Charna halpern and del close biography

American actor, writer, and teacher (1934–1999)

Del Close (March 9, 1934 – March 4, 1999) was an American actor, writer, and teacher who coached many of the best-known comedians and comic actors of the late twentieth century. In addition to an acting career in television and film, he was one of the influences on modern improvisational theater. Close was co-founder of the ImprovOlympic (iO).

Life and career

Early life

Close was born on March 9, 1934, in Manhattan, Kansas. He ran away from home at the age of 17 to work in a traveling side show, but returned to attend Kansas State University. At age 19 he performed in summer stock with the Belfry Players at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. At age 23 he became a member of the Compass Players in St. Louis. When most of the cast—including Mike Nichols and Elaine May—moved to New York City, Close followed. He developed a stand-up comedy act, starred as the Yogi in the Broadway musical revue The Nervous Set, and performed briefly with an improv company in Greenwich Village with fellow Compass alumni Mark and Barbara Gordon. Close also worked with John Brent to record the classic Beatnik satire album How to Speak Hip, a parody of language-learning tools that purported to teach listeners the secret language of the "hipster".

Chicago years

In 1960 Close moved to Chicago, his home base for much of the rest of his life, to perform and direct at Second City, but was fired due to substance abuse. He spent the latter half of the 1960s

Infamously dedicated to establishing improv as a unique art form in its own right, Del Close was an influential teacher, an impassioned, complicated guru and a true comedy maestro who pushed all artistic boundaries and trained many of the most celebrated performers of the late 20th century.

Close was born in Manhattan, Kansas, in 1934, the second cousin of Dwight D. Eisenhower. After already spending time at The Compass in St. Louis and his own stand-up act, Close joined The Second City cast in 1961, working with the company as an actor, writer and director. He was in and out of the company for years, as well as directing the 12th revue, 20,000 Frozen Grenadiers or There’s Been a Terrible Accident at the Factory.

Close soon hooked up with The Committee, an improv group in San Francisco. It was there he invented the long-form improv he called “The Harold.” He returned to Chicago in 1972, directed several more Second City productions, and became one of the most revered improvisation teachers in the city. A diversified talent, he also wrote comic books, pursued a successful acting career on stage and on camera (including The Untouchables), was an advisor for SNL, and joined fellow Chicago improv fixture Charna Halpern in running the Improv Olympic, now known as iO, where among other types of comedy, teams compete in “Harolds.”

Many up-and-coming Second City performers studied with Close, and The Upright Citizens Brigade first met and formed their ensembles in his classes.

Close passed away in 1999 at the age of 64 after holding a “living wake” in the hospital the night before he died. According to Charna Halpern, his last words were, “I’m tired of being the funniest person in the room.” He famously bequeathed his skull to the Goodman Theatre, to play “Yorick,” the cranium in Hamlet’s graveyard scene.

Steve Plock has spent the last, roughly, ten years as a manager, bartender, and performer at the iO Theater, except for the last two years which he spent in Wyoming managing one of our nation’s premier honky-tonk bars.

Steve is now excited to return to Chicago as the Managing Director of the new iO Theater and to help steward the theater in a new direction.

Steve is also an accomplished drummer and musician who has toured all over the United States and even most of Europe one time. John Forté once told him he had ‘great pocket.’

Steve is also an avid beef jerky fan and believes that Y2K was a hoax perpetrated by the non-perishable food corporations to scare us into buying lots of old food. I mean, why would a computer *think* that it’s 1900 and just decide to crash? It makes no sense.

Hopefully you’ll be able to see Steve perform with the world famous improv team Dumb John around Chicago soon.

American comedian (born 1952)

Charna Halpern (born June 1, 1952) is an American comedian who is co-founder of the ImprovOlympic, now known as iO. Upon iO's founding, in 1983, with partner Del Close, she began teaching Harold to many students in the Chicago theater community. Many prominent comedians performed at iO, from Neil Flynn (The Middle) to Jack McBrayer (30 Rock). Also appearing were up and coming comedic minds such as Craig Cackowski (Drunk History).

Halpern opened the iO West located in Hollywood, California, in the early 2000s. In February 2018, she made the decision to close the theater citing the reasons as the neighboring nightclub and lack of attendance.

She and Close co-authored the book Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation with editor Kim "Howard" Johnson in 1994. She published Group Improvisation in 2003 and Art by Committee in 2006.

The remaining theater in Chicago, originally located in the Wrigleyville neighborhood was forced to relocate due to neighborhood development. In 2017, the theater reopened in the Clyborn North Area across from a Whole Foods flagship store, and next to VIPs strip club.

In 2020 during a forced shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a targeted racial justice outcry, she closed the only remaining Chicago location.

Early life: college years to meeting Del Close

Halpern graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1974 with a major in English and Speech. Following graduation, she set out to find work as a teacher and eventually found herself working for a juvenile delinquency school called The House of Good Shepherd under a grant offered up by the institution. Halpern continued to w