At a packed Park West in Lincoln Park on March 20, the room positively hums. Nearly every seat is full as attendees await an unconventional act: a fully improvised musical. As Zach Reino and Jessica McKenna of “Off Book: The Improvised Musical Podcast” take the stage, the crowd erupts.

After a quick introduction, Reino and McKenna begin by asking the audience for some random words and suggestions: among them “mermaid,” “dragon” and “trebuchet.”

Cue the show.

Pianist Scott Passarella starts to play and Reino and McKenna start singing — it’s a Peter Pan-esque parody with sea creatures, fairies, a post-puberty Peter Pan and, of course, a Captain Hook-Smee romance.

Park West is the biggest venue Off Book has played — Reino said playing for 700 people was “a swing.”

“It was very cool, and cool to do it in such an improv city,” McKenna said. “The show was a blast. It was a very funny venue. We were saying it had kind of dystopian ‘80s movie vibes, but the house made it feel awesome.”

Attendee Brandon Mueller found McKenna and Reino through their work on the independent comedy streaming service Dropout, which was founded in 2018.

“I really enjoyed their skits and stuff on (Dropout),” Mueller said. “Introduced my girlfriend to the show and then she stumbled upon the show they were having here in Chicago.”

McKenna and Reino met at The Upright Citizens Brigade in LA, a comedy theater and training center, in 2010. After working together for many years, they piloted “Off Book” — an improvised musical podcast — in 2017 while continuing to work on other projects.

The podcast initially ran in a studio setting, with no live audience. Eventually Reino and McKenna felt they were falling into the same patterns, so they switched to touring performing only live shows.

“‘Off Book’ has always very much been a live show that happened to be a podcast for a long time,” Reino said. “And it’s now actually back in its final and most perfect form.”

Improv — especially musical improv — might sound scary, but for Reino and McKenna, it’s become second nature.

“We don’t get nervous about it,” Reino said. “The truth is that Jessica is so good, and we’ve been doing this show together for so long-”

“Zach is so good, and we’ve been doing this for so long,” McKenna said, laughing.

Reino said because of their history, they know how to support each other and “have each other’s backs.”

“We would both have to tank so badly, and at the same time,” Reino said. “There’s really nothing to be nervous about, right?”

Reino and McKenna emphasized the role musicians play in their shows, and said the people they tour with, like pianist Scott Passarella and local drummers who play each show, give them “a huge boost.”

Having grown up as theatre kids (McKenna got her bachelor’s degree in theatre from Northwestern University and Reino got his from UC Irvine) and now with improv backgrounds, they’ve come to understand mistakes as “blessings.”

“There’s no wrong note,” McKenna said. “It’s about the next note.”

“Yeah, I don’t think either of us operates from a flagging-mistakes mindset,” Reino added. “It’s just, how do you keep the show going? How do you find the next funny thing?”

McKenna said the goal is to exude confidence during shows and to have a good time doing it.

“The audience is so nervous for you, because they’re like, ‘absolutely not. You’re not able to do this,’” McKenna said. “Someone can’t really enjoy themselves if they’re terrified for you. So you have to … be confident, even if what you’re saying makes no sense, or you are absolutely buying time to figure out, like, where are we going on the scene?”

Reino said he hopes he and McKenna will get to continue to make art together.

“The dream is just to make stuff that we love,” Reino said. “‘Off Book’ is (something) I think we will always do because it will be a fun live show that we do together.”

McKenna agrees, expressing gratitude and emphasizing that in an industry so dependent on other people’s schedules (and money), it’s refreshing to have a project where they call all the shots.

“It is important to have things that you love doing that you get to be in charge of doing,” McKenna said. “We were able to find that with ‘Off Book.’ … It is the purest version of me and Zach’s sensibilities mashing up together. … This is just our brains coming out undiluted.”

Both McKenna and Reino expressed their gratitude for people’s “very sweet” responses to their work.

“I think there’s always a joy about it because it does just feel natural,” McKenna said. “I think silly, joyful humor holds a special necessary place … and it feels very nice to be a source of that in the world.”

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