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Veteran actor-host Wayne Brady has joined forces with Freestyle Love Supreme Academy and Speechless Inc. to launch a virtual business and educational training platform built around improv acting techniques.

Brady will become chief creative officer of the venture dubbed Fls Plus. Steve Johnston, former president and managing partner of the of the famed Second City improv group, is on board as an investor and will serve as president.

The deal company brings together the assets of Fls Academy, an offshoot of the acting troupe behind the Off Broadway hit “Freestyle Love Supreme,” and Speechless, a San Francisco-based improv company that offers training services, live entertainment and video production services.

Fls Plus is supported by seed money from investors including several Broadway producers. The goal is to target corporate and institutional clients with virtual services. The partners strive to eventually build brick-and-mortar training centers in major cities to serve underprivileged youths and other hard-to-reach communities.

The Second City, the famed Chicago improv comedy outfit, has been acquired by private equity firm Zmc, whose founder and managing partner is longtime media figure Strauss Zelnick.

Financial terms for the deal were not disclosed. Houlihan-Lokey served as a financial advisor to Second City on the transaction. The M&a firm generally specializes in middle-market deals such as the sale of the XFL or Univision’s acquisition of Spanish-language streaming service Vix.

Second City, founded in 1959, gained fame from its theaters in Chicago, Toronto and Hollywood. Alumni of its stages, touring companies and theatrical productions include Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey, Keegan-Michael Key, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Gilda Radner and many more. Sketch comedy series Second City Television, its name shortened to Sctv, ran for years in Canada and also attracted a loyal audience on NBC in the U.S. Many products...

The Second City, the comedy institution that launched the careers of Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray and Tina Fey, is being put up for sale. It marks only the second time in the brand’s 60-year history that it has been on the block. Investment bank Houlihan Lokey will advise on the sale.

The announcement comes as Covid-19 has upended the live events business that helped define and popularize The Second City. Despite the pandemic, some of the company’s theaters are open. The Second City’s live shows are still taking place in Toronto, where infection rates are lower, and the company says it is closely monitoring the “evolving situations” in Chicago and Los Angeles, where it also has venues. The Second City’s brand of improvisational stage comedy made it a feeder for Hollywood and, most prominently “Saturday Night Live,” which populated its casts heavily with veterans of the stage shows.