Business Theater
What We Do
IMPROVISED SHOWS
Our top performers comprise the i.O. Road Show, an ensemble that will create scenes and games to entertain and involve your group. We also offer our resident company, Baby Wants Candy, a troupe famous for creating on-the-spot musicals complete with scenes, songs and choreography. Baby Wants Candy has appeared in “Best of the Fest” at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (reviews available upon request).
CUSTOMIZED SHOWS
The following types of shows are helpful when dry or statistical information is being presented at your meeting or conference. Humor is a way to help your audience retain the information in an entertaining way. As physicist Niels Bohr said, “There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.” Here’s what we offer:
• Specialized Shows — We will interview you and then write scripts to fit the specifics of your event. You will have script approval. A preview performance is offered.
• Roasts — Honoring a retiree or the Employee of the Year? We are the way to go. The Orthopedic Surgeons of America loved I.O. when we brought in a very special guest to roast a retiring surgeon who happened to be an Elvis fanatic. Our Elvis impersonator roasted the good doctor with burnin’ love and even had a few Elvis parodies to sing that were written especially for the occasion.
• Emcees — We can supply guest speakers and even musical hosts a la Billy Crystal.
• Meeting Breaks — Allow I.O. to entertain your clients and employees during breaks in long meetings. A surefire way to make them meetings to remember.
• Roving Entertainment — We will interact with the attendees at your event in the most creative ways. We will engage them, promote products, and create the fun.
• Speaker Support — We will provide your speakers with comedy that will illuminate your ideas. We will even become human bar graphs if necessary in order to keep your audience awake and watching. You can’t go wrong with comedy when you need to get a point across.
• Media Production Services — Do you need a training video for employees, a media clip to welcome people to your website, or a creative way to connect with investors, your board of directors or employees? Let us write, film and produce a high-quality video to make your content shine.
Past clients include: CNA, UNILEVER, Abbott LABS, British Petroleum, AMERITECH, Deloitte & Touche, and more.
Who We Are
Charna Halpern has been teaching performers how to work together for more than 20 years. Her world-famous I.O. theaters in Chicago and Los Angeles are the meccas of training in the art of improvisation, and they act as a “recruiting” stop for television shows like “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “MADtv,” supplying New York and Hollywood with writers and performers.
Charna’s book Truth in Comedy, which she co-wrote with Kim “Howard” Johnson and her late partner, Del Close, acts as a guide for theaters and improv groups around the world that teach and perform improvisation. Specializing in creating a “group mind” with hilarious end results, Charna is now sharing her secrets and skills in order to give businesses the creative edge they need to compete in the corporate world. And she’s making them laugh as they learn.
Charna has also recently written a second book, “Art by Committee”, available for purchase here from Amazon.com.
“This is the most important group work since they built the Pyramids.” - Bill Murray