Twin Cities' improv pioneer Dudley Riggs dies at 88
Updated: 11:32 p.m.
The founder of Brave New Workshop, the Minneapolis troupe that blended improvisational sketch comedy and political satire, has died. Dudley Riggs was 88.
Riggs also kickstarted the comedic careers of Louie Anderson, “Daily Show” co-creator Lizz Winstead and former U.S. Sen. Al Franken.
His stepdaughter Ann Sheffels said Riggs started in show business with his family's circus act.
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"When he was very small, he would come out in a wagon pulled by a bear, and just be a tiny child in this little wagon,” Sheffels recalled.
Riggs performed as an aerialist for a time before injuries led him to trade the trapeze for the stage.
During shows, his parents would riff on suggestions from the crowd. Riggs said this was part of the genesis for the audience-driven sketches that are a longstanding Brave New Workshop tradition.
Over the decades, the troupe’s material has touched on everything from the Vietnam War to race, religion, sex and any other topic that makes audiences squirm.
Riggs was living in New York in the mid-1950s when the idea came to him to create original material on stage while performing it. At the time, improvisation was largely the purview of jazz musicians. Riggs brought the concept to comedy, toured the country with it for a few years, and eventually found a home for his Instant Theatre Co. in Minneapolis. He’d soon rename it the Brave New Workshop.
In a 1986 MPR interview, Riggs said the early years were tough. Audiences were more interested in what he called serious plays, not topical satire. His fortunes improved when television caught up to what he was doing.
“Certainly revue work now looks like it was invented by ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and some of those old sketches that we were doing in 1965 are still showing up on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in their structures.”
Minneapolis native Lizz Winstead said her first time on stage was on a dare at age 22 at another Riggs venue — the Experimental Theater Co. By her account, Winstead bombed the second time around, but Riggs welcomed her back to ETC regularly and didn’t critique her material.
“He never really gave me pointers. He just gave me the space to be who I was,” Winstead said. “And I think that was maybe the greatest pointer of all.”
In 1997, Riggs sold the Brave New Workshop to Jenni Lilledahl and John Sweeney. The couple carries on his legacy. Sweeney said it’s an understatement that Riggs was a singular talent.
“He’s not just another theater owner or another comedian, or another circus performer. He is Dudley Riggs.”
His death comes as the pandemic has forced the troupe to halt in-person performances for the first time in 62 years. But the show continues on through a web series called Brave New Workshop Goes Viral.
A memorial for Riggs is being planned for later this year.