Jesters were usually the wisest members of royal courts, due to the extra brains stored in their three-pronged hats. Let a modern jokester share some of his brains with you with today's Groupon: for $12, you get four tickets to a show at the iO Theater in Wrigleyville (up to a $56 value; tickets range from $5 to $14). This Groupon cannot be used toward The Cupid Players' iO show, Cupid Has a Heart On, or any TJ & Dave show. All 4 tickets must be used in the same night but can be used toward different shows.

iO is a world-renowned theater that was founded by Del Close and Charna Halpern and has birthed such notable alumni as Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler. The two theaters at iO host more than 25 improv shows every week. iO’s signature show, The Harold, is performed nightly. Relying heavily on audience participation, teams of skilled off-the-cuffers work together to create storylines and characters, gradually weaving them together into a tapestry of side stitches and embroidered hilarity. The renowned comedy concoctors of the Cook County Social Club take the stage on Tuesday nights. Friday nights feature two shows by The Improvised Shakespeare Company, a bawdy bunch of bard-like ad-libbers who enact an audience-suggested play that Shakespeare would have written if he wasn’t so busy trying to make stage ghosts out of ground-up phone book pages.

Check out what’s on tap downstairs at the Cabaret Theater, upstairs at the Del Close Theater, and, most importantly, at the bar. Call ahead to reserve your tickets.

Reviews

Frommer’s gives iO a 3-star rating, and more than 140 Yelpers give it an average of four stars:

• iO offers a nightclub setting for a variety of unscripted nightly performances, from free-form pieces to shows loosely based on concepts such as Star Trek or dating. Like all improv, it's a gamble: It could be a big laugh, or the amateur performers could go down in flames. – Frommer’s
• The premier long-form improv capital of everything, iO counts among its ranks some of the best ensembles, in any category, the world over. The level of play here is on average very high, particularly among the headliners. – Alex B., Yelp