Dan Zellner is new Kaplan Fellow

Dan Zellner, multimedia service specialist in the Library’s Digital Collections department, has been awarded the 2008-2009 Alice Berline Kaplan Humanities Institute Library Fellowship. Dan, who has been deeply involved in Chicago’s improv comedy scene for many years, plans to investigate “The Future of Improv” in the context of new digital media, including audio, video, computer programs and virtual spaces.

“Chicago-style improvisation, which is the style practiced by Second City, has been incredibly influential world-wide,” Dan says, “and not just on comedy and theater. The business world, and psychology and the other social sciences have borrowed its role-playing techniques, and it’s also influential in the theory of human-computer interaction.”

A graduate of Second City’s Conservatory Program, Dan says his project is partly inspired by Jeffrey Sweet’s book Something Wonderful Right Away, which documented the creation of Second City and has guided and motivated many improv practitioners. The timing of the fellowship is especially fortuitous, he notes, since in 2009 the famous comedy theater will be celebrating its 50th anniversary. He plans to use some of the time afforded by the fellowship—which allows a member of the library staff to work half-time for a year—to interview artists and educators currently in the Chicago scene about how new media may now be influencing their work, to create that same kind of context and inspiration for the future.

“I was recently talking to someone who teaches improv, and I asked him what he thought would be the future of improv,” Dan says. “And he said: ‘I think it will be improvised.’”