The Hambook is a New Improv Magazine from a really awesome student of improv - Lee Benzaquin. Some really thoughtful and interesting articles from some of the very best in Chicago. In the last essay UG house team member Harrison George chronicles the reasons he left Chicago and in so doing spends some time breaking down his experience of the Upstairs Gallery and it’s impact. It was really hard to read. BUT you should read it because Harrison was and maybe still is one of the best thinkers about improv we’ve come across.
I feel the need to speak personally about this. So the rest of this is from me, Alex Honnet, one of the Gallery co-proprietors.
I hope our legacy transcends what Harrison says here. As someone at the heart of it I’m sure i don’t have an accurate perception of what the gallery was. I’m too close. But for me the gallery was an explosion of joy and creativity and work that showed me what is possible when a group of performers come together and create as a community. The gallery is the fuel for every project i’ve tried to undertake since. It was something we landed on completely by accident and went further then any of us ever thought. There was plenty of the self aware comedy that Harrison mentions, it was an undeniable and wonderful part of the gallery. Lots of folks discovered a shared voice in that sort of work when they were freed from the judgement they felt at other more established venues. That said, there was lots of other stuff going on as well. It does the place and that time or our lives a real disservice to view it so reductively.
I think that the students who emulated the work that Harrison associates with the gallery saw in that comedy the sort of work they wanted to do someday and took their lumps creating along that path instead of another. Lots of them eventually figured it out, you can see them all over the city currently doing amazing work. Some of the are even getting paid to do it. Just because they weren’t aping the grounded scene work of the old guard that drew so many of us to the city doesn’t mean that we fucked up improv. It means improv changed AND we all felt it changing! AND it was exciting! Harrison was part of that. His team Cool Jacket did some incredible work there that i’ll never forget. He was one of the cool kids here on the cutting edge and it seemed like he really loved being in it. He was a great improviser and i miss watching him perform, right up to the end when he felt so burned out he was still better then most people up on stage with him.
It also touched on something that has always bothered me. Someday if enough people who are associated with the gallery find success in the comedy industry the gallery could be viewed as some sort of golden age. Like what UCB has now, or what iO is had in the 90′s. You should know that it wasn’t all comedic gold and fun. It was hard work, and a process for the people who wanted to be there to find it. There was really good work done at the gallery in front of almost no one and there were also terrible shows done in front of lots of people. It was always hit or miss. It takes someone becoming famous for the public to suddenly decide that something was worthwhile. Thats so fucked.
There is the best work ever being done in the city RIGHT FUCKING NOW. You can go out and see it for cheap or even for free EVERYWHERE.
It’s being done by the people who stay and by the students who continue to show up here and we will continue to push this medium forward. People get burned out and move away but their contributions live on.
If the legacy of the gallery is friends performing in front of friends friends on teams that didn’t rehearse or have a coach. Fine.
If I have any say though (and I know ultimately that I don’t but just stick with me) that it can be YOU CAN DO THIS. YOU CAN BUILD A THING THAT WILL AFFECT PEOPLE AND CHANGE LIVES. People will become best friends, and fall in love, and find their creative voice at your thing.
It won’t look like The Gallery, it will look like your thing. So go find it or build it or do what you have to do.
