In 1994, she joined the cast of The Second City. She performed eight shows a week, for two years. She was also in the revues "Citizen Gates" (1996) and "Paradigm Lost" (1997., She performed with Scott Adsit, Kevin Dorff, Rachel Dratch, Jenna Jolovitz, and Jim Zulevic. Improvisation became an important part of her understanding of what it means to be an actress, as she noted in an interview for "The Believer" in November 2003: