How did you find out about iO closing?
The moment I read the shared post I sent a DM to Charna: “say it ain’t so, Charna this makes me sad if its true.”
“The community is really hurting right now,” Plummer continues, adding that she created a GoFundMe campaign “to help staff members of iO who are struggling. Help them get through a few more months if their unemployment benefits end.”
When I asked Charna if the petition circulated by five BIPOC improvisers played a role in her deciding to close iO, her answer was unambiguous: “No no no no no not at all.”
Shepherd wanted to do an improv-based show built around the Jonah Complex (which is Abraham Maslow’s term for fear of success), and Charna agreed to work with him on that if they also collaborated on the Olympics of improv.
The iO that died in June was a lot of things—a popular improv school, a theater complex (the building on Kingsbury has four working theater spaces), a celebrity factory (the walls of iO are covered with photos of younger versions of now-famous actors and comedians, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Adam McKay, Aidy Bryant, Amy Poehler, Jason Sudeikis among them, posing with their Harold teams), a shrine in a cult built around the memory of Del Close—but it was not a mom-and-pop operation.
