UPDATE: On Saturday, June 6, Second City announced the appointment of Anthony LeBlanc as interim executive director. LeBlanc has most recently served as artistic director for Second City, where he previously appeared in two Chicago mainstage revues.
A tsunami of tweets from other BIPOC artists and Second City alumni followed, calling out institutional racism. It was reminiscent of the controversy surrounding the 2016 Second City e.t.c. revue A Red Line Runs Through It, when half of the cast quit in response to what actor Peter Kim described in a Chicago magazine essay as an environment where audiences “hurled increasingly racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments at me and my castmates: comments demeaning my Asian ethnicity, using the f-word to degrade my homosexuality, and shouting ‘whores’ at the women.” In response to the exit of the actors, Andrew Alexander, Second City’s owner, CEO, and executive producer, shuffled around some of the management team.
You remember when the black actors wanted to put on a Black Lives Matter Benefit show and you said only if we gave half of the proceeds to the Chicago PD, because I will never forget. Remember when you would make black people audition for job you simply just have to white people? https://t.co/LA92b13qs3
— Dewayne Perkins (@DewaynePerkins) June 4, 2020
Alexander owns 50 percent of the company, and under his leadership, Second City expanded its brand through a range of initiatives, including corporate training and expansion of both the Training Center facilities and additional performance venues in Piper’s Alley. It’s unclear right now how the for-profit enterprise will move forward with changing leadership and who might be in contention to take over Alexander’s role, particularly given the economic turmoil of the coronavirus shutdown that has caused massive layoffs and drops in revenue throughout the entertainment sector.
