The Compass Players | search
Click here to view The Compass Players news from 60+ newspapers.
Bookmark or Share- The Compass Players and the Roots of Improv | The Dinner Party‘The Living News’ sketch was first established by the Compass players, inspired by Chicago Sun-Times news items and participation from intellectual U of C audience members. Historian Janet Coleman chronicles Compass in The Compass: the improvisational theatre that revolutionized American comedy .
- Compass Players - WikipediaThe Compass Players (or Compass Theater) was an improvisational theatre revue active from 1955 to 1958 in Chicago and St. Louis. Founded by David Shepherd and Paul Sills, it is considered to be the first improvisational theater in the United States.
- Compass Players - The Art and Popular Culture EncyclopediaThe Compass Players (or Compass Theater) was a 1950s cabaret revue show started by alumni, dropouts and hangers-on from the University of Chicago. The troupe was active from 1955-1958 in Chicago and St. Louis. Several of the members went on to form The Second City Theater in 1959.
- Theater - Encyclopedia of ChicagoThe situation changed fundamentally in 1955, when two friends from the University of Chicago —Paul Sills and David Shepherd—started the Compass Players. Sills and Shepherd had already worked together on a repertory company called the Playwrights Theatre Club, producing 24 plays in just two years; but now they were trying something new.
- Improvisational TheaterSecond City Cast on Stage, 1960. What did have to be invented was a mechanism by which our everyday improvisations could be tapped, focused, and structured into theatrical art. That was achieved in Chicago in 1955, when David Shepherd and Paul Sills started an ensemble called the Compass Players.
More
