Jo Feldman was 19 years old when she first became associated with The Second City almost 10 years ago. Feldman is one of the six-member cast of the Fully Loaded company that will perform The Best of Second City on Saturday, Nov. 14, for the 39th annual Grand Givers event.
The Jewish girl from Detroit grew up watching Second City shows in her hometown. Feldman was especially attracted to Gilda Radner, who was a member of the very first cast of “Saturday Night Live.” Radner died in 1989, when Feldman was a tiny tot.
“I really always liked Gilda Radner. My mom introduced me to her work at a young age and I knew that she was a part of Second City before being a part of SNL. So I thought if I wanted to be like her, this is what I have to do,” she said in a phone interview last week.
“So I moved to Chicago for college and I started interning at Second City. I was too scared to even take a class for the first few years. I just interned and I worked as a host during the shows. I sold merchandise. I produced a podcast for a while and it wasn’t until after college that I had the guts to take classes,”
When she finally enrolled in classes at Second City, she considered them her version of graduate school. After completing the beginning improv program, she moved up to the conservatory where students can be considered for performance jobs.
“When I was in conservatory I happened to be doing a show in the building in one of the smaller theaters and the producers saw me in the show and then cast me for a cruise ship, which is one of the first performing jobs you can have at Second City,” she explained.
“I never finished those classes,” she laughed.
Feldman first worked aboard Norwegian Cruise Line in 2010 and hit the cruise circuit again in 2013. She’s been officially a member of the touring company a little over a year now, following a six-month stint as an understudy.
A comedian and an actor, Feldman explained that performing with Second City can be described as a “bunch of different things.”
“It’s improv where we make up things on the spot. It’s sketch comedy where we perform archival material, which are things that have been written by our alumni, and also current things that we write ourselves. It’s a mixture of ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?”
The list of Second City alumni is a veritable who’s who in comedy. Just a few of the familiar names whose careers were launched through Second City are Joan Rivers, Jerry Stiller, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Akroyd, Amy Poehler, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell and Tina Fey.
Feldman describes working for Second City as “mostly a full-time job.”
“We perform all the time. We might be in California for month performing six nights a week. We might be performing in about 10 different cities in a month so we’ll go do a show, come back home and maybe do shows in Chicago at Second City. “
Because her Second City schedule varies, Feldman does perform at other venues. In Chicago she performs with Sears Tower at the iO Theater and with her best friend Mike Marunowski in Feldmanowski at the Upstairs Gallery. She has also worked for NPR and performed in the great state of Maine with ImprovAcadia.
Feldman was raised in a Conservative home and attended Jewish day school until she completed middle school. Before moving to Chicago to begin studying at Columbia College and pursuing a career at Second City, she attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
She believes her Judaism does impact her comedy.
“We have a little group of Jewish improvisers that started mostly as a joke called Mazel Tovs a couple of years ago. Through that I met my fiancé, the one great thing to come out of Mazel Tovs.”
“We mostly just get together now for Jewish holidays instead of performing together.”
Feldman keeps kosher, which she said is sometimes tough to do when she’s on the road.
“Wherever we go I have to figure out what I can eat, which can be hard when we are eating at rest stops off of expressways, but I make it work.”
Feldman said people will see a really fun show at K.I.
“I think we are one of the goofiest touring companies that Second City has. We are just a bunch of people that love having fun. So you’ll see us doing archived material that was written by our amazing list of alumni and you’ll see scenes that are relatable characters that everyone would be familiar from life. You’ll see more outlandish scenarios, people playing bigger characters. We’ll do a ton of improv and we’ll interact with the audience. We’ll mostly be trying to make each other laugh because that’s what makes us happy is trying to get each other to break onstage.”
A night of comedy comes to K.I.
“The Best of The Second City,” which features some of the finest sketches, songs and improvisations from Second City’s 55-year history, will be performed at Kehilath Israel Synagogue’s 39th annual Grand Givers event on Saturday, Nov. 14.
“We all know the great talent that has come out of The Second City Comedy Troupe and we are thrilled to bring the only 2015 visit of The Second City Comedy Troupe to Kansas City right to K.I. Synagogue. We want to invite the whole city to join us,” said Grand Givers Co-Chair Dr. Michael Sokol.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. with wine and hors d’oeurves, and the show begins at 8 p.m. Following the show will be desserts and an opportunity to meet Second City performers. Tickets admit two people. Gold tickets are $400; Silver tickets are $200.
For more information or to purchase tickets, call 913-642-1880 ext. 203 or visit http://kisyn.org/events/2015-grand-givers.