Chicago/Raleigh Improv Festival in its 10th year in Raleigh

For the past 10 years, ComedyWorx has been hosting the most swinging improv festival you probably didn’t know about.

Friday and Saturday night, the Tenth Annual Chicago/Raleigh Improv Festival will be happening at the downtown Raleigh improv theater. The fest will feature improv groups from around these parts and visiting groups from Chicago, the improv mecca that’s home to such ad-lib playhouses as The Annoyance Theatre, The iO Theater and, of course, Second City, which has given us some of the funniest human beings (Belushi! Murray! Colbert! Fey!) ever to walk the Earth.

So, how has this meeting of comedy communities gone on for so long right under our noses?

If you ask Jenny Spencer, coordinator, producer and “person who sends all the emails” for the festival, improv festivals mostly attract, well, other improvisers.

“I think, to us, it feels like we’re celebrating with ourselves, almost,” says the Raleigh-born, Durham-based Spencer, 28. “The improvisers really love this, and we love celebrating the community. And I think it becomes such an internal celebration that we’re not always great about advertising it to the rest of the world. But we get a great turnout every year. Every year, we completely sell out. So, whatever we’re doing is working, even if it’s our own people showing up.”

There will be 12 troupes in all, rocking such names as Tiny Daddy, Dinner Bell and Diabolical Fishbank. (Spencer, whose parents are former ComedyWorx improvisers, is also in a group called Playdate! that will perform Friday during the 10 p.m. show.)

For the festival, ComedyWorx will put aside its rep for fast-paced, funny games in favor of doing bits and scenes that evolve over a lengthy bit of time.

“We get to celebrate longform, which is not the sort of improv ComedyWorx always does,” says Spencer. “Most of their shows are the sort of shortform, ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ style.”

ComedyWorx will also put its “Funny & Clean” ethos – two words that are literally in lights outside the theater – on hold, meaning all groups can get a little blue if they want. Says Spencer, “The longform is a place where we’ll tell everyone when they arrive this is not our usual show. This is not necessarily a clean show.”

Spencer does hope that the novices who check out the Chicago/Raleigh Improv Festival will realize that not only does ComedyWorx serve up improv comedy on a regular basis, but there are also the Transactors Improv Comedy in Chapel Hill and the DSI Comedy Theater in Carrboro. “It’s surprising, because we do have so much amazing improv in the area around here,” she says. “And over the past 10 years, it’s really grown in the Triangle area. But it’s still something that very few people know about – how many great opportunities there are to see it.”

So, remember, there are many places in the Triangle where people can’t wait to make stuff up for you.

This story was originally published April 21, 2016 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Chicago/Raleigh Improv Festival in its 10th year in Raleigh."