twenty-five-plus years of teaching across diverse settings, from college classrooms to senior centers to corporate events, reflects a belief that improvisational skills have universal application. Through the CCL Training Program and her Purchase College courses, Gelman trains students in the Chicago City Limits tradition of audience-interactive, comedy-driven improvisation.

Legacy

Gelman's co-founding and sustained leadership of Chicago City Limits helped establish improvisational comedy as a permanent fixture of New York's performing arts landscape. As one of the earliest Second City alumni to transplant the Chicago improv tradition to New York, she contributed to the East Coast development of the art form at a time when Chicago dominated American improvisation. Chicago City Limits' survival as New York's longest-running improv revue stands as testimony to the institutional stability that Gelman's producing and programming sustained over decades. Her decades of teaching across educational, corporate, and community contexts have expanded access to improvisational training far beyond the professional performance world, demonstrating that the skills cultivated on improv stages transfer to communication, creativity, and collaborative problem-solving in any setting. Her position on the Purchase College faculty further bridges the professional improv world and formal academic theatre training, giving undergraduate students access to a practitioner with direct lineage to The Second City tradition.