In the fashionable Old Town district of Chicago, I am making mooing noises and performing deep lunges. My classmates are frozen to the spot – waiting for me to tap one of them so they can make a strange movement and noise all of their own. This is not your typical Monday night, even in Chicago.

In the hallway outside this improv class run by The Second City hang the headshots of actors who, once upon a time, were most likely gestating in a similarly ridiculous way, feeling roughly as self-aware. Amy Poehler, Bob Odenkirk, Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Dan Castellaneta, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Jordan Peele, Jane Lynch, John Belushi … the list of alumni covers an entire corridor.

Chicago occupies a curious place in the hierarchy of big US cities – sitting somewhere on the edge of popular culture – but that’s just how Chicagoans seem to like it. Huge worldwide cultural movements have emanated from here: house music, blues, world-beating musicals before they appear on Broadway and the West End. Oh – and comedy.

A moustachioed Bill Murray, right, on The Second City comedy club’s wall of fame in Chicago. Photograph: M Spencer Green/AP

The Second City, celebrating its 60th anniversary in December, is a giant in the world of improv, a monastery of mirth in which the great and the good of the US scene have paid their dues before taking over the world. “We were all early mid-20s, people not knowing what to do with ourselves, all misfits,” Colbert told podcaster Marc Maron earlier this year. “You could experiment all you wanted in the improv set and then you would craft it, you would learn a little bit about dramatic structure to be able to make your scene work. I fell in love with the place, and then I made my career there.”

At the start of all this was Viola Spolin, seen by many as the godmother of modern improvisation. A social worker, Spolin spent time on the lower south side of Chicago, assimilating immigrant children into their communities. “She developed [drama-based] games that would help the children come together and collaborate and communicate without necessarily speaking the same language,” says Kelly Leonard, an executive director at Second City.

Theatre games … an improv class at The Second City. Photograph: M Spencer Green/AP

Spolin wrote groundbreaking books on improvisation techniques, and her son, Paul Sills, carried her practices forward, blending them with performance, and forming the Compass Players improv theatre. In 1959, this became Second City, a name appropriated from jibes directed towards Chicago from a New York journalist.

Second City’s culture is built on two words: “Yes, and…” The belief is that during improvisation there are no incorrect answers, no wrong turns, only opportunities – demanding a response that would embrace and build on an idea, building confidence and fostering creativity.

You're taught to listen and react to what you're given. Not just with the audience, but if something pops up in my mind, boom!

One native Chicagoan who was very much part of the ‘yes, and…’ brigade is Jeff Garlin. “Everyone there is pretty genuine. There’s no bullshit there, and no bullshit is what it’s all about,” he says on the phone from LA. “Second City is the key to my entire career – it’s the one ingredient that got me here.” Above the hum of the traffic and down his speakerphone, he expands in his signature friendly foghorn-like timbre: “If there was a main lesson I took away, you’re taught to listen and react to what you’re given, and that’s what I do, period. That’s my number one lesson – being present and reacting to what I’m given. Not just with the audience, but if something pops up in my mind, boom! I react to it. I’m doing ‘yes and…’ in my own head.”

Jeff Garlin performs on the Second City stage for his Netflix special. Photograph: Elizabeth Sisson/Netflix

Garlin started out working the box office with Colbert, and playing pranks on the punters they took against. What really established Second City on the national stage was John Belushi and Harold Ramis arriving in 1969, with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Shelley Long following shortly afterwards. “The genius of this place is that the minute somebody becomes so great, they move on,” says Leonard. “This is the model that guarantees there’ll be a spot for the next weirdo that no one else conceives is going to do great work, and then they’re going to leave. It seems backwards, but it’s actually brilliant.”

Like most close-knit graduates, they stay loyal to their circle. “What you’ll see in my Netflix special are all things that I learned and developed at SC,” says Garlin. “As an actor too. Curb Your Enthusiasm would not exist without Second City.” He continues: “It’s all improvised – I approached Larry [David] with the idea – so it truly came from my time there. I guarantee I’ve hired more Second City actors for that show than from anywhere else.”

The Second City comedy club in Old Town, Chicago. Photograph: Digital Image Library/Alamy Stock Photo

Second City opened at just the right time, on the cusp of a new cultural age. “Comedy was mother-in-law jokes,” continues Leonard, “then suddenly Second City is appearing, Lenny Bruce is appearing, across the Atlantic there was Beyond the Fringe and The Establishment.”

In an office on the third floor of SC’s headquarters, Leonard and Jen Hoyt, VP of production, sit beneath a blackboard wall on which the prettily written mantras of “Failure is not fatal”, “Success is not final”, and “Replace blame with curiosity” are scrawled in colourful chalk. Hoyt has just moved here from Second City LA, so I ask her, as an outsider, why she thinks Chicago made all of this possible. “There’s an intrinsic DNA to this city which is a bit humble. They are aware that there’s New York and LA. What makes it unique is it’s the people that make the city go – the unions, the workers, the egalitarianism – there’s a blue-collar attitude. There’s a freedom in not being under the microscope.”

Leonard concurs: “We are a city that makes art that is un-ownable – you go elsewhere to make the money. Therefore, there’s tremendous freedom here to experiment. Taking what could be perceived as a deficiency, and using it to its full effect.”

After mooing and lunging in that small room, maybe I could be the next one to embrace my deficiencies to full effect … or maybe not. But this is a typical day in a company that now runs seminars, goes out into the community with workshops that spread its ethos, and even into big corporations.

Trump doesn't do improv, he spouts off. He's doing 'no, but…' instead of 'yes, and…'

I wonder out loud to Hoyt and Leonard whether they could take their skills to the White House as President Trump seems to be improvising anyway. “Trump doesn’t improv,” Hoyt interjects, “he spouts off. There is a synchronised movement to improv, where you’re working with the person across from you. Together you are creating something that is not my idea or your idea. It’s a synchronised idea that is better than either of ours. Trump’s spontaneous. He’s doing ‘no, but..’ instead of ‘yes, and…’” They should definitely go to the White House.

As I walk back to my hotel along the shore of Lake Michigan, the skyline of the Windy City spread out in front of me, I wonder, could The Second City keep going for another 60 years? And suddenly the answer occurs to me: “With this attitude? Yes, and…”