History
Barrel of Monkeys was founded in 1997 by Erica Halverson and Halena Kays. Halverson and Kays had both performed in Griffin's Tale at Northwestern University. Griffin's Tale is a theatre ensemble that creates a sketch comedy show from stories that have been mailed to them from North Shore elementary schools. After graduating from Northwestern, Halverson and Kays realized that there were underserved students in the Chicago Public School who would benefit from similar programming and consequently founded Barrel of Monkeys. That's Weird, Grandma: In April of 2001, Barrel of Monkeys opened