Charna Halpern

Charna Halpern (born June 1, 1952) is an American comedian who is co-founder of the ImprovOlympic, now known as iO.

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 work at the school for three years until her programs grant finished.

Around the same time that her grant ended, she returned to her father's newly built McDonalds in Dixon, Illinois.

As an English and Speech major, she had a lot of exposure with performance in her undergraduate studies.

Often finding herself doing theatrical performances as a requirement for the major.

Yet, it was during her time in Dixon that she solidified her passion for improvisation.

As a promotional platform for the McDonalds, Halpern's father hired an interviewer from a local radio station to exhibit the reactions of locals in correlation to the towns first fast-food restaurant being opened.

Halpern, wanting to help, jumped in as an interviewer.

Not long after the interview questions began, Charna was offered a job on the radio show.

She worked on the radio for a year before embarking on a separate journey to pursue live improvisation.

Halpern's strategy to entering the improv performance space was two-fold.

On one end, she attended classes at the famous Second City Player’s Workshop.

On the other side of things, Halpern had created an improv troupe called ImprovOlympic, an idea she got from a similar troupe located in Canada.

The idea was to get a collection of improv troupes under the same roof and practice improvisational games.

Within a year, the ImprovOlympic reached commercial acclaim.

Although her business seemed to be successful, Halpern was tired playing improv games and felt that there was more to her new venture.

All of this changed when she met Del Close in 1981.

Halpern first met Close at an art gallery on Halloween.

Her first interaction with Del Close was not superb.

At the time, she was new to the study of meditation.

While going to make a first impression on Close she found him conjuring the spirits of demons, a practice that was antithetical to the transcendental practice of white lighting.

She took offense to this, scolding him on the way out the door.

It wasn't until a month later that Halpern saw Close again at one of her performances.

She offered him 200 dollars and some pot in return for a three-hour improvisation lesson.

From that day until Closes’ death 19 years later, Close and Halpern were partners.

After the two met in 1981, the team worked together, on and off, hosting competitive improv tournaments under the iO brand.

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).

Two years later, in 1983, Halpern made a massive change in how the iO would operate.

Instead of competition between different troupes, all troupes would work together to create a shared comedic narrative.

She and Close co-authored the book Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation with editor Kim "Howard" Johnson in 1994.

Halpern opened the iO West located in Hollywood, California, in the early 2000s.

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 February 2018, she made the decision to close the theater citing the reasons as the neighboring nightclub and lack of attendance.

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.