Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

44° Evanston, IL
Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Cookin’ up comedy

Welcome to Improv Kitchen!” an actor booms over 11 flatscreen monitors, scattered throughout Improv Kitchen’s dining room. “We’re so glad you joined us tonight.”

The two actors onscreen are dressed as a nerdy husband and wife and emcee the show from what appears to be the interior of a suburban kitchen. “We’re in your kitchen and you’re in ours,” says the woman with a chuckle. “We can hear you and you can hear us,” adds the man.

Here, the magic of Improv Kitchen is revealed: the show is actually filmed live from a studio next door and the audience is visible to actors through security-style cameras placed throughout the restaurant.

Improv Kitchen is the innovative merger of a hip Wrigleyville restaurant and technologically advanced improv and sketch comedy. “Ad-Lib TV,” a sketch comedy show directed by Second City-trained performer and Northwestern instructor Dan Zellner, opened Jan. 28 and gives Chicago’s favorite comedic past time a modern twist.

“Ad-Lib TV” features three actors who perform improvisation and sketch comedy from a studio next door to the restaurant. The show, which broadcasts live to the restaurant’s closed-circuit televisions, features high-tech special effects, and encourages and incorporates audience participation.

According to Zellner, a multimedia services specialist at NU, it is a huge challenge to produce a live, interactive improv show. Zellner says that actors have a particularly difficult time reading audience reactions through the closed-circuit television system and responding accordingly. Improv and sketch comedy rely heavily on audience reactions. Experiencing these reactions indirectly undoubtedly takes some adjustment.

“It’s weird because everything is mediated through the TV, so it’s not like live theater in that respect,” Zellner says. “I spent over two months just thinking about the concept . . . We had to conceptualize how this would work, to see how audiences would react.”

The first establishment of its kind, Improv Kitchen pioneers what may become a new trend in interactive dinner theater venues in Chicago. Bridging together dinner theater and a relaxing night on the couch in front of the television with two-day-old pizza, Improv Kitchen finds an unexpected middle ground.

At first glance, Improv Kitchen looks like a normal restaurant. The difference comes in the restaurant’s walls, which are lined not with artwork, but with flatscreen televisions that display a live improv show just inches away from diners’ plates.

“There’s nothing else like it anywhere in the world,” says Improv Kitchen owner and creative director Jim Mayhercy. “We are the first.”

Upon arrival at Improv Kitchen, diners are greeted by uniformed waitstaff and escorted into an intimate restaurant lined with soft spotlights and modern pine furnishings.

The menu, which is crafted by local chef Christy Steinmeier, offers a selection of enticing yet surprisingly affordable items ranging from grilled salmon with a tomato confit tart to gnocchi with a buffalo bolognese sauce. And for dessert, selections include white chocolate bread pudding and deep fried ricotta cheesecake. The audience is treated to the hour-long “Ad-Lib TV” show while they dine.

Audience participation is utilized throughout “Ad-Lib TV” and many scenes are based upon audience suggestions. In a “Breaking News” sketch, for example, an audience member suggests “Wrigley Field” for the location of a news interview. The image of the stadium instantly appears as a backdrop to the action onscreen.

In another scene, an audience member gives the suggestion of the word “chroma.” As if on command, the coloring of the characters onscreen becomes distorted and the lights positioned around the room change color in response.

Changeable backdrops, subtitles and graphics all give the show an aesthetic unlike anything possible in live theater. The secret to the show’s innovation is its state-of-the art Apple computer technology. In addition, actors are placed on a “green screen” set — a technology not commonly used in sketch comedy shows but often used in film and television — allowing graphics to be superimposed behind them onscreen.

“The green screen is incredible,” Mayhercy says of the technology. “It’s almost never used on television except in weather broadcasts . . . and now we use it here.”

According to Mayhercy, the concept of Improv Kitchen was inspired by a dream that his girlfriend had in which “people were sitting in a restaurant watching a performance on TV.” After several months of planning and preparation, Mayhercy opened the restaurant and its accompanying studio in July 2004.

Although Zellner admits that “Ad-Lib TV” is a work in progress, an opening night attendee and one of Zellner’s NU colleagues, Kathryn Farley, says she found the show to be innovative.

“Dan is learning this new form of combining technology and improv in a nontraditional way,” Farley says. “Chicago audiences are trained to respond to improv. What Improv Kitchen is able to do is appeal to that local support and to combine it with a good restaurant. And I think that concept works well.”

“Ad-Lib TV” is playing at Improv Kitchen, 3149 N. Clark St., Fridays through Feb. 18. Shows are at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Tickets are $10 plus the price of dinner and are available by reservation at 773-868-6423 or online at www.improvkitchen.com.4

Communication sophomore Mackenzie Horras is a PLAY writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

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Cookin’ up comedy