About Us

Nightcaps Improv Comedy was founded by Steve Jennings, Jessica Gordon, Heather Kangas, and Chad Errio in the fall of 2021. Steve had just been named producer of Shots 'n' Giggles, which at that time was an independent show not attached to an improv group, and wanted to build a group around that show. By sheer coincidence, a few days after Steve had started thinking about starting a group, Heather started a group chat with a ton of improvisers who used to primarily be part of The Blacklist(an improv group that folded in early 2017) and Open Source Improv(a spin-off of The Blacklist which didn't last very long). This provided the first step in finding players to be in a new group. One of the people in the group chat was Jessica, who found us space at a local German-American heritage museum where we could meet and discuss a plan to get this new group going. In attendance at that meeting were Steve, Jessica, Heather, and Chad thus cementing themselves as the founders of a yet-to-be-named improv group. The group chat was then used for people to suggest possible names for the group. The name "The Nightcaps" was thrown out by our friend Charlie, and it won a vote against other suggested names in a landslide. In January of 2022, we began officially practicing as The Nightcaps at The Circa 21 Speakeasy in Rock Island. At this time, we also folded in a handful of improvisers from another group known as SUYP(Show Us Your Pokeballs) which was getting ready to put on one final show in February before ceasing operations. This brought us current Nightcaps members Race, Molly, Ronnie, and Bobby. 

 

The first show under The Nightcaps brand was a Shots 'n' Giggles on March 12, 2022. For the rest of our first year, we ran mostly Shots 'n' Giggles with a couple 100 Laughs shows mixed in. For our first year, we were all about the breweries with Blue Cat Brewing Company providing the beers for our Shots 'n' Giggles shows and Nerdspeak Brewery providing a location for three of our remote shows. Both Blue Cat and Nerdspeak have since closed, but we promise that we had nothing to do with it! In January of 2023, we produced the first ever Improvmania, where Chad became the first Nightcaps Improv Champion. At the end of 2023, we introduced a new show called Roll 4 Improv. In 2024 we announced the first ever Improvpalooza, which spanned the course of three weekends in March. The first ever Improvpalooza Champion was Andy Denton, who became a Nightcaps member shortly after the conclusion of the tournament. After the tournament Jessica White, who did not participate in the tournament but was there to watch and saw how fucking awesome we are, decided to join us as well. In the summer of 2024 we produced our first Summer Improv Blowout show that featured eight improvisers that included people from other improv groups in the area. The first one was such a big success that we brought it back in the summer of 2025 and it has now become a summer staple.

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The first Nightcaps auditions were held in August of 2022 and that's where we found current members Brinton, Andrew, and John who trained under the name Kiddie Cocktails. Our second round of auditions were held in September of 2023, of which Ryan is the only one still around after we lost Julie. She's still alive, we just have no idea where she's at. We keep booking her for shows and she never shows up and says she's in George Washington and none of us know what that means. We did not hold auditions in 2024, but did bring them back for another round in May of 2025. This round of auditions included our newest members Michael, Sho, and Niki who began training under the name The Mocktails in June. In July, we added Aaron into the Mocktails training class. All four of them graduated into Nightcaps in August of 2025.

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In February of 2025, The Nightcaps rebranded as simply Nightcaps Improv with a new look and a new attitude that has solidified us as a group that is unlike any other that has ever existed in the Quad Cities area.