The Second City, a Chicago Comedy Institution, Takes on New York

The improv comedy empire The Second City has arrived in New York in the form of a 12,000-square-foot multi-use space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The seeds of the eastward expansion, its Chief Executive Officer Ed Wells says, were sown during Covid-19. “We shifted to an online model almost immediately for all of our classes,” he says, at which point the organization, which has locations in Chicago and Toronto, noticed a surprising number of New Yorkers signing up for its online improv courses. The numbers were such that “it became a point of interest to say, ‘Hey, maybe there’s a geographical expansion opportunity into a market where we’re seeing that there is demand already,’” Wells says. “That was the beginning kernel of thinking about coming to New York.”

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