CHICAGO — Chicago’s Second City, the venerable comedy theater headquartered in Old Town, has a new CEO: Ed Wells, most recently executive vice president and global head of media and education for the Sesame Workshop, the producers of “Sesame Street,” formerly known as the Children’s Television Workshop.
“I’m a big fan of the institution,” Wells, 49, said of Second City in a telephone interview Monday. “I want to continue scaling the business and see how we can honor the brand.”
Wells also said that he plans to expand the Second City into markets beyond the longtime mainstays of Chicago and Toronto. That would not be a new endeavor — at various points in its 63-year history, Second City has had outposts in downtown Detroit (Wells’ hometown), Los Angeles, Las Vegas, on cruise ships and in suburban Hoffman Estates. But Wells described his new employer, now owned by Strauss Zelnick’s ZMC, a New York-based private equity firm, as “the world leader in improv-based education and entertainment” that befits a national roll-out of its brand.
Wells, who already has moved to Chicago and started his new job, also said that he intends to create “strategic partnerships in the media marketplace,” an area in which Second City has had limited success over the years. “We’re well positioned to be looking back into the media space and figuring out a multi-platform approach for scaling this brand," Wells said.
He also said that he expects to announce “an expansion into another major market” in coming weeks and that he will continue to work both with the current management team and with the new celebrity-infused Second City artistic advisory board, spearheaded by Stephen Colbert but also including Steve Carell, Keegan-Michael Key and Tina Fey as members.
“This is my dream job,” Well said.
He replaces Steve Johnston, who was president under former owner Andrew Alexander and now is working with Freestyle Love Supreme, the expanding hip hop improv group founded by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anthony Veneziale in 2004.
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