Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

Chapter Four: The Chicago Lesbian Cha-Cha Remix - The Chicago Way of the 90's

Kelly Leonard: Hi, This is the Kelly from the Second City...

I think I blacked out on the phone...

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Hans and I were back in Chicago. It was not as though we did not know what to do, where to go, or how to accomplish getting back into the improvisational scene in town. We were gone for three years. Just long enough for some to not remember who we were...but not long enough for the now established improvisers we had worked with to forget us.

We were welcomed back with open arms. That is the Chicago way.

We were immediate in auditioning actors and finding a new space. In Seattle we had heard these commercials that were promoting an Indy Space that was doing performances in the basement of its space. The Commercial for Visa that said:

Café Voltaire does not take American Express. This was true. They didn't. They should have. They probably would have been open for longer.

Their vegetarian/vegan food was pretty bad. You went there for the booze. You went there for School House Rock that was then occupying that space and eventually moved on to bigger and better confines.

The theatre scene was kicking early to mid-nineties in Chicago. All sorts of amazing things were happening: The Annoyance Theatre was getting a new space. iO Chicago had finally settled into a space. ComedySportz Chicago had found a new space as the one they were in (The Improvisation) did not even tell them that they were closing.

There was a moment where I watched this show by a new company called WNEP called Metaluna. It was like watching everything I ever wanted realized in Improv: Social/political theatre, in a Dada/Improvisational Style.

I remember watching their pre-show where this verbose man who was part of ComedySportz came out and in Dada form, had people tear pieces of the Chicago Sun Times/Tribune/Reader into strips and glue them on a board on the ground. You had to do a big TA DA! Move and everyone would applaud. The strips of the news were turned into art.

It was beautiful.

At the end, this verbose man would look at the audience and take a deep bow. The light went down...then right back up and the cast would storm the stage...trotting over the art, destroying it.

At the bar across the street, I said to this man I barely knew that I wanted to have his babies.

Decades later Don Hall (that man) said to me while smoking cigarettes after I performed at WBEZ's The Moth, sad and miserable about the whole thing: Shaun, you are one of the most talented women I know.

For comedic effect, I stared at him expressionless. For comedic effect, (like the old Dada man he is six months younger), he stared back at me.

We stared at each other expressionless for a good comedic moment.

I finally said: Is this the moment where I give you head?

He splayed out on his couch like an insect flipped over on its back, laughing his ass off.

These are the people who resided in my world in the 90's in Chicago.

It was vibrant. It was wild and wonderful. People were creating new formats of improvisation like it was  honey wine flowing out of every spigot on the North Side of Chicago.

We were back for this.

I couldn't have been happier.

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