Prior to going on stage the members of The Improvised Shakespeare Company know nothing about the one-hour play they will create. When the curtains open they have nothing but their tunics, pantaloons, and incredible wits. The ensemble asks the audience for a title for their production and then they launch straight into it. One cast member takes center stage to deliver a prologue in rhyming couplets that perfectly evokes Shakespeare’s traditional form -- but with a modern sense of humor.

I was able to catch the Chicago-based award winning improv ensemble on tour during the New York Comedy Festival last year, while November politics were still on everybody’s mind.  The suggested title from the seats? “Monarchy Shutdown.” From that clever shout-out, the company performed a comedy filled with wordplay, physical humor, and nuance that many skilled playwrights would have loved to have taken credit for. Like any good Elizabethan comedy, the show involved several subplots as well as more than a dozen characters -- including a brooding yet lecherous prince, four unpaid servants, nobles engaged in partisan politics, and a pervert in the bushes. The actors were able to play multiple characters and keep track of many minute details that all came together an uproarious, and -- this being Shakespeare -- bloody conclusion.

New Yorkers will get a chance to see this Windy City staple later this week when they perform at Theater 80. As you await their arrival, check out our interview with Blaine Swen, the creator and lead performer of the company, below:

StageBuddy: Combining Shakespeare and improv is such an unusual and inspired choice. What made you think of the concept?

Blaine Swen: In California, I played with a group that performed short-form improv. Short-form improv usually involves brief scene games, like what you’d see on “Whose Line is it Anyway?” Each of the scene games has a twist and the twist in one of the games we performed was that you had to perform in the style of Shakespeare. A group of us decided to try our hand at extending the length of these scenes and we experimented with performing longer plays. A few years later, some members of that group combined to form The Backstreet Bards and then The Spontaneous Shakespeare Company, which ran at iO West in Hollywood in 1999-2000. When our run ended and I graduated from college, I moved to Chicago to work on a graduate degree in philosophy. Here I founded The Improvised Shakespeare Company in 2005.

The Improvised Shakespeare Company has been around since 2005. How has the company changed in those years?

The cast started with just five people and we performed once a week. We've since grown into an ensemble of 18 people. We now have three shows every week at the iO Theatre in Chicago and we have a national tour that is on the road roughly 100 days per year. The show itself has also evolved. We’ve developed a greater facility with Elizabethan language. We have a better sense of Shakespearean character archetypes and plots. We’ve all grown as improvisers — we’re better listeners, we have richer reactions to discoveries within the scenes. But I think that most importantly, we continue to have more and more fun. There is so much joy in performing this show. All of the players are so supportive onstage that we continue to earn each others’ trust. There have been many cases where something that started as a “mistake” (something like misreading the gender of someone’s character or calling someone by the wrong name), found such support from the rest of the cast that it became an essential plot-point. Where early in the process mistakes might have made us nervous, now the cast seems to really enjoy supporting a good “mistake”. So, as a result, there’s less fear of making them. The more we trust each other, the more fearlessly we play, and the more fearlessly we play the more fun we have.

You are able to use elements of Shakespearean language and tropes without alienating audiences that might not be that familiar with the bard’s oeuvre. How were you able to find this balance of Shakespeare and the contemporary?

Today, our experience of Shakespeare is different than the experience of his original audience. His plays weren't as difficult for his original audience to understand because they were immersed in the world he was referencing. When he referenced Elizabethan pop culture, Greek mythology, and European history, his audience was right with him. Now when we reference Miley Cyrus, Disney mythology, or the latest election our audience is right with us. In some ways I think that our show might replicate what it was like to be in one of Shakespeare's original audiences. The only real difference is that Shakespeare created work that elucidates and informs what it means to be human. But we're working on that.

I was impressed when the show began with a traditional Shakespearean prologue with rhyming couplets and an introduction to the show’s themes. The rest of the show was also peppered throughout with rhymes. How did the cast become so good with coming up with these rhymes on the cusp?

Some of the guys are amazing freestylers and it just seems to come so naturally. Ross Bryant is something of a wizard, I think. For the rest of us, we practice a lot. There's a trick that I like to use that helps. I first think of the word that I want to land on. Then, rather than use that word to end the first line of my couplet, I save it for the second and set myself up. And sometimes while walking to the theater I'll spend time creating rhymes for things that I see.

The show I saw was very hands-on, with cast members lifting each other and balancing in hilariously strange positions. Are most of your shows so physical?

Yeah, the shows are often very physical. We used to joke that one day someone's back would go out on stage. The further each cast member passes beyond his 20's that joke becomes a little less joke and a little more actual fear. Not for Brendan Dowling, though. His constant yoga has made him nearly invincible.

Are there any particular YouTube clips or other online videos you would like point out to readers looking to see a preview of what you do?

Oh yes! You can see some great clips at www.improvisedshakespeare.com