Michael Gellman

Gellman's role as founding faculty at ImprovOlympic alongside Del Close places him at a critical juncture in the history of improvisational theater. The development of long-form improvisation in Chicago during the 1980s represented a fundamental expansion of what improvisation could be, moving beyond the short-form game structures that The Second City and television shows had popularized toward extended, narrative-driven performance formats.

His twenty-five-year tenure as a Second City resident director gave him an institutional perspective on improvisation that few practitioners have matched. Working across both the Chicago and Toronto operations, he saw the art form develop from multiple vantage points and trained generations of performers who went on to careers in television, film, and theater. His time at Second City Toronto was particularly significant during a period when the Canadian branch was producing performers who would shape North American comedy, and his seven Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations reflect the quality of work the company produced under his direction.

Gellman's parallel engagement with both Second City and ImprovOlympic gave him a rare vantage point on the creative tensions between the two institutions. Where Second City emphasized sketch comedy developed through improvisation, iO prioritized pure improvisational performance. Gellman's work bridged these approaches, applying process-oriented thinking to both contexts.

Gellman's teaching centers on process-oriented improvisation, emphasizing the internal journey of the performer rather than the external product of the scene. His approach, documented in Process: An Improviser's Journey, treats improvisation as a discipline that develops the actor's presence, responsiveness, and creative courage through sustained practice. His workshops focus on the intersection of directing and improvisation, drawing on his parallel careers as a Second City director and improv teacher to address the relationship between spontaneous creation and theatrical structure.

Gellman's significance lies in his dual role as both a founding figure in long-form improvisation and one of The Second City's most influential directors and teachers. His work at ImprovOlympic with Del Close and his parallel career at Second City gave him a perspective that spans the two institutions most responsible for defining American improvisational theater.

Process: An Improviser's Journey, co-written with Mary Scruggs, provides one of the few published accounts of a process-based approach to improvisational training, emphasizing the internal development of the performer rather than the external games and formats that dominate most improv instruction. The book's focus on the improviser's internal experience, rather than on games, formats, or audience-facing performance techniques, represents a pedagogical tradition that complements the more format-driven approaches found in most improv training centers.

His international teaching career, spanning institutions from London to Lyon to New York to Ontario, has disseminated his approach to performers and teachers worldwide. The Process Theatre, his current company, continues to apply the principles he developed across decades of work at Second City and iO, maintaining a living practice of the process-oriented improvisation he has championed throughout his career.