Ask anyone in improv comedy (and this is Chicago, so if you close your eyes and grab the nearest person, chances are they will at least have some concept of “yes, and …”) and they will agree. On stage, there’s no such thing as mistakes, only opportunities for creation.
For Farrell Walsh, artistic and managing director of CIC Theater, that philosophy applies not just to his time on stage, but to the theater he runs, as well. Every setback is a chance to assess what the theater is working towards and see where they may need to go next.
Or, as Walsh puts it, tackling things, “one disaster at a time.”
“Disaster” may seem like a grand word when discussing a theater whose main goal is to be as silly as possible as often as possible — but no one has ever accused anyone in improv comedy of being subtle.
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For the past three years, Walsh has been shepherding CIC to a new permanent home, after the company closed the doors on its longtime space at 1422 W. Irving Park Road in 2022. He’s been involved with CIC since the early 2000s, first as a performer, then as artistic director. When he started, CIC produced improvised shows, sketch shows and the occasional full-length play on weekends in its rented home at The Cornsevatory on Lincoln Avenue. After becoming artistic director in 2005, he was there as the CIC moved to its Irving Park address. And now, Walsh is still there as the theater looks, once again, for a space to bear its name.
CIC had been on Irving Park for more than 10 years when COVID hit in 2020. During those early days of the pandemic, the building’s then-landlord allowed the company to pay only half of its rent, a move Walsh credits with keeping the theater afloat. But at the beginning of 2022, the building was purchased and new landlords arrived. At first, Walsh said, the landlords expressed willingness to continue the COVID-era deal in drafting a new lease for the company. However, the months dragged on, and that new lease never materialized. As the May renewal date approached, Walsh and the company made the decision to leave their home on Irving Park and return, once again, to the nomadic lifestyle of their early days.
In the fall of 2022, CIC worked out a deal with Finley Dunne’s Tavern on Lincoln Avenue — a mile south of their former home at the Cornservatory — to use the bar’s backroom as a performance space. Shows went up twice a week: Wednesday night featured student teams, guest performers and a house team, while the Thursday open-stage format gave anyone wanting to perform the chance to try.
“I felt like that was the best use of the two nights,” Walsh said, “to kind of keep the fire burning.”
Classes also continued — at a rehearsal space near the former Irving Park location. “We maintained the classes to keep the community going,” Walsh said.
And CIC exemplifies community. Though perhaps not as well known to the general public as places like iO or The Second City, CIC is an improviser’s improv theater. Rather than working to perfect a specific format or heightening every single joke to the millionth power, CIC teams focus on what Walsh calls, “playing vertically.” Instead of a series of scenes totally different from each other, in a CIC house team show, “the (previous) scene inspires the next scene,” he explains, “and then (we) weave it together at the end.”
Being able to “dig in and chase” what’s most interesting from scene to scene, Walsh said, allows players to “maintain momentum of the piece on stage without a bunch of resets.”
In November of 2025, CIC hit reset on their own shows when they left Finley Dunne’s. The team continued to scout the Lakeview and North Center neighborhoods or a new venue.
Walsh says they looked at “at least 100” spaces over the course of their search; some were former performance spaces, others were defunct bars, and at least one was a closed auto repair shop. The story was always the same: either rent was affordable but the build-out would have been too expensive, or the space was perfectly suited for a theater company but the rent, Walsh said, “would be astronomical” for the nonprofit theatre company to manage.
As in any good improv scene, CIC members had to use what was in front of them. Thinking about how well their time at Finley Dunne’s Tavern had gone, Walsh set to searching for a similar space: a combination bar-and-theater.
He eventually discovered 4301 N. Western Avenue. Formerly known as the Celtic Crown and closed since 2020, the location came with a kitchen and bar, a back bar, and theater space underneath the main bar.
Walsh, in conjunction with partner (and former bar manager over at iO) Kyle McCabe, knew they had found their spot, and in July of 2025, they opened The Western Bar & Kitchen, a Southwest-style tavern inspired by Walsh’s years living in Arizona.
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Now, after nearly a year’s worth of work on the theatrical spaces in the building, CIC is preparing to welcome back the community that has kept it going.
“I’m a big believer in trying to, you know, support the folks that have supported us,” Walsh says. “That’s the goal of a nonprofit, right? Support the community, support the folks who have supported us.”
CIC certainly has supporters. A GoFundMe for the new location raised more than the $25,000 requested, funded by a litany of local improvisers, anonymous well-wishers and the intriguingly named “Ladies Of Dumpster.”
Walsh hopes to have a grand opening for the theater sometime this fall. For now, classes continue, and so do the drinks and dishes at The Western. All that’s left is to welcome an audience.
And though that may still be a few months away, given the community’s support of the theater, an empty house is one disaster Walsh and the CIC team may not have to worry about.
Ryan P.C. Trimble is a freelance writer.