SITCOM: Like TV, but funny
From Chicago, Munich, San Francisco and now Boston,
SITCOM ... the world's most widely-produced
structured improvisation show with nine productions in four cities
on two continents!
| SITCOM is a fully-improvised show that looks exactly like an hour of prime-time television. Two half-hour episodes of a brand-new sitcom are created on the basis of suggestions from the studio audience. All aspects of real sitcoms are accounted for including sitcom-style: commericals, jokes, timing, chacterization, lighting, gender rôles, irony, theme music, and even improvisational scenery made of 56 large modular building blocks. |
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Since its inception, SITCOM has been heaped with praise. Read the best sound bites from critics worldwide. For developing SITCOM, Dan Goldstein and John Bourdeaux received Chicago's prestigious Morton-Murphy Award. SITCOM was lucky enough to receive media attention by The Chicage Tribune, The Chicago Sun Times (pick of the week) , The Chicago Reader, The Boston Herald, The University of Chicago Magazine, The Chicago Maroon, and The Chicago Chronicle, Bay Windows, Dorchester Reporter as well as a lot of German press I could list here but most of you could not read. Famed Chicago director Curt Columbus called it "the best longform in Chicago" in 1994. Public Radio critic Chris Harding called it "the most satisfying of Boston's improv shows" in 1999. |
| The SITCOM show was conceived in a conversation between Dan Goldstein and John Bourdeaux during a long road trip through the southern United States. It was founded on an improv philosophy called Structured Improvisation which holds that improv actors must study and use the fundamentals of story structure in their long form improvisations. This idea was inspired by, of all things, a computer program designed for plot structure analysis, called STRUCTURALIST GILLIGAN. |
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SITCOM has been produced nine times in four cities on two continents and you can read about every production. To our knowledge, SITCOM is the most widely produced longform show in the history of ever. The maiden voyage of SITCOM happened at the University of Chicago's University Theater in the fall of 1994. The most recent productions are currently running in Boston and Munich. The farthest east of Chicago SITCOM has traveled is Munich, Germany, and the farthest west, San Francisco, California. |
| The founders of SITCOM offer a workshop which teaches the fundamentals of sitcom writing and our "active development" process for creating startlingly original material through improvisation. It is ideal for creative teams interested in a stimulating, group-based approach to creative development. The SITCOM workshop has been taught to student groups at Harvard and Stanford Universities. |
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SITCOM and the ideas of Structured Improvisation have inspired its creators to launch other shows including: Commedia dell'High School and Riverboat Lawyer. The ideas of structured improvisation have inspired other shows and groups as well, including Shiela's Instant Odyssey, Spaghetti-o Western, & The (Re)View (Chicago), The Loose Screws (Hawaii), & The Scene Shop (San Francisco). |
| Send email to Dan Goldstein (dan@dangoldstein.com) to chat with Dan (the guy on the far right side of the Chicago magazine cover up top), receive your very own SITCOM press kit, see about starting up a production of SITCOM running in your part of the world, or get information about workshops. |
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