The Bastion checked out The Chicago Improv Rebellion at iO this past Monday. CIR features tunes from house band Death By Thunder, and improv from the team Hodge Podge, with a different headlining guest each week. Here are the vitals: 5 dollars if you’re a civilian, 0 dollars if you are an iO student, starts at 10:30, in the cabaret, every Monday. PBR was on special for $ 2.50 and there was vodka lemonade for $3.

Here’s why PBR was on special: CIR is all about mixing punk music with improv comedy. Death by Thunder opened the show with archetypal pop-punk- they covered both the Ramones and Green Day, and played an original composition with an extremely rude title about Karl Rove.

Then the improv team Hodge Podge created a Harold off of the suggestion of “soup.” They were good at keeping the scenes moving quickly and created some very funny characters. (Hodge Podge's Warren blogged a little about Chicago Improv Rebellion here.)

Pimprov closed out the evening with meta-improv: they improvised two characters self-consciously performing improv. Hearing a pimp brag about his ho-leasing abilities and then critique his castmember’s performance with a Del Close maxim was pretty delicious.

The headlining improv team changes every week, so if you made a habit of going to CIR you would get a quick and easy course in Chicago’s improv scene. And you could listen to the Ramones and swill PBR on a Monday night like the carefree punk kids you wanted to be back in high school. Time to live the dream!

-Carrie Callahan