Brave New Workshop

The Brave New Workshop Comedy Theater (BNW), is a sketch and improvisational comedy theater based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The artists of the BNW have been writing, performing and producing live sketch comedy and improvisation performances for 55 years – longer than any other theater in the nation.

The BNW, founded as the Instant Theater Company in New York City, was established in Minneapolis in 1958 by Dudley Riggs, with improvised help from Dick Guindon, Irv Letofsky, and Dan Sullivan. (Riggs's parents were circus and vaudeville performers, and he regularly joked that he ran away from the circus to find a home.) The BNW was named in honor of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and bills itself as the oldest ongoing satirical comedy theater in the nation. Nearly 400 original productions have been mounted on Brave New Workshop stages for more than three million people. Improv and sketch comedy shows can be seen on its stage nearly every weekend of the year.

The original location Riggs selected for his theater was 207 East Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. In 1961, Riggs moved the company to its historic location at 2605 Hennepin Avenue South, where it remained until 1998, when the BNW moved four blocks south to Calhoun Square in Uptown Minneapolis. Finding the location a financial burden, the company returned to 2605 Hennepin in 2002. BNW also operated a satellite location in neighboring Saint Paul, Minnesota, for five years before closing in 2006. Earlier, in 1971, a satellite theater and cafe, the "ETC" ("Experimental Theatre Company," not to be confused with BNW's current "Experimental Thinking Centre"), opened in the Southern Theatre at Seven Corners in the Cedar Riverside area of Minneapolis' West Bank. In 2010, Sweeney and Lilledahl purchased the Hennepin Stages Theater at 824 Hennepin Avenue (the longtime home to productions such as Tony n' Tina's Wedding) in downtown Minneapolis. This location is the main venue for the Brave New Workshop, housing the theater where the main stage sketch comedy shows are performed, as well as an event space and administrative offices. In August 2014, the company announced that the historic Uptown location at 2605 Hennepin Avenue had been sold, and that it had purchased a building located at 727 Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. This building is now the home of the Brave New Workshop Student Union, which runs improv and comedy writing classes, as well as occasional improv performances.

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