The Second City returns with more comedy

Legendary comedy troupe The Second City returns to the stage of the Edmonds Center for the Arts Feb. 14 in a show mining comedic gold from the day’s headlines and the worlds of politics, entertainment and media.

Started in Chicago in 1959, The Second City was launched by a group of hip, creative and intellectual University of Chicago students in an environment that was ripe for social and political satire.

Their popularity quickly spread with their first Broadway appearance in 1961 and their first London appearance in 1962 The Second City firmly established its comedy reputation with the debut of Saturday Night Live in 1974, featuring Second City alumni John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd and Gilda Radner.

The Second City is recognized as the premier training ground for the comedy world’s best and brightest. Alumni of the famed comedy theatre include such recent performers as Tina Fey (“30 Rock”), Stephen Colbert (“The Colbert Report”) and Steve Carell (“The Office”) — as well as Mike Myers, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Martin Short, John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Fred Willard, Chris Farley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Harold Ramis, George Wendt, Peter Boyle, Robert Klein, Alan Arkin and many others.

In addition to its live stage shows, Second City now boasts the largest school of improvisational comedy in the world with theatres in Chicago, Toronto, Detroit, Las Vegas and Denver and training centers in each of those cities as well as New York and Los Angeles; a corporate communications division; an exclusive deal with Norwegian Cruise Lines that puts the brand in front of millions of cruise passengers every year; and a television and film division that recently sealed a development deal with NBC/Universal.