Charna halpern biography

Charna Halpern

Charna Halpern single-handedly saved the world.

Teaching performers how to work together for more than 28 years, her world-famous I.O. theaters in Chicago and Los Angeles are meccas for the art of improvisation, and recruiting stops for television shows like Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and MADtv. The alumni whose talents she’s honed include Tina Fey, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Amy Poehler, and an entire generation of North America’s best and brightest comic minds.

A specialist in creating a ‘group mind’ with hilarious end results, Charna’s secrets and skills have given businesses the creative edge they need to compete, and she travels to universities around the world to teach her creation–longform improvisation. Her books Truth in Comedy and Art By Committee act as guides for theaters and improv groups around the world, and she and her Los Angeles theater, iO West, starred in the 20th season of MTV’s The Real World, where she trained the roommates in improvisation.

As for saving the world? At the request of the American Embassy to Cyprus she worked with Greek and Turkish Cypriots to help foster peace agreements, and most recently traveled to Switzerland to work with the particle physicists who created the Large Hadron Collider, which people feared would create a black hole. Charna got them to work together, thus single-handedly saving the world. So there.

@iochicago

Steve Plock has spent the last, roughly, ten years as a manager, bartender, and performer at the iO Theater, except for the last two years which he spent in Wyoming managing one of our nation’s premier honky-tonk bars.

Steve is now excited to return to Chicago as the Managing Director of the new iO Theater and to help steward the theater in a new direction.

Steve is also an accomplished drummer and musician who has toured all over the United States and even most of Europe one time. John Forté once told him he had ‘great pocket.’

Steve is also an avid beef jerky fan and believes that Y2K was a hoax perpetrated by the non-perishable food corporations to scare us into buying lots of old food. I mean, why would a computer *think* that it’s 1900 and just decide to crash? It makes no sense.

Hopefully you’ll be able to see Steve perform with the world famous improv team Dumb John around Chicago soon.

I always knew I was going to do something different. Even as a kid, I was always observing people.

When I was 10, I directed shows. I would use every kid on the block in them so that their parents would have to come, and I would charge a quarter. I paid kids to ride around on bikes to advertise the show.

I was living in Dixon and came to Chicago for a Second City party. There were all these people doing bits and goofing around, and I was joining them. Tim Kazurinsky said, “You’re really funny. You should be at Second City. I’m going to get you an audition.” I was like, “OK.” My audition was ridiculous. There was no way I should’ve been on that stage. It got to the point where I was so embarrassed, I even said, “Should I go on, or do you just want to hire me now?”

I took classes at Players Workshop, and at the end, I was given the position to direct the children’s shows at Second City with Jo Forsberg. I walked into the theater, the main stage. It was, like, 10 in the morning, and nobody was there. I walked around, and I thought, “This is going to be mine.” I just knew. So that’s why after I was done with the job, I said, “I’ve got to find a way to do this,” and decided to start this little theater at CrossCurrents.

So many improv tenets follow life. Stay in the moment. Stop worrying about planning. Once I began doing the improv thing, I realized I can’t bother planning my life. I’ve just got to see what opportunities open. The things that happen are far more interesting than anything I could’ve planned.

When I started the ImprovOlympic Theater, I knew I needed help. I was at a little coffee shop one day, and Del Close was there having coffee and a cigarette. He was the director of Second City, but he was frustrated. I went up to him and said, “Hey, how’d you like to make $200 and some pot?” I knew that would get hi

American comedian (born 1952)

Charna Halpern (born June 1, 1952) is an American comedian who is co-founder of the ImprovOlympic, now known as iO. Upon iO's founding, in 1983, with partner Del Close, she began teaching Harold to many students in the Chicago theater community. Many prominent comedians performed at iO, from Neil Flynn (The Middle) to Jack McBrayer (30 Rock). Also appearing were up and coming comedic minds such as Craig Cackowski (Drunk History).

Halpern opened the iO West located in Hollywood, California, in the early 2000s. In February 2018, she made the decision to close the theater citing the reasons as the neighboring nightclub and lack of attendance.

She and Close co-authored the book Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation with editor Kim "Howard" Johnson in 1994. She published Group Improvisation in 2003 and Art by Committee in 2006.

The remaining theater in Chicago, originally located in the Wrigleyville neighborhood was forced to relocate due to neighborhood development. In 2017, the theater reopened in the Clyborn North Area across from a Whole Foods flagship store, and next to VIPs strip club.

In 2020 during a forced shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a targeted racial justice outcry, she closed the only remaining Chicago location.

Early life: college years to meeting Del Close

Halpern graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1974 with a major in English and Speech. Following graduation, she set out to find work as a teacher and eventually found herself working for a juvenile delinquency school called The House of Good Shepherd under a grant offered up by the institution. Halpern continued to w