Like the lights-out on an overlong two-person scene, the Chicago Improv Festival this year arrives a little later than some might like. The writer's strike made it hard to book TV talent in the customary slot in late April, so the fest folks decided to hold off until this week.

Besides the new time, CIF also has a new place: the Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway, hosting the festival luminaries who used to be in the Athenaeum and, last year, in the Park West.

"It's big enough to feel big but still small enough to feel intimate," festival executive producer Jonathan Pitts says of the 330-seat Lakeshore. "All the alternative comics that I've been aware of really love playing there. Obviously they're doing something right, and they're really branding themselves well with alternative comedy."

Tickets for Lakeshore shows are $20 ($25 for the J.T.S. Brown reunion Saturday) and available at the box office, at (773) 472-3492 and lakeshoretheater.com.

"Scheer & McBrayer" will open the fest at 8 p.m. Monday, with opening act Virgin Daiquiri, a supergroup of female improvisers from Chicago. Here are the other Lakeshore headliners:
Scott Adsit, Mick Napier, Susan Messing

8 p.m. Tuesday

Three key Second City players of the '90s come together for a special edition of "Messing With a Friend," the weekly Annoyance Theatre outlet for local favorite Susan Messing. Her guests are Adsit, who plays beleaguered producer Pete on "30 Rock," and Napier, founder of the Annoyance. Opening: Joe Bill and CIF artistic director Mark Sutton in their banter-in-a-boat perennial "Bassprov."
Chicago Night

7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Local ensembles, and plenty of 'em. Here you get Dirty Water, Wing Night, Cornwallis, pHamily with an improvised musical and Revolver from IO.
Miller & Middleditch

8 p.m. Thursday

T.J. Miller, who played camera-toting Hud in "Cloverfield" and slacker Marmaduke on the sitcom "Carpoolers," improvises with Thomas Middleditch, best known for his YouTube rap about McNuggets. The opening acts are Scram, a duo that includes Chicago's Joe Bill, and the Reckoning, a long-running IO team.
Ditka

8 p.m. Friday

No, the coach won't be here, but four Chicago transplants to Los Angeles -- Frank Caeti, Maribeth Monroe, Brian Gallivan and Marc Warzecha -- will be back to pay him homage. Opening are the L.A. duo of David Razowky (a Chicago Second City alum) and Carrie Clifford, and the Seattle trio Improsia.
313

7:30 p.m. Saturday

Among the players in this L.A.-based group -- all from Detroit -- are Larry Joe Campbell from "According to Jim" and Keegan-Michael Key from "Mad TV." First come the New York team Johnny Lunchpail, and Mark Sutton teamed with Seattle's Adina Gillett.
J.T.S. Brown

10:30 p.m. Saturday

This reunion, of a team that had a brief but influential run at IO in 1999, brings back Ike Barinholtz (who was on "Mad TV"), John Lutz (who plays a writer on "30 Rock"), Peter Grosz (who actually is a writer on "The Colbert Report") and possibly Jason Sudeikis from "Saturday Night Live." IO's female quartet Children of a Lesser God opens.
'Sports Action Team'

8 p.m. Sunday

They're improvisers, after all, so vamping on stage shouldn't be hard for the cast of this Chicago-based TV sports spoof, seen here on WMAQ-Channel 5. Two local teams open: the four dudes of Mr. Pepper and the headline-driven IO ensemble Whirled News Tonight.