Labor and Wages at the iO Theater

Longform improvisers are rarely paid, even at levels of relative prestige. This paper uses the iO Theater in Chicago, one of the oldest and most important longform improv theaters in the world, as a case study to examine the relationship between the structural and material iterations of the theater with the types of students, improvisers, and staff who were there. Given the fairly consistent approach iO held towards paying performers over forty years, I argue that longform improv's social position as a distinctly middle-class artform engenders a classification struggle wherein improvisers work to rigidly delineate 'work' from the 'play' of improv. The longform improv life-style that arises receives attempts to pay improvisers as symbolic attacks on that life-style.