Special to the Gazette

BENTON HARBOR — In 50 years’ time, The second Citybrand has produced enough famous comic names to fill asmall-town phonebook.

Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Amy Sedaris andothers on today’s screens have gone through theChicago-based improv theater chain and comedy trainingcenter. Most in the early seasons of “Saturday NightLive” are second City alumni, as were those inCanada’s “SCTV.” Grads include Mike Myers,Martin Short, Dan Aykroyd, Eugene Levy, John Candy, JohnBelushi, bill Murray, Robert Klein, Fred Willard, JoanRivers, Alan Arkin and too many others to list.

The second City touring company is celebrating the 50thanniversary around the country, and will be at the MendelCenter in Benton Harbor this Saturday. They’re a groupof unknowns now, but maybe not in the future.

Megan Hovde Wilkins, speaking while eating lunch across fromThe second City in Chicago, said the SC is “a big family… nice network of people who help each otherout.”

That’s the key to improvisational humor, she pointedout. She’s a diminutive person, “I gotta be scrappy,gotta watch out!” but onstage, “we got eachothers’ backs… If you’re failing,someone’s got your back; if you’re succeeding,someone lifted you up there.”

This touring cast is Tim Robinson (“the goofiest, nice guyever,” Wilkins said), Ross Bryant (“a quirky,intelligent humorist”), Dana Quercioli (“asupportive, quick improviser,” who “will jump onboard with whatever you put out there and take it to thenext level of hilarity”), Edgar Blackmon (“themost enthusiastic comedian; he will put it all out on thestage, physically and verbally”) and Wilkins(“she has never let me down yet”).

Wilkins has performed and studied in SC and other improvtheaters in Chicago, and was with second City Novi in theDetroit area.

There she wrote and performed “Michigan Impossible: AllLaid off with Nowhere to go.”

Stage comedy has been her life, Wilkins said. She has vividmemories of being in a high school play, “where I wasgetting a big laugh, and I remember thinking, this is what Ilike the best. I like everyone laughing at me, and havingthat power — the power of comedy.”

The road cast will present sketches from the company’sstart in 1959 to today. These are called“scenes” which came out of, and were polishedwith, improv sessions.

The anniversary show will be a brief history of comedystyle. “There’s definitely a styledifference” between the early bits andtoday’s, Wilkins said. The older material “is a littlemore heavy in a great way,” with dry verbalhumor. “I love that stuff. but you have to be a little morepatient with it.”

Things get freewheeling with the new stuff. The show is“totally scripted to not scripted at all.”They’ll work nutty improv magic on newer scenes, andalso do pure improv.

There is a danger in doing improvisational comedy in frontof a live audience, she admitted. “But that’s whatmakes it so great. when it works, it’sexciting.”

The second City — Making political, social, and culturalcomedy since 1959, 7:30 p.m. Nov. 28, The Mendel Center,2755 E. Napier Avenue, Benton Harbor. $19, $24. (269)927-1221, lmcmainstage.org.