Art teacher Lisa Evans has co-written a student production for the famed Second City comedy theater. "While My Keytar Gently Beeps" premieres tonight in Chicago at Donny's Skybox Theatre. Gargoyle photo by David Porreca (click to enlarge)

UNI ART TEACHER Lisa Evans has stepped into a new kind of artistic veranda, that of the theater.

Evans has recently co-written a sketch revue for The Second City comedy and improv theater in Chicago.

She contributed two sketches to a student production titled "While My Keytar Gently Beeps." The show will premiere 10:30 tonight at Donny's Skybox Theatre in the Piper's Alley complex on Wells Street. Donny's is one of three Chicago theaters that Second City operates.

The production will continue to run for the next several weeks: March 20 and 27, and April 3 and 10, with each show beginning at 10:30 p.m.

Evans has been taking classes at The Second City Training Center, a school for comedic writing and performance. The revue is the final project for her and her classmates in the Advanced Writing Program.

"A lot of the people who take classes there are young professionals who want to do it just for fun, or to meet people," she said. "But there are some people who are pretty serious about it."

A few years ago, Evans took an improvisational acting class at Second City.

"I'm terrible at improv, but I thought there's something really interesting about it … just being so free and spontaneous, and that's something I wanted to develop," she said. "But I knew I'd never get anywhere in the improv world."

So Evans tried her hand at writing instead. She is one of seven writers for "While My Keytar Gently Beeps." The writers from her class contributed two sketches apiece, each roughly five minutes long.

One of Evans' sketches is about not having money to put in the collection basket at church, and the other is about an aesthete mobster named Rococo Bruno.

"There is no overarching theme,'" said Evans. "The show as a whole has to have some kind of personality from the class, though."

According to Second City's description of the revue, the sketches touch on such topics as "love in unlikely places, religion in the workplace, parents having 'the talk' with their son, a kinder, gentler mob, high school vampires, and the pressure families put on newlyweds to start popping out babies."

Evans, already an accomplished visual artist, has proved that a passion in the arts can take many forms.

"In my class I've had a lot of actors and performers working there," she said. "I've learned from them about what works, what doesn't work — just hearing your sketches read by trained actors gives a new spin on things. Also, I think as a visual artist what I've brought to that group is more emphasis on the visual component, the sight gags, the body movements. … But I've learned so much from my classmates, really, because most of them are out there trying to perform."

Tickets for "While My Keytar Gently Beeps" are $12 for regular admission, $10 for students. For more information, call 312-337-3992 or visit the Second City Web site.