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Nasty gray slush and potholes abound in fact, forget what I said about white snow blanketing streets. There’s no white to be seen-it’s all gray, all foreboding.

So what was I doing on Wells Street? I’d used my college-radio credentials to get an interview with the great Joyce Sloane. Joyce was the den mother of Second City theatre, in Chicago. She shepherded lives and creative choices at that legendary comedy venue for decades, and she did it with a personal touch-like if your mom ran a theatre, but also if your mom liked theatre and if she merely rolled her eyes at the smell of pot. Joyce would one day give me my big break. Back in 1983, she gave me an hour of her time. I sat in her office and peppered her with names, asking her to tell me about their paths to greatness: John Belushi, Joe Flaherty, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner. . . . I wanted to hear a story that sounded like something I might duplicate. “Joe Flaherty? Joe was in Pennsylvania, and he packed himself a sack lunch and got on the bus to Chicago. “Billy Murray? He was here with his brother Brian, and he was making everyone laugh, and we said, ‘ Get on that stage right now, you!’ and he went up there, and we all said, ‘Yay!’ ” “John Belushi? He showed up to the theatre one day and said, ‘Put me on that stage right now!’ and I said, ‘You get up there, Mister!’ and he was absolutely a riot and just tore the house down!” Success on this renowned Chicago stage seemed to have been a three-step process, at most: He came right to the theatre and walked in and said, ‘Give me a chance,’ and we did, and he was wonderful!”Īll the stories she told involved the performers’ innate self-confidence and undeniable talent. “Wow,” I sputtered, as our time wrapped up. I’m not ‘gifted’ or ‘special’ or ‘worthy.’ ” After all, I’d been sitting in her office for an hour already, and no one had said, “You get up on that stage right now, Mister!” I thanked Joyce and tried to keep my chin up as I walked out into the February day that had somehow got even colder, grayer, more Chicago-y than it already was. I walked down Wells Street, past a cigar store, past Zanies comedy club, with head shots of someone named Jay Leno, a standup comic with a prank oversized chin for yuks. I pondered my fate and the question of how cold a city should be. (Not this cold, I can tell you.) I ducked inside a bookstore because I liked books and there was less wind inside. I leafed through two books: Viola Spolin’s hefty tome “ Improvisation for the Theater” and Keith Johnstone’s slimmer, idiosyncratic “ Impro.” I was leaning toward the shorter, more soulful of the two when into the store ambled a jabbering mound of clothing with a human being inside.

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