The San Francisco Improv Festival, dark since 2019, played this week in a converted back room at Silk Road Bar near Union Square. Saturday, Aug. 15, is the final night of shows; Sunday is workshops only.

If you want to see live improv in San Francisco this week, your window closes tonight. Saturday, Aug. 15, is the final night of performances at the San Francisco Improv Festival — the showcase's first run since 2019, and, per the festival's own site (external source, opens in a new tab), its debut as a registered nonprofit.

Here's the room: Silk Road Bar, 134 Ellis Street, a cocktail lounge a block from Union Square whose back room got rebuilt into a black-box theater for the week. Saturday's posted lineup (external source, opens in a new tab) runs three back-to-back double-bills — 7:00 p.m. Him Its and Phasers on Stun; 8:15 p.m. The Intensive Ensemble and The Five Deadly Improvisors; 9:30 p.m. Rag Tag Improv and The Cutting Room — and then closes with the Mystery Jam at 11:00 p.m., a free-for-all with the whole roster of festival performers on stage at once. Sunday, Aug. 16, is daytime workshops only; there are no evening shows. So tonight is the whole show.

The comeback has some weight behind it. The event bills itself "Under the Same Stars" and, across its five days, put 19 troupes through roughly 10 shows plus a run of daytime workshops after years of pandemic-era silence. It also had to find a new address. For years the festival lived at PianoFight, the multi-stage Tenderloin venue that shut its doors for good in 2023; Silk Road's back room is the scrappier stand-in — a bar's spare space, not a warehouse of stages.

Tickets: a full festival pass is $135, and single-show tickets have been on sale since late July, according to the festival site (external source, opens in a new tab). A per-show price isn't posted up front, so if you only want tonight, buy through the box office at sfimprovfestival.com rather than assuming a walk-up rate — and since Silk Road is a bar, plan on 21+ and carry ID.

A few things a regular would tell you. Skip the car: Powell Street BART and the Powell Muni platform are a block off, and parking around Union Square on a Saturday night is its own small tragedy. The theater is a converted back room, so it's intimate — get there a few minutes ahead of your set instead of slipping in mid-scene. Drinks are at the bar, and food comes from a partner restaurant on site, so you don't have to duck out between acts.

Two hours and no more? Take the 8:15 p.m. bill, then hang for the 11:00 p.m. Mystery Jam — the everyone-on-stage nightcap is exactly the kind of unrepeatable thing a festival's closing Saturday is for. After tonight, it's dark again until next year.