The Faculty Lounge

Founding (2019)

Rachel Michaela and Brian Crane met while teaching at a school in New Mexico in 2019 and founded The Faculty Lounge that summer as a long-form improv ensemble. Rather than operating a dedicated building, the group performs at partner venues across New Mexico, with recurring appearances at Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe and venues in Albuquerque and Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Ensemble Development

Crane later relocated to Chicago, and Rachel Michaela continued as executive producer and lead performer. The roster expanded to include Max Maliga, who joined in 2025, and Garner Jarrett among its regular members. Rachel Michaela also teaches independently through her own practice.

Festival Appearances

The Faculty Lounge has appeared at the District Improv Festival in Washington, D.C. (2023) and the Santa Fe CloudTop Comedy Festival (2024), where the ensemble performed with guest Will Hines. The group has also appeared on Improv4Humans with Matt Besser.

The Faculty Lounge performs long-form improv exclusively, and its model of booking into existing partner venues rather than maintaining a dedicated building keeps it mobile across New Mexico. Workshops and classes extend the ensemble's work as a training resource for the state.

The Faculty Lounge performs its flagship long-form ensemble show, The Faculty Lounge, which established the company's reputation for character-driven narrative improv in New Mexico. The Faculty Lounge 2.0 expanded the ensemble's membership and scope. A collaboration with The Exodus Ensemble, billed as The Faculty Lounge + The Exodus Ensemble, brought two New Mexico companies together for co-produced long-form sets, with a new joint production debuting in Santa Fe in 2026. The show The Boyz, directed by Rachel Michaela, represents the company's additional performance strand alongside the main ensemble work.

The Faculty Lounge emerged in the summer of 2019 when Rachel Michaela and Brian Crane, who met while teaching at a small New Mexico school, co-founded what would become the state's longest-running professional long-form improv team. Crane relocated to Chicago in fall 2019 while Michaela continued building the ensemble in New Mexico, establishing a monthly performance residency with Stage Santa Fe (later Improv New Mexico) through 2021. The company secured a resident team position at Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe beginning in 2022, where it shared stages with noted improvisers including Neil Casey, Matt Besser, and Danielle Schneider. An invitation to perform at the District Improv Festival in Washington, D.C. in fall 2023 marked the ensemble's first major out-of-state festival appearance, followed in 2024 by sharing the stage with Will Hines at the Santa Fe CloudTop Comedy Festival.

The company expanded its roster in 2025 when Max Maliga, formerly of the San Francisco company Killing My Lobster, joined as a performer alongside core members Garner Jarrett and returning co-founder Brian Crane. That same year The Faculty Lounge launched a new residency at The Shop NM in Albuquerque and initiated the cross-ensemble collaboration with The Exodus Ensemble. Rachel Michaela has continued as executive producer and lead performer throughout, building the company into a connective institution linking the Albuquerque and Santa Fe improv communities.