Second City comedian Peter Grosz is trying his hardest to make it in show business. He’s sending out audition tapes for TV and film roles as often as possible and touring the country performing improvisational comedy. Right now, he’s sitting in the Chicago headquarters of The Second City, the famous improv comedy theater he’s been working at since 1997. As the entertainment industry becomes tougher and tougher to break into, Grosz has one advantage over the average comedian — he comes from a theater company with a legendary list of alumni.John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, Mike Myers, George Wendt, Martin Short — all these actors launched their careers performing at Second City.”I think that there is nothing going on anywhere else in the country like this,” Grosz says. “The people from Second City go on to do such great things.”Grosz is part of Second City’s touring company, which travels across the United States performing “The Best of Second City,” drawing a lot of material from the days when its most famous alumni were writing and acting in sketches. “Our show is old material from old shows that have been staged in Chicago, plus material we create ourselves,” says Grosz, who describes his style of comedy as reality-based and intellectual.The typical Second City performance is packed with spontaneity and liveliness. After the formal performance, the group spends time working out improv skits, taking ideas and suggestions from the audience. When Grosz first found his passion for comedy, he was a theater student at Northwestern University in the theater program that spawned such actors as John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. “I didn’t really know anything about improv,” he says. “I knew sketch comedy from watching ‘Saturday Night Live’ as a kid.”At Northwestern, he saw a student improv group called the Meow Show. “When I went to Northwestern and saw that group, I became aware of the concept of improvisational comedy,” he says. “From the moment I saw it I just kinda knew that was something I wanted to do, kind of like the way the first time they hear Bob Dylan that that’s what they want to do, or if somebody sees a gorgeous building and realizes they want to be an architect. I don’t really know why, it just sort of struck me.” After graduating from Northwestern, Grosz moved to Amsterdam, Holland, and joined a group of former Second City actors who had started a theater called Boom Chicago. “Going to Boom Chicago [in Amsterdam] was great because it’s like a really professional opportunity,” he says. “I was only 23 when I did that, and I was paid to perform four nights a week, and that really turned me into thinking ‘I’m a professional performer.’ You can perform at different places around Chicago for free and still kind of feel like you’re a waiter or a systems analyst or you work at the box office of the theater or something.”After living in Amsterdam for six months, Grosz moved back to Chicago and joined the Second City’s touring company. Since then, he has grown to enjoy playing for college audiences. “College audiences are the most actively hungry for comedy, and I think it’s because it’s live,” he explains. “They don’t really know what to expect and very often even just the hint of sexual innuendo, or a curse or anything will just get such a big response out of them.”The laid-back atmosphere of college shows also gives the cast of Second City a chance to spend time with the crowd after the show. “Usually at night we’re pretty wound up so we like to go out and party,” Grosz says. “So as long as students are of legal drinking age, we’ll take them up on heading out to a bar or something. Sometimes they’ll take us out and buy us a round of drinks and that’s pretty nice.”The next potential step for Grosz is to move up to the Second City’s Main Stage, which he hopes will propel him into a film or television career. “We’re sort of billed as the up-and-comers,” Grosz says. “And people know that we’re not finished yet, and when they see us, we’re works in progress. ‘Second City’ is really a theater thing. Our deal is live theater and that magic of improv which is pretty special, and it’s something that isn’t offered in film or television. It’s hard to nationalize or take it out of the space. It’s a theater, 350 people, six actors and that’s what the experience is all about.”