Can comedy help people learn about serious civic issues? Our audience surveys say yes.
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Can comedy help people learn about serious civic issues? Our audience surveys say yes.

For years, The Theater of Public Policy asked a slightly strange question: What if a serious civic conversation and an improv comedy show had a baby, and that baby cared deeply about zoning, taxes, public health, and democracy? 

Between 2016 and 2019, we collected 422 audience surveys across 29 shows at the Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis. We wanted to know if our “chocolate-covered broccoli” approach of mixing hard policy with unscripted humor actually worked.

The results were definitive.

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