Cat Booty

Cat Booty, an improv comedy group consisting of current and former students in the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department‘s nationally lauded Comedy Writing & Performance BA program, won the 10th annual College Improv Tournament (CIT10), a national competition for improv groups at colleges and universities. The College Improv Tournament‘s Nationals Championship took place on February 25 at the Vittum Theater in Chicago. Fifteen teams from schools across the country gathered for a celebration of collegiate improvisation, and Cat Booty won the finals match to claim the title of CIT National Champ.

The team’s members are current Columbia College students Will Nicholson and Tom Spooner, both seniors in the Comedy Writing & Performance BA program with a Writing for Television Minor; Laura Mulcahy, a senior in the Comedy Writing & Performance BA program with an Arts in Healthcare Minor; Glo Chitwood, a senior in the Comedy Writing & Performance BA program with a Video Production Minor; and Comedy Writing & Performance BA senior Sydney Back. Also in the group is Columbia College alumnus Alan Giles ’16, who graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Comedy Writing & Performance and a Writing for Television Minor.

Anne Libera

“It is thrilling to see our comedy majors recognized in this way,” says Theatre Department faculty member Anne Libera, coordinator of the Comedy Writing & Performance BA program.

Other schools represented at CIT10 were New York University, Boston University, the University of California-Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Iowa, Illinois State University, Indiana University, Georgia Tech University, the New College of Florida, Texas Christian University, the Savannah College of Art & Design, Kansas State University, and the University of Arizona, as well as the University of British Columbia in Canada.

The Bachelor of Arts in Comedy Writing & Performance program is a collaborative partnership between Columbia College Chicago’s Theatre, Television, and Business & Entrepreneurship departments and The Second City, the nation’s premier professional comedy theatre and training center. The program builds on the Theatre Department’s long and successful tradition of teaching improvisation and sketch comedy as part of its Acting program and the department’s successful eight-year partnership with The Second City in creating a semester-long immersion in the study and performance of comedy.