The builders, teachers, and performers behind the form.

Abhishek Desai

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Adal Rifai

Adal Rifai is a Chicago improviser, podcaster, teacher, and corporate trainer who has been performing at iO Chicago since 2007 and is widely known as the co-creator and voice of Chunt on the long-running improvised comedy podcast Hello from the Magic Tavern. He holds a position as Adjunct Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he teaches improvisation for actors, and serves as Corporate Training Director at iO, where he oversees the institution's applied improv and business training programs. His career reflects the dual role of performer-teacher that has defined a generation of mid-career Chicago improv practitioners: rooted in the Harold ensemble tradition, embedded in institutional training, and extending the form into digital audio and corporate contexts that the earlier generation of Chicago improvisers did not occupy.

Adam Dow

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Adam McKay

Adam McKay (born 1968) is a writer, director, and co-founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade ensemble who moved from Chicago improv training through Saturday Night Live head writer to a film career that produced both broad studio comedies and Academy Award-winning political satire. He trained at ImprovOlympic and The Second City under Del Close in the early 1990s, co-founded UCB with Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, and Matt Walsh, and brought long-form improv disciplines into the SNL writers' room before shifting toward film. His trajectory demonstrates how the Chicago improv pipeline fed into network television writing and, from there, into studio filmmaking.

Adam Meggido

Adam Meggido (born 1970) is an English writer, performer, director, and teacher based in London who co-created Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, the first improvised show to win an Olivier Award. He has served as Artistic Director of Extempore Theatre, Head of Foundation at LAMDA from 2007 to 2016, and directed for Mischief Theatre including the West End and Broadway productions of Peter Pan Goes Wrong. He produced and directed the London 50 Hour Improvathon beginning in 2008 and holds an unofficial world record for directing long-form improvisation, a 55-hour Soapathon in Toronto in 2013. His book Improv Beyond Rules: A Practical Guide to Narrative Improvisation was published by Nick Hern Books in 2019.

Aisha Tyler

Aisha Tyler (born 1970) is a performer, host, actress, stand-up comedian, director, and podcaster who has hosted Whose Line Is It Anyway? on the CW since 2013. Her path to the improv world ran through stand-up comedy and television hosting rather than through a formal improv training program, but her hosting of one of the most widely seen improv formats in American television history makes her an important figure in the public presentation of improvisation. She has also been a sustained advocate for improv's values of listening, specificity, and spontaneous creative decision-making in interviews and public talks.

American

Alain Rostain

Alain Rostain is an applied improvisation practitioner, innovation consultant, and co-founder of the Applied Improvisation Network (AIN), the primary international organization connecting practitioners who use improvisation principles in business, education, healthcare, and organizational development contexts. He co-founded the AIN in 2002 alongside Paul Z Jackson and Michael Rosenburg and played a central organizational role in establishing the network's early infrastructure, including its mailing list, newsletter, and inaugural conference in San Diego. His consulting practice, Creative Advantage, brought improvisation methods to more than thirty Fortune 500 companies.

American

Alan Arkin

Alan Arkin (1934-2023) was an actor, director, and writer who came to national prominence through The Second City and went on to an Academy Award-winning film career spanning more than six decades. He joined the Second City ensemble in Chicago in 1960 after working with the Compass Players in St. Louis, performed in landmark early revues alongside Severn Darden, Barbara Harris, and Paul Sand, and brought the company's improvisational character work to New York in the revue From the Second City in 1961. His subsequent Tony Award win on Broadway and Oscar win for Little Miss Sunshine established him as one of the most formally distinguished performers to emerge from the American improv and sketch tradition.

Alan Myerson

Alan Myerson (born 1936) is a theatre and television director who co-founded The Committee, the politically satirical improvisational troupe that operated in San Francisco's North Beach from 1963 to 1972. A Second City alumnus who directed the company's second ensemble in Chicago, Myerson brought the improv-revue model to San Francisco and shaped it toward explicitly political and activist content, creating one of the most historically distinct improvisational companies in American comedy history. He subsequently directed more than two hundred television episodes for major network series and made his feature film debut with Steelyard Blues, starring Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda.

Canadian

Alanis Morissette

Alanis Morissette participated in the Canadian Improv Games during her high school years in Ottawa, Ontario, acquiring foundational ensemble performance experience through competitive improvisational theatre before pursuing a career in music. She became one of the most commercially successful singer-songwriters of the 1990s, and her connection to the Games represents one of the more prominent examples of competitive youth improv producing a major figure whose primary career developed outside the comedy and theatre world.

Alex Prichodko

Alex Prichodko is a Chicago-based improv performer, teacher, and co-founder of Logan Square Improv, the first dedicated improv theatre established west of the established Lincoln Park and Lakeview corridor in Chicago. Founded with co-founder Andrew Lemna in November 2018, Logan Square Improv operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and has become one of the city's most celebrated independent improv venues, winning the Chicago Reader's Best New Theater Company award in 2019 and earning consistent recognition as a finalist for Best Venue for Improv in the years that followed.

Alexis Simpson

Alexis Simpson is a Philadelphia-born performer, director, writer, and comedy educator who co-founded the Philly Improv Theater (PHIT) in 2005 and served as its inaugural Artistic Director beginning in 2008, making her one of the architects of Philadelphia's organized improv training infrastructure. She subsequently relocated to Los Angeles, where she has built a parallel career as a television actress and as a performer, director, and staff writer with Story Pirates, the children's comedy ensemble whose podcast has accumulated over eighty-five million downloads. Her career spans more than two decades of ensemble improv work across Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Ali Al Sayed

Ali Al Sayed is a comedian and comedy educator based in Dubai who co-founded Dubomedy Arts, a comedy and urban arts training program in the UAE. He has performed at international festivals including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, and the Muslim Funny Fest. Al Sayed has worked as a comedy coach and instructor, conducting workshops regionally and abroad, and co-produced the DUBOMEDY International Performing Arts Festival in 2010 and 2011.

Ali Farahnakian

Ali Farahnakian is a New York-based improv performer, teacher, and founder of The People's Improv Theater (The PIT), which he established in New York City on December 6, 2002, as a tribute to his mentor Del Close. A founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade ensemble in Chicago, a writer on Saturday Night Live's 25th anniversary season, and a graduate of ImprovOlympic under Del Close, Farahnakian built The PIT into one of New York's significant independent improv training institutions, with notable alumni including Ellie Kemper, Kristen Schaal, and Hannibal Buress.

Alison Goldie

Alison Goldie is a British actor, director, facilitator, and writer whose improv career spans four decades of ensemble work and teaching in the United Kingdom and internationally. A co-founder of Spontaneous Combustion (1988), one of the earliest British companies dedicated to full-length improvised plays, and co-founder with Kath Burlinson of The Weird Sisters theatre company (1996), which won major fringe awards in Canada, Australia, and the United States, Goldie has also published 'The Improv Book: Improvisation for Theatre, Comedy, Education and Life' (Oberon Books, 2015; second edition Methuen Drama, 2022), one of the most comprehensive British texts on improv practice.

Amber Ruffin

Amber Ruffin began her improv career in Omaha, Nebraska in 2001, performing in local theater and improv productions before relocating to Chicago after meeting iO Theater co-owner Charna Halpern. She completed her training at iO Theater, then moved to Amsterdam in 2008 to perform and write with Boom Chicago. Upon returning to the United States, she performed with The Second City in both Denver and Chicago, building the comedic foundation that led to her career in television writing and hosting.

Amey Goerlich

Amey Goerlich is a New York-trained improv performer, director, teacher, and co-founder of Chaos Bloom Theater in Denver, Colorado, where she serves as Training Center Director and Co-Creative Director. A long-form improviser at UCB New York from 2001 to 2016 and co-creator of the Krompf form, she subsequently founded Improv Training Hub and E-MPROV.COM, an early online improv training platform, before relocating to Denver and building Chaos Bloom into one of the city's most recognized independent improv venues. The theatre won Best Intimate Improv Club in the 2024 Denver Westword Best of Denver awards.

Amy Poehler

Amy Poehler (born 1971) is a performer, writer, producer, and co-founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre whose career runs from training under Del Close in Chicago through SNL, Parks and Recreation, and decades of sustained creative leadership in American comedy. She trained at iO and The Second City in the early 1990s, helped found the UCB ensemble in 1996, and built a long-form improv institution in New York that became one of the defining training pipelines of the following generation. Her importance to improv history begins well before her television career and extends through the institutional infrastructure she helped create.

Ana Gasteyer

Ana Gasteyer trained with The Groundlings, the Los Angeles improv and sketch comedy group, which led directly to her joining Saturday Night Live in 1996. She served as a repertory cast member for six seasons through 2002, developing original characters such as the folk singer Cinder Calhoun, the suburban music teacher Bobbie Mohan-Culp, and NPR host Margaret Jo McCullen, alongside celebrity impressions of Martha Stewart and Celine Dion. Her work at The Groundlings represents her foundational training in improvisational performance before her transition to television, film, and Broadway.

Andrea Martin

Andrea Martin (born 1947) is a Canadian-American actress, comedian, and writer whose career spans Second City Toronto, SCTV, two Tony Award wins on Broadway, and sustained film and television work across five decades. She joined the Second City Toronto Mainstage in 1975 and became a core cast member and writer on Second City Television from 1976 to 1984, creating characters including Edith Prickley and Edna Boil and winning two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing. Her career documents how the Canadian improv and sketch pipeline, rooted in Second City Toronto, produced performers who sustained careers at the highest levels of theatrical and screen performance.

Andrew Alexander

Andrew Alexander is a producer and institutional builder who took control of The Second City Toronto in 1974 and became co-owner of The Second City Chicago in 1985, leading both institutions for nearly five decades. During his tenure he produced hundreds of revues, executive produced more than 150 hours of SCTV television, and oversaw the expansion of Second City's training and performance operations into multiple cities. His contribution to improv history is primarily infrastructural: he built and sustained the institutions that trained and launched generations of performers, and he extended the Second City brand through a television format, SCTV, that gave the ensemble its widest North American reach.

Andrew Berkowitz

Andrew Berkowitz is a Portland-based improv performer, director, teacher, author, and applied improv practitioner whose career has been anchored at ComedySportz Portland, where he served as Artistic Director and later Artistic Director Emeritus. A Stanford University graduate and former journalist, he has authored 'You Can Teach Improv (Yes, You!)', a comprehensive guide to improv pedagogy, 'Reffing ComedySportz: The Ultimate Guide to Whistling While You Work', and co-authored 'The ComedySportz Games Manual.' He has taught applied improvisation for business at major technology conferences including O'Reilly's OSCON in Portland and Amsterdam and has facilitated training for companies across multiple industries.

Andrew Duncan

Andrew Duncan (1927-2022) was a Chicago-born actor and comedian who performed at three of American improv's foundational institutions: the Playwrights Theatre Club, the Compass Players from their opening night in July 1955, and The Second City as a charter member in December 1959. Sheldon Patinkin, the most authoritative historian of the Chicago improv tradition, identified Duncan as 'the quintessential straight man and interviewer at both The Compass and Second City.' He subsequently appeared on Broadway in 'From the Second City' (1961), in films by Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Zemeckis, and is most widely known to general audiences as Jim Carr, the extravagant broadcaster in George Roy Hill's 'Slap Shot' (1977).

Andrew Eninger

Andy Eninger is a Chicago-trained performer, director, teacher, and curriculum designer who co-founded GayCo Productions (1996), co-founded The Playground Theater in Chicago, served as Head of the Writing Program at the Second City Training Center from 2011 to 2016, and created the Sybil solo improv format, which he has taught and performed internationally across North America, London, Amsterdam, and Toronto. A graduate of Miami University and the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, he is also the founder of Fairplay Communications, an applied improv and learning design firm that served major corporate clients for over two decades before merging with The Nova Collective in 2025.

Andrew Lemna

Andrew Lemna is a Chicago-based improv performer, teacher, and co-founder of Logan Square Improv, which he established in November 2018 with Alex Prichodko as the first dedicated improv theatre in Chicago's Avondale and Logan Square neighborhoods. Trained at iO Theater, The Second City, and The Annoyance Theatre after relocating to Chicago from Indiana, Lemna co-built Logan Square Improv into one of the city's most recognized independent improv venues, known for its five-dollar ticket prices, accessible class fees, and community-centered booking model.

Andrew M. Spragge

Andrew M. Spragge is a Western New York improv performer, teacher, and author who co-founded Defiant Monkey Improv with Karen L. Eichler in 2009, establishing what was at the time the only two-person shortform improv duo in the Buffalo-Niagara region. Based at the Kenan Center's Taylor Theater in Lockport, New York, Spragge and Eichler developed a decade-plus body of work that included the long-running improvised soap opera 'Solomon's River,' an award-winning improvised radio drama for blind and low-sight audiences, and three published books on improv pedagogy, including 'The Big Book of Improv Games' (2021), a 460-page compilation of more than five hundred games endorsed by ComedySportz founder Dick Chudnow.

Andrew Moskos

Andrew Moskos is a Chicago-born improv performer, director, and co-founder of Boom Chicago, the English-language improv comedy theatre he established in Amsterdam in 1993 with childhood friend and Northwestern classmate Pep Rosenfeld and fellow Northwestern graduate Ken Schaefle. Over thirty years, Boom Chicago became the most internationally prominent American-tradition improv theatre outside the United States, launching the careers of Seth Meyers, Jordan Peele, Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, Amber Ruffin, and Kay Cannon, among dozens of others who collectively contributed to approximately fifty television productions. Moskos co-authored 'Boom Chicago Presents the 30 Most Important Years in Dutch History' (Akashic Books, 2023), with forewords by Seth Meyers and Jordan Peele.

Canadian

Andrew Phung

Andrew Phung is a Calgary-born actor, improviser, writer, and producer of Chinese-Vietnamese descent who trained at the Loose Moose Theatre Company in Calgary under Keith Johnstone's Theatresports tradition from age sixteen, eventually becoming a Senior Ensemble Performer and Instructor. He rose to national prominence in Canada through five seasons of the CBC sitcom 'Kim's Convenience' (2016-2021), for which he won five consecutive Canadian Screen Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, and subsequently co-created and starred in 'Run the Burbs' (2022-2024), winning a Canadian Screen Award for Best Lead Performer in a Comedy Series. He has won eight Canadian Screen Awards in total.

Angus Sampson

Angus Sampson is a Sydney-born actor, writer, director, and improviser who trained in Theatresports at The Comedy Store in Petersham during the late 1990s and became Australia's most frequently appearing guest performer on Thank God You're Here (Network 10, 2006-2009), accumulating eleven appearances across four seasons and winning the Season 1 finale. His subsequent international screen career includes Bear Gerhardt in the acclaimed Fargo Season 2 (FX, 2015), co-creator credit on the Insidious horror franchise alongside Leigh Whannell, co-writer and co-director of The Mule (2014), a role in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and ongoing series work in Bump (Stan/Amazon Prime, 2021-2025) and The Lincoln Lawyer (Netflix, 2022-present).

Anna Preminger

Anna Preminger is the founder, director, lead performer, and primary instructor of Improv Theater Israel (Teatron HaImprov), established in Tel Aviv in 2007, and is widely credited with introducing long-form improvisation to Israel as a sustained institutional practice. She trained at the People's Improv Theater, Magnet Theater, and Annoyance Theater in New York and at iO Theater in Chicago, and studied directly with Keith Johnstone, before returning to Israel to establish the country's first and leading improvisation school and ensemble. Improv Theater Israel performs regularly at Habima (Israel's national theater) and Tzavta Theater in Tel Aviv, and Preminger organizes the Tel Aviv International Improv Festival, which by 2022 had reached at least four editions.

Anne Libera

Anne Libera is a Chicago-based comedy educator, director, and author who has been affiliated with The Second City since 1986 and has taught in the Second City Training Center since 1991. She served as Executive Artistic Director of the Second City Training Centers and Education Programs from 2001 to 2009, during which she created the Training Center's youth program, summer camp, directing program, and musical improv program. She holds the rank of Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago, where she created the Comedy Writing and Performance BA, the first degree program of its kind in the United States. She is the author of The Second City Almanac of Improvisation (Northwestern University Press, 2004) and Funnier: A New Theory for the Practice of Comedy (Northwestern University Press, 2025).

Anthony King

Anthony King is a writer, director, and performer who served as Artistic Director of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York from 2005 to 2011, performing on the Harold teams Dillinger and Reuben Williams alongside performers including Zach Woods, Lennon Parham, Joe Wengert, Charlie Todd, and Katie Dippold. He co-wrote Gutenberg! The Musical! with Scott Brown, which originated at UCB around 2003, won the NY Musical Theatre Festival Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre Writing for Book, and reached Broadway in 2023. His book for Beetlejuice The Musical (2019, co-written with Scott Brown, music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect) received a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical. His television career encompasses Broad City, Silicon Valley (writer and co-executive producer), and The Afterparty (Apple TV+, 2022-2023, showrunner and executive producer).

Anthony Leblanc

Anthony LeBlanc is a Chicago-based improv performer, writer, director, and educator who trained at iO Theater (ImprovOlympic) before joining The Second City, where he wrote and performed in two Jeff Award-recommended Mainstage revues in 2009 and subsequently directed productions for Second City's main and e.t.c. stages, including a Kennedy Center touring production and a Woolly Mammoth Theatre collaboration nominated for the Helen Hayes Award for Best New Work. He served as Associate Artistic Director and Artistic Director of The Second City Training Center and was appointed Interim Executive Producer of The Second City in June 2020 following the resignation of co-owner Andrew Alexander amid allegations of institutionalized racism. He has also taught at Columbia College Chicago's Comedy Writing and Performance program and has been a public advocate for racial equity and neurodiversity in comedy institutions.

Ari Voukidis

Ari Voukidis is a Boston-born writer, improviser, actor, and teacher who joined the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in 1997 and spent eleven years performing on Harold Night house teams, including Pound and multiple iterations of DeCoster, while teaching at UCB in New York and Los Angeles for more than twenty years. He co-created Wicked F***in' Queeyah, an annual Del Close Marathon ensemble show, with Amy Poehler and Rob Corddry. His sketch duo Mark and Ari, with partner Mark Sarian, received a Time Out New York Critic's Pick for their show Loft at UCB Chelsea and produced a comedy short directed by John Landis that appeared on The Tonight Show. His writing credits include SNL's Weekend Update and Ring Nation with Wanda Sykes (120 episodes).

Armando Diaz

Armando Diaz is a Harvey, Illinois-born improviser, director, and teacher who trained at ImprovOlympic under Del Close, at the Annoyance Theatre under Mick Napier, and through the Second City Conservatory before becoming a central figure in the development of long-form improvisation in both Chicago and New York. He is the namesake of The Armando Diaz Experience, Theatrical Movement and Hootenanny, a monologue-driven long-form show that premiered at iO Chicago in 1995 with a founding cast including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, Rachel Dratch, Neil Flynn, Adam McKay, and David Koechner. The show ran every Monday night at iO Chicago for decades and is cited as the longest-running improv show in history. The Armando format it established directly influenced ASSSSCAT at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Diaz co-founded the Magnet Theater in New York in 2005 and remains its co-owner and primary director.

Arthur Simone

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Asaf Ronen

Asaf Ronen is a New York and Austin-based improv director, teacher, and author who began performing improvisation in 1990 and subsequently worked with NY Theatresports and NY ComedySportz before developing a long-form practice rooted in Annoyance Theatre methodology. He founded YESand.com in 1999 and published Directing Improv: Show the Way by Getting Out of the Way in 2005, one of the few books in the improv literature specifically addressed to directors and coaches rather than performers. He relocated to Austin, Texas around 2006, where he served as Education Director of The Institution Theater for approximately eight years, as Conservatory Director of ColdTowne Theater, and as Producer and Education Director of the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival. He subsequently founded The Seed, his own Austin improv training studio. He produced Trust Us, This Is All Made Up, the 2009 documentary about improvisers TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi, which premiered at South by Southwest.

Augusto Boal

Augusto Boal (1931-2009) was the Brazilian theatre director, theorist, and political activist who created the Theatre of the Oppressed, a system of participatory theatrical forms that turned passive spectators into active collaborators and placed improvisation at the center of democratic, educational, and anti-oppression practice. Although his work sits partly outside mainstream comedy improv, it is indispensable to the field's history because he expanded the horizon of what audience participation, improvised intervention, and collective performance could mean. His core forms, including Forum Theatre, Image Theatre, and Invisible Theatre, spread across six continents and became foundational to applied theatre, community performance, and socially engaged practice worldwide.

American

Barbara Harris

Barbara Harris (born July 25, 1935, Evanston, Illinois; died August 21, 2018, Scottsdale, Arizona) was an actress, improviser, and founding cast member of The Second City, where she was the first performer to appear on stage on opening night, December 16, 1959, singing Everybody's in the Know. She participated in Viola Spolin's theater game workshops at the Playwrights Theatre Club under Paul Sills in 1952 and was a member of the Compass Players from 1955 to 1958, the first professional improvisational theatre company in the United States. Her subsequent Broadway career produced three Tony Award nominations (1962, 1966, and 1967), with a win for Best Actress in a Musical for The Apple Tree (1966-1967), directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring Alan Alda. Her film career generated four Golden Globe nominations and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971).

Becky Duncan

Becky Duncan is a Chicago improv performer who appears in the archive in connection with the Chicago comedy scene of the 2000s and 2010s. No verifiable public biographical record documenting her specific training, ensemble history, or institutional affiliations has been located.

Ben Bowman

Ben Bowman is a Chicago-based improv performer, director, teacher, and journalist who trained at Second City, iO Chicago, and the Annoyance Theatre while simultaneously building an Emmy-winning career in television news production. At iO he performed on Harold teams Whiskey Rebellion and ButchMAX, and he later joined Under the Gun Theater where he hosted the long-running Porn Minus Porn and created the Power Up diversity program. His parallel career as a television news producer at NBC Chicago earned him two Emmy Awards, and he has written extensively about improv theory and pedagogy.

Ben Burris

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Ben Huack

Ben Hauck is a New York-based actor, improviser, and author whose 2012 book Long-Form Improv: The Complete Guide to Creating Characters, Sustaining Scenes, and Performing Extraordinary Harolds established him as one of the leading published authorities on Harold technique and long-form structure. Trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, he coached the ensemble Devil's Dancebelt from 2002 to 2006 and has taught long-form improv in New York, Toronto, and London. As stand-in for John Oliver on HBO's Last Week Tonight for eleven seasons, he was honored four times by the Television Academy.

Ben Schwartz

Ben Schwartz is a New York-born actor, comedian, writer, and improviser whose work spans television, film, voice acting, and live long-form performance. He trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre beginning in 2003 and performed on four Harold teams there, co-founded the sketch and improv team Hot Sauce, and built a parallel career as a television writer before breaking through as Jean-Ralphio Saperstein on Parks and Recreation. He is the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog in the film series bearing that character's name. In September 2023 he sold out Radio City Music Hall with Ben Schwartz and Friends, the first long-form improv show to headline that venue.

Bernie Sahlins

Bernie Sahlins (1922-2013) was the producer, director, and co-founder of The Second City who transformed Chicago improvisation from an experimental breakthrough into one of the most durable comedy institutions in North America. A University of Chicago graduate who had already produced at the Studebaker Theatre and co-founded Playwrights Theatre Club, Sahlins invested the initial capital to open The Second City on North Wells Street in December 1959 alongside Paul Sills and Howard Alk, then stewarded the company through its most consequential decades of growth. Under his watch, Second City launched the careers of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, John Candy, Martin Short, and Tina Fey, developed the Toronto company that produced SCTV, and established the producing model that Andrew Alexander extended after purchasing the company in 1985.

Beth Melewski

Beth Melewski is a Milwaukee-born actress, improviser, writer, applied improv facilitator, and Licensed Professional Counselor who spent more than twenty years at the center of the Chicago comedy scene. A Second City ensemble member, iO Chicago performer, and ComedySportz alumna across three cities, she wrote and performed in three Jeff Award-recognized Second City productions and hosted Cash Cab: Chicago on Discovery Channel. She co-founded the Super Human Collective, a Chicago female-owned applied improv business, and completed a master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2023.

Betsy Stover

Betsy Stover is a Minneapolis-born improviser, actress, writer, director, and teacher who has been a central figure at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre since 1997. She trained with all four UCB founders and studied under Mick Napier, Armando Diaz, Susan Messing, and Joe Bill, performing on six Harold Night teams including Wormhole, Cowbot, Ice-Nine, Valupack, DeCoster, and T.R.U.C.K.S. Amy Poehler served as her formative early influence and later as a professional mentor. She taught at UCB for over two decades and co-hosted recurring shows including Form Night and Hot for Teacher with her husband, fellow UCB performer Ari Voukydis.

Bill Arnett

Bill Arnett is a Chicago-based improv teacher, director, and performer whose twelve-year tenure on the iO Chicago faculty and eighteen months as iO Training Center Director established him as one of the institution's leading pedagogical figures. A member of the iO house team People of Earth from 1998 to 2003 and co-founder of Chicago Improv Studio in 2014, Arnett published The Complete Improviser in 2017 and originated the widely circulated Experience Graph model of performer development. His teaching is grounded in a naturalistic philosophy that prioritizes realistic human behavior over improv convention.

Bill McLaughlin

Will McLaughlin, who appears in the archive as Bill McLaughlin, is a Syracuse-born actor, improviser, and teacher who trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York beginning in 2001, performed on five Harold Night teams across both coasts, and relocated to Los Angeles in 2006 to join UCB's new west coast theatre. A Meisner-trained actor, he performed on the New York teams Police Chief Rumble, America, Grenade vs. Washing Machine, and Renegade 77 before moving to Los Angeles, where he performed with Gravy and Hey, Uncle Gary! and co-founded Rough Cut, an improvised movie form ensemble. He teaches the Movie Form at the UCB Training Center in Los Angeles and has appeared in Parks and Recreation, Superstore, Wrecked, The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and A Man on the Inside.

American

Bill Murray

Bill Murray is one of the most commercially successful and critically recognized performers to emerge from the American improv tradition. Born William James Murray on September 21, 1950, in Evanston, Illinois, he trained and performed at The Second City in Chicago beginning in 1973, where he was directed by Del Close and worked alongside John Candy and Betty Thomas. After the National Lampoon Radio Hour and Off-Broadway National Lampoon Show brought him to New York, he joined Saturday Night Live in 1977, where he remained through 1980 and won an Emmy Award for writing. His film career, spanning Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Lost in Translation (for which he received an Academy Award nomination), and collaborations with Wes Anderson, established him as among the defining screen presences of American comedy over five decades. He received the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2016.

Billy Merritt

Billy Merritt is a UCB performer, teacher, director, and theorist who has been affiliated with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre since it opened in New York in 1996. He trained under all four UCB founders and performed on multiple Harold Night teams in New York during the theater's Solo Arts Group era, co-founding the celebrated ensemble The Swarm and later co-founding The Stepfathers with Michael Delaney, Chris Gethard, Bobby Moynihan, and Zach Woods. He relocated to Los Angeles, where he performed on Hey, Uncle Gary! and co-founded The Smokes. As a theorist and teacher, Merritt developed the Pirate Robot Ninja taxonomy of improviser archetypes, which he formalized in the book Pirate Robot Ninja: An Improv Fable (2019, co-authored with Will Hines). He has created multiple long-form formats at UCB and has been credited as one of the theater's foundational teaching figures. His television credits include Reno 911!, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Recreation, and voice work on Steven Universe.

Blaine Swen

Blaine Swen is the creator and director of The Improvised Shakespeare Company, an ensemble he founded in Chicago in 2005 that performs fully improvised plays in the style and language of Shakespeare. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Loyola University Chicago, where he was studying when he began developing the company alongside actor Thomas Middleditch. After performing five inaugural shows at Donny's Skybox, The Second City's student theater, he was invited by Charna Halpern to bring the show to iO Chicago in 2006, where it became a long-running fixture. Swen's iO Chicago credits include the two-person ensemble Blessing with Susan Messing, the house team Bullet Lounge, the one-man improvised musical BASH!, The Armando Diaz Experience, The Deltones, and Challenger. Chicago Reader named him Best Improviser in Chicago in 2010. The Improvised Shakespeare Company expanded to Los Angeles and tours nationally, with appearances at the Kennedy Center, Bonnaroo, and the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal.

Bob Dassie

Bob Dassie is a Chicago-born improviser, performer, and teacher who trained at iO Chicago beginning in the early 1990s and has remained active across iO Chicago, iO West, UCB New York, and UCB Los Angeles. He performed on multiple iO ensembles including The Armando Diaz Experience and Baby Wants Candy, and formed Dasariski, a critically recognized long-form trio, with Rich Talarico and Craig Cackowski, whom he met at iO in 1992. With his wife, comedian and MADtv alumna Stephnie Weir, he created WeirDass, a two-person show developed at iO West in Los Angeles. His television credits include Community (NBC), Review (Comedy Central), The Comedians (FX), and The Spoils of Babylon (IFC). He has taught at iO Chicago, iO West, UCB, and the WGImprov School, and has led workshops across North America, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.

Bob Hollister

Bob Hollister is an actor and improv performer whose presence in the public record is limited to a Facebook actor profile and general web listings. No biographical detail, institutional affiliation, or performance history has been identified through the sources available for this entry.

Bob Odenkirk

Bob Odenkirk is a comedian, actor, writer, and director who trained at the Players Workshop of The Second City in Chicago and performed on the Second City Mainstage in 1990 before building a career as one of American alternative comedy's defining figures. Born October 22, 1962, in Berwyn, Illinois, and raised in Naperville, he studied at Southern Illinois University Carbondale before relocating to Chicago to pursue comedy. He joined Saturday Night Live as a staff writer in 1987, winning an Emmy Award for writing in 1989. He co-created and starred in Mr. Show with Bob and David, the HBO sketch series he developed with David Cross that ran from 1995 to 1998 and became a landmark of alternative comedy. His screen acting career expanded substantially with his recurring role as corrupt attorney Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad beginning in 2009 and his starring role in the AMC prequel series Better Call Saul from 2015 to 2022, for which he received six Primetime Emmy nominations. He received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2022 and published a New York Times bestselling memoir, Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama, the same year.

American

Bob Orvis

Bob Orvis, known as Orvy, is a Milwaukee-based comedian, improviser, and co-founder of ComedySportz, the competitive improv format he helped establish in 1984 alongside Dick Chudnow, Karen Kolberg, and Brian Green. The inaugural performance took place in September 1984 at Kalt's Restaurant on Oakland Avenue in Milwaukee. Orvis performed in over 7,000 ComedySportz shows across his career and booked more than 15,000 road shows for ComedySportz Milwaukee, serving as co-owner of the Milwaukee franchise for approximately 25 years. A former writer for radio and advertising, he contributed to the organizational growth of ComedySportz from a single Milwaukee venue to a national franchise network with affiliates in cities across the United States.

Bobbi Block

Bobbi Block is a Philadelphia-based theater artist, improviser, educator, and applied improv facilitator who co-founded ComedySportz Philadelphia in 1991 and co-founded LunchLady Doris, described as Philadelphia's first long-form improv company. She holds two bachelor's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. in Theater from Villanova University, and trained in improvisation at iO Chicago, The Annoyance Theatre, and UCB New York. She founded Tongue and Groove Spontaneous Theater in 2007, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2017. She has served as an adjunct professor at Temple University and Drexel University, as a faculty member at Wharton Executive Education, and as a facilitator with the Ariel Group for more than twenty years, working with Fortune 500 companies across multiple industries. The Philadelphia City Paper named her the actress who will lead improvisation to the promised land in 2008.

Brad Sherwood

Brad Sherwood is an improv performer, comedian, and actor who trained with Theater Sports Los Angeles and Second City Los Angeles before becoming a series regular on the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which aired on ABC from 1998 to 2007. Born Bradley Sherwood on November 24, 1964, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he earned a BFA in Acting from Wright State University in 1986. He first appeared on the British Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1992 and has since 2003 co-headlined a two-person touring show with Colin Mochrie, originally titled An Evening with Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood and subsequently called Scared Scriptless and Asking for Trouble, which has toured the United States, Canada, India, Australia, and New Zealand. His additional television credits include a recurring role on L.A. Law, The Newz, Drew Carey's Green Screen Show, and Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza.

Brandy Sullivan

Brandy Sullivan is an American improv performer, director, teacher, and co-founder of Theatre 99, Charleston, South Carolina's premier improvisational comedy venue. Together with co-artistic director Greg Tavares, Sullivan co-founded The Have Nots! Comedy Improv Company in 1995 and Theatre 99 in 2000, building the foundational institutions of Charleston's comedy and improv community over three decades.

Brendan Hunt

Brendan Hunt is an American actor, writer, comedian, and producer who spent a decade as a regular writer and performer with Boom Chicago, an Amsterdam-based comedy and improvisational troupe, where he served as head writer for the Comedy Central (Netherlands) satirical news program CCN and performed alongside Jason Sudeikis, Jordan Peele, and Seth Meyers. During his time with Boom Chicago, he co-wrote and co-starred in two Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows: Iconic Yanks with Meyers and Here Comes the Neighborhood with Peele. He later co-created the Apple TV+ comedy series Ted Lasso, for which the concept originated from NBC Sports promos he helped co-write with Sudeikis in 2013, and in which he portrays assistant coach Beard.

Brennan Lee Mulligan

Brennan Lee Mulligan is a performer, writer, and game master born January 4, 1988, in New York City, who trained and performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York before becoming the creator, executive producer, and permanent Dungeon Master of Dimension 20, a Dungeons and Dragons actual-play series produced by Dropout. He is the son of stand-up comedian Joe Mulligan and science fiction author and comic book writer Elaine Lee. He was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons at age nine by his mother, was gamemastering by age ten, and spent much of his adolescence as a story writer, performer, and counselor at The Wayfinder Experience, a live-action role-playing camp in upstate New York. He earned a BFA in screenwriting from the School of Visual Arts in 2009 and performed on Harold Night and with the UCB Touring Company before joining CollegeHumor in 2017. Dimension 20 launched in 2018 with the campaign Fantasy High and moved to the Dropout streaming platform in 2019, where nine Intrepid Heroes campaigns had aired as of 2025.

Brett Lyons

Brett Lyons is a Chicago-based improv comedian who trained at iO Chicago, The Second City, and The Annoyance Theatre and has performed on iO Chicago's mainstage team Deep Schwa and in the current-events improv show Whirled News Tonight, which has run weekly on Saturday nights since September 2003. He has toured with The Second City aboard Norwegian Cruise Lines ships and performed at the ImprovAcadia festival in Bar Harbor, Maine in 2008 and 2011. He is a recurring performer on the podcast Hello from the Magic Tavern, voicing the character Hungho, and co-hosts The Word Association podcast with Adal Rifai and Rob White. He serves as Co-Treasurer at Broadway In Chicago and has taught improv at Improv Cincinnati.

American

Brian Green

Brian Green is a Milwaukee-based comedian, improviser, and co-founder of ComedySportz, the competitive improv format he helped establish in September 1984 alongside Dick Chudnow, Karen Kolberg, and Bob Orvis. The first ComedySportz show took place at Kalt's Restaurant on Oakland Avenue in Milwaukee. Green has maintained a continuous performing presence with ComedySportz Milwaukee from the organization's founding onward and is described in Milwaukee press as a veteran of both improv and stand-up comedy. The Shepherd Express has recognized him as one of the veterans of the Milwaukee comedy scene. ComedySportz Milwaukee is located at 420 S. 1st Street in Milwaukee.

Brian Lazzaro

Brian Lazzaro is an improviser documented in the American improv community. No verified biographical record connecting him to a named theatre, ensemble, training program, or performing company has been located in any publicly available source consulted during research.

Brian Stack

Brian Stack is a comedy writer and performer from the Chicago improv tradition, best known as a staff writer and on-air character performer for Late Night with Conan O'Brien and the subsequent Conan programs across eighteen years. A product of iO Chicago's Harold era under Del Close and Charna Halpern, he performed on landmark ensembles including Jazz Freddy, Blue Velveeta, and Bouquet of Flesh before joining the Second City touring company and eventually transitioning to network television. He received five Writers Guild Awards and an Emmy Award during his television career, and joined The Late Show with Stephen Colbert as a writer in 2015. He has continued to perform monthly at UCB's Gravid Water show in New York.

Brian Wohl

Brian Wohl is a Chicago-trained improviser, stand-up comedian, and co-founding member of Octavarius, the independent improv group formed in April 2009 from alumni of Illinois State University's Improv Mafia program. Octavarius was voted Best Improv/Sketch Group by the Chicago Reader in 2011 and 2012. Wohl has served as the group's Vice President of Live Entertainment and has expanded his performing career into stand-up comedy and comedy music, opening for the band Lewberger and appearing as Flim Flam the Sausage Man in the sold-out Off Broadway musical Lewberger and The Wizard of Friendship. He co-hosts Smoke Show on the Try Guys channel.

Buck Henry

Buck Henry, born Henry Zuckerman on December 9, 1930, was an American writer, actor, and director whose career bridged the New York improvisational comedy scene of the early 1960s and the mainstream of American film and television. He co-founded The Premise, an off-Broadway satirical ensemble, before co-creating Get Smart with Mel Brooks and writing the screenplay for The Graduate. He co-wrote and co-directed Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty, receiving Oscar nominations in two categories. He hosted Saturday Night Live ten times between 1975 and 1980 and was the inaugural member of the program's Five-Timers Club. He died on January 8, 2020, in Los Angeles.

Butch Roy

Butch Roy is a Minneapolis-based improviser and producer who co-founded HUGE Improv Theater in 2005 alongside Jill Bernard, Nels Lennes, Joe Bozic, and Mike Fotis, establishing the Twin Cities' first dedicated longform improv venue, which opened at its Lyn-Lake location in 2010. He founded both Improv A Go-Go, a weekly all-improv showcase, in 2002 and the Twin Cities Improv Festival in 2006. He is a member of Five Man Job, one of the Twin Cities' longest-running improv groups. He resigned from HUGE in August 2023; the theater closed due to financial challenges in October 2024.

Cal DeBruyne

Cal DeBruyne is an improviser documented in the American improv community. No verified biographical record connecting him to a named theatre, ensemble, training program, or performing company has been located in publicly available sources consulted during research.

Cale Bain

Cale Bain is a Canadian-born improviser, director, educator, and academic based in Sydney, Australia, who has been performing and teaching improvisational comedy since 1988. He trained through the Second City Theatre Company in Toronto before relocating to Australia, where he became Director of Training at Impro Australia and co-founded Improv Theatre Sydney. He served as improv director for Foxtel's Australian adaptation of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and launched Sydney's first longform improv show, Full Body Contact No Love Tennis, which ran for nearly a decade. He holds a PhD in humour, journalism and discourse from the University of Technology Sydney, where he has conducted grant-funded applied improv research with refugee communities and university students.

Caleb McEwen

Caleb McEwen is an American comedian, writer, director, and performer who has served as Artistic Director of the Brave New Workshop Comedy Theatre in Minneapolis since 2001, making him one of the longest-tenured artistic leaders in American regional improv. He has written, directed, and performed in more than 100 productions at the Brave New Workshop across his tenure and has guided the institution through its 2022 acquisition by the Hennepin Theatre Trust, which preserved it as the nation's oldest continuously operating sketch and improv comedy theatre. He performs, teaches, and hosts corporate events internationally and toured as part of the physical comedy trio the Danger Committee.

Carmine Lucarelli

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Carol Schindler

Carol Schindler is a New York-based improviser, teacher, director, author, and corporate communication consultant who co-founded Chicago City Limits in 1977, one of the longest-running improv comedy shows in the United States. She trained under both Del Close, the director who developed the Harold at ImprovOlympic, and Paul Sills, the co-founder of The Compass Players, giving her a double lineage connecting the two foundational nodes of American improvisational comedy. Chicago City Limits relocated from Chicago to New York City in 1979 and has performed over 10,000 shows across its history. Schindler has additionally built a parallel career in corporate communication training, applied improv facilitation, and science communication pedagogy.

Catherine O'Hara

Catherine Anne O'Hara (March 4, 1954 - January 30, 2026) was a Canadian-American actress, comedian, and writer who emerged from Second City Toronto in the mid-1970s to become one of the most celebrated comedy performers of her generation. As a core cast member and writer on Second City Television (SCTV), she originated iconic characters including Lola Heatherton and Dusty Towne and won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 1982 and 1983. She appeared in six Christopher Guest mockumentaries and major studio films including Beetlejuice, Home Alone, and The Nightmare Before Christmas before winning the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her portrayal of Moira Rose in Schitt's Creek in 2020. She received no formal theatrical training; her craft developed entirely through live improv and ensemble performance at Second City Toronto.

Celia Pacquola

Celia Pacquola (born February 12, 1983) is an Australian stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television host from Victoria's Yarra Valley. She co-created and starred in the ABC comedy series Rosehaven, which received 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes for its first season, and has won Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, a Helpmann Award, and a Golden Logie nomination for her performing work. She is the host of the revived Thank God You're Here on Network Ten, Australia's nationally broadcast improvised comedy format. While she is not a graduate of a formal improv institution in the iO, UCB, or Second City tradition, her work hosting a long-running improvised television format and her university training in drama have engaged her directly with improv performance practice.

American

Charlie Todd

Charlie Todd (born c. 1979, Columbia, South Carolina) is the founder of Improv Everywhere, the New York City-based public performance collective that has staged over 100 large-scale surprise performances since 2001 and accumulated more than half a billion YouTube views. He trained at the UCB Theatre in New York and performed on multiple UCB Harold Night house teams. He is widely credited as a pioneer of the flash mob genre and as a codifier of participatory public comedy as a documented performance art. His 2008 Frozen Grand Central mission, in which more than 200 performers simultaneously froze for five minutes in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal, became a defining viral video event of early YouTube. He authored Causing a Scene (HarperCollins, 2009) and delivered a widely circulated TED Talk in 2011.

Charna Halpern

Charna Halpern (born 1952) is the Chicago producer, teacher, and institution-builder who co-founded ImprovOlympic with Del Close in 1981 and built it into iO Theater, the central Chicago home of long-form improvisation for four decades. Working first in David Shepherd's competition-based framework and then in sustained partnership with Close, Halpern provided the organizational structure, training curriculum, and institutional continuity that transformed the Harold from a workshop experiment into the dominant form in American long-form improv. She co-authored Truth in Comedy (1994) with Close and Kim Howard Johnson, trained Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Chris Farley, and Mike Myers, and facilitated the team pairings that launched the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Cheri Oteri

Cheri Oteri is an American actress and comedian who trained with The Groundlings in Los Angeles before joining Saturday Night Live as a cast member from 1995 to 2000. At SNL she created original recurring characters including Arianna the Spartan cheerleader (paired with Will Ferrell) and delivered impressions of figures such as Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, and Judge Judy. Her work on the show earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. She has continued to perform improv and appear in film and television since departing SNL.

Chip Esten

Chip Esten, born Charles Esten Puskar III on September 9, 1965, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an American actor, comedian, and musician best known as a recurring performer on both the British and American editions of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and as Deacon Claybourne in the ABC and CMT drama Nashville. His improv work is distinguished by musical improvisation: he was among the most accomplished improv singers associated with the Whose Line format, frequently partnered with Wayne Brady in musical games. He has performed over 170 times at the Grand Ole Opry and holds a Guinness World Record for releasing 54 original songs in 54 consecutive weeks.

American

Chris Farley

Christopher Crosby Farley (February 15, 1964 - December 18, 1997) was one of the most celebrated physical comedians of his generation, a product of iO Theater's Harold tradition under Del Close and Second City Chicago's sketch training who became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1995. He originated iconic SNL characters including Matt Foley, the motivational speaker who lived in a van down by the river, and the superfan Todd O'Connor of Bill Swerski's Superfans, and starred in feature films including Tommy Boy, Black Sheep, and Beverly Hills Ninja before his death from acute intoxication at age 33. He is widely regarded as a central figure in the Chicago improv-to-network-television pipeline of the early 1990s.

Chris Hannay

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Chris Kattan

Chris Kattan is an American actor and comedian who trained and performed with The Groundlings, a Los Angeles-based improvisational theater troupe, where he developed early versions of characters including Mr. Peepers in collaboration with Will Ferrell. He was scouted by an SNL producer during a Groundlings performance, leading to his debut as a featured player on Saturday Night Live in March 1996. Over seven seasons on SNL (1996–2003), he created recurring characters including the flamboyant Mango, the hyperactive primate Mr. Peepers, and one half of the Butabi Brothers, earning a reputation for physical comedy and eccentric personas.

Chris Parnell

Chris Parnell trained with the Los Angeles improv troupe The Groundlings, where he performed as a company player before joining the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1998, serving as a repertory player until 2006. His Groundlings training provided the improvisational foundation for his sketch comedy work on SNL, where he contributed memorable characters and impressions over multiple stints with the show. He subsequently applied his comedic skills to recurring television roles and an extensive voice acting career in animated series.

Christine Keogh

Christine Keogh is an Australian improviser and co-founder of Impro Melbourne, Melbourne's longest-running improvisational theatre company, which she established in 1996 alongside Russell Fletcher. The company is grounded in Keith Johnstone's philosophy of improvisation and holds exclusive licenses in Victoria to perform Johnstone's proprietary formats: Theatresports, Gorilla Theatre, and Maestro Impro. Keogh is listed among Impro Melbourne's alumni, having performed with and helped build the organization from its founding.

Christopher Oyen

Christopher Oyen was one of the founding members of Chicago City Limits in 1977, an improv ensemble co-founded by performers who had trained under Del Close in Second City Chicago's workshop program. Chicago City Limits relocated from Chicago to New York City in 1979 and became one of the earliest and longest-running improv companies in New York, producing over 10,000 performances at multiple venues across its history. Oyen had served as Second City's stage manager before co-founding Chicago City Limits and subsequently worked as an actor in film and television.

Clive Anderson

Clive Stuart Anderson is an English comedian, broadcaster, writer, and former barrister, born December 10, 1952, in Stanmore, Middlesex. He is best known as the host of the original British Whose Line Is It Anyway? on BBC Radio 4 and Channel 4, which ran for ten series from 1988 to 1999 and became the most widely watched improv-format television programme in British comedy history. A graduate of Cambridge University and a practicing criminal barrister until 1991, Anderson developed a hosting style shaped by his legal training and his Cambridge Footlights background, bringing a sharp, adversarial wit to the format that contrasted productively with the performers. He also hosted the long-running chat show Clive Anderson Talks Back and has co-hosted BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends since 2007.

Colin Mochrie

Colin Andrew Mochrie is a Scottish-born Canadian actor and improvisational comedian, born November 30, 1957, in Kilmarnock, Scotland, who is the most continuously visible performer in the history of televised improv. He trained at Studio 58 at Langara College in Vancouver and was among the founding members of the Vancouver TheatreSports League before spending three years with The Second City Toronto. He subsequently appeared in every episode of the American Whose Line Is It Anyway?, hosted by Drew Carey on ABC and later the CW, and had already established himself as a regular on the British edition hosted by Clive Anderson on Channel 4. His improv partnership with Ryan Stiles is among the most celebrated in the history of performance improv. He tours with Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis, a hybrid show co-created with hypnotist Asad Mecci.

Conceited

Reginald Sergile, performing as Conceited, is a Brooklyn-born battle rapper who became the first practitioner of competitive rap battle performance to join the regular ensemble of Nick Cannon Presents: Wild 'N Out, bridging the improvisational discipline of the urban battle circuit to the television comedy game format. Known in battle rap circles as the King of Punchlines, he competed on the major international circuits including SMACK/URL (Ultimate Rap League), King of the Dot, Don't Flop, and Got Beef? before joining Wild 'N Out in 2013 when the series transferred from MTV to VH1. His subsequent television work spans the Singled Out reboot, the Bodied feature film, and the Yo! MTV Raps revival.

Cory Hartman

Cory Hartman is an American pastor, author, and ministry consultant who co-authored Improv Leadership: How to Lead Well in Every Moment (Zondervan, 2020) with Stan Endicott and David A. Miller, applying improvisational principles to Christian organizational leadership. He is the founder of Fulcrum Content, a gospel communication training organization, and has co-authored several books on church leadership and ministry development.

Craig Cackowski

Craig Cackowski is a Chicago-trained longform improviser, actor, and teacher who studied under Del Close at iO Chicago (then ImprovOlympic), performed on the Second City Mainstage, and became one of the most decorated improv educators on the West Coast, winning the Del Close Award for Excellence in Teaching at iO West three times. He trained and performed in Chicago from 1992 through 2002 with ensembles including Dasariski, Baby Wants Candy, and The Armando Diaz Experience, Theatrical Movement and Hootenanny, before relocating to Los Angeles where he continued to perform and teach at iO West and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. He is also a working actor with recurring roles on Community, Veep, and Drunk History.

Craig Uhlir

Craig Uhlir is a Chicago-based longform improviser, teacher, and co-founder of Deep Schwa, described as the longest-running Harold team in Chicago's history, with more than 1,000 performances and 50 members over its run. He trained at all three of Chicago's foundational improv institutions, Second City, iO Chicago, and The Annoyance Theatre, in addition to performing short-form with ComedySportz Chicago. His career includes touring with the Second City Touring Company, performing for American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait through USO programs, and sustaining a residency at Second City at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

Canadian

Dan Aykroyd

Daniel Edward Aykroyd, born July 1, 1952, in Ottawa, Ontario, is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, and musician who trained at Second City Toronto before becoming an original cast member of Saturday Night Live (1975-1979). He co-created The Blues Brothers with John Belushi, co-wrote Ghostbusters (1984), and received an Academy Award nomination for Driving Miss Daisy (1989). His career arc from Second City Toronto's inaugural cast through SNL to Hollywood franchise creation is one of the most consequential trajectories produced by the Second City training tradition, and his commercial successes, including Ghostbusters and The Blues Brothers, established templates for improv-trained performers generating original film properties rather than adapting existing material.

Dan Castellaneta

Daniel Louis Castellaneta, born October 29, 1957, in Chicago, Illinois, trained at Second City Chicago from 1983 through 1987 before becoming a cast member of The Tracey Ullman Show and subsequently the voice of Homer Simpson, the character he has performed in every episode of The Simpsons since its premiere on December 17, 1989. The Simpsons is the longest-running American animated program, the longest-running American primetime scripted television series, and the longest-running American sitcom. Castellaneta also voices approximately twenty additional recurring characters in the series, including Grandpa Abraham Simpson, Krusty the Clown, Mayor Quimby, Groundskeeper Willie, Sideshow Mel, and Barney Gumble. He has received four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance.

Dan O'Connor

Dan O'Connor is a Los Angeles-based improviser, director, teacher, and author who co-founded BATS Improv (Bay Area Theatresports) in San Francisco, co-founded LA Theatresports in Los Angeles, and founded Impro Theatre, a critically acclaimed company specializing in fully improvised, genre-specific long-form narrative productions under the format titles Shakespeare UnScripted, Jane Austen UnScripted, Chekhov UnScripted, and Sondheim UnScripted, among others. He trained with Keith Johnstone, Phelim McDermott, and Lee Simpson, and has been performing and teaching improvisation professionally since 1986. He co-authored Life UnScripted and Ensemble!, both published by North Atlantic Books.

Dan Reitz

Dan Reitz is a Buffalo-based musician, improviser, educator, and composer who served as musical director for Baby Wants Candy for eight years, co-founded Buffalo Improv House, and built a career that spans musical improv performance in New York City, composition for Serial and This American Life, and teaching at institutions including Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and SUNY University at Buffalo. A Grammy All-American High School Jazz Ensemble trombonist from Williamsville, New York, Reitz co-founded the improvisational comedy troupe Zamboni Revolution at Syracuse University before establishing himself in New York's musical improv community and subsequently returning to Western New York to found the region's first full-time improv and comedy training center.

Dani Alon

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Dave Buckman

Dave Buckman is an Austin-based improviser, director, and educator who served as Artistic Director of Boom Chicago in Amsterdam from 1999 to 2002, co-owns ColdTowne Theater in Austin, and spent seven years performing at Second City, iO Theater, ComedySportz, and the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago. During his time at Boom Chicago he directed future Saturday Night Live cast members and film directors including Jason Sudeikis, Seth Meyers, Kay Cannon, Jordan Peele, Ike Barinholtz, and Brendan Hunt. He holds two B. Iden Payne Awards for Excellence in Improvisational Theater.

Dave Cohen

Dave Cohen is a British comedian, comedy writer, and teacher who co-founded the Comedy Store Players, one of the UK's most enduring improvisational comedy troupes, in 1985. He helped establish the group alongside Paul Merton, Mike Myers, Kit Hollerbach, and Neil Mullarkey at the Comedy Store in London, with the troupe's first performance taking place on October 27, 1985. Cohen has maintained an ongoing association with the Comedy Store Players throughout its history, contributing to its reputation as a long-running improv ensemble built on spontaneous scenes, games, and audience suggestions.

Dave Ruark

Dave Ruark is an American improv performer and co-founder of ComedySportz Indianapolis, which he helped establish in February 1993 as a member of the sketch and improv ensemble Below the Belt. ComedySportz Indianapolis became the longest-continuously-running comedy show in the city's history.

Dave Thomas

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

David A. Miller

David A. Miller is a theatre director, playwright, and educator whose documented professional work is in traditional theatre production, new play development, and theatre-in-education, with a career spanning institutions in New York City and the Pacific Northwest including Wagner College, Playwrights Horizons Theatre School at NYU, and Seattle Children's Theatre.

David Ahearn

David Ahearn is an Iowa-born comedian, improviser, author, and speaker who co-founded Four Day Weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1997 alongside David Wilk, Frank Ford, and Troy Grant. The company became the longest-running improvisational comedy show in the American Southwest, accumulating more than five thousand performances. Ahearn co-authored Happy Accidents: The Transformative Power of 'Yes, And' at Work and in Life, served as Entrepreneur in Residence at TCU's Neeley School of Business, and has built an independent career as a keynote speaker applying improvisational principles to organizational culture and leadership.

David Ogden Stiers

David Ogden Stiers was an American actor, voice artist, musician, and conductor best known for his portrayal of Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on the CBS television series M*A*S*H from 1977 to 1983, a role that earned him two Emmy Award nominations. He originated the role of Feldman in the Broadway production The Magic Show in 1974 and appeared in numerous other Broadway productions. In addition to his live-action work, Stiers voiced several prominent Disney animated characters, including Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast (1991), Governor Ratcliffe and Wiggins in Pocahontas (1995), and Dr. Jumba Jookiba in the Lilo and Stitch franchise.

David Pasquesi

David Pasquesi is a Chicago actor and improviser who trained with Del Close at iO Theater for fifteen years, performed four revues at The Second City Mainstage, and co-created the long-form improvisational duo TJ and Dave with T.J. Jagodowski beginning in 2002. His sustained commitment to the Harold form and his unscripted long-form practice with Jagodowski have established him as one of the most respected improvisers in the Chicago tradition. The New York Times described TJ and Dave as 'Second City-seasoned masters of long form improv,' and their monthly residency at Barrow Street Theatre in New York placed the Chicago-developed long form before Off-Broadway audiences for more than a decade.

David Razowsky

David Razowsky is a Los Angeles-based improv actor, director, teacher, and podcaster who co-founded the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago in 1987, performed in ten Second City Mainstage revues alongside Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, and Rachel Dratch, and served for ten years as Artistic Director of Second City Hollywood. He has directed productions for Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, consulted for DreamWorks and BBC's Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and built a global teaching practice centered on present-moment awareness as the foundation of improvisational performance. He is the author of A Subversive's Guide to Improvisation: Moving Beyond 'Yes, And' and host of the INNY Award-winning ADD Comedy with Dave Razowsky podcast.

David Shepherd

David Shepherd (1924-2018) was the producer, organizer, and theatrical visionary who helped found Playwrights Theatre Club and The Compass Players in Chicago in the 1950s, then spent the following six decades advocating for improvisation as a civic and democratic practice. A Harvard-educated New Yorker who hitchhiked to Chicago in 1952, Shepherd conceived the Compass Players as a people's theater modeled on political cabaret and commedia dell'arte, one in which improvisation would make theater responsive to ordinary audiences rather than serve trained performers. He later created the Improvisation Olympics in New York in 1972, co-founded the Canadian Improv Games, and provided the original competitive framework that became ImprovOlympic. The Second City has stated that without David Shepherd there would be no Second City.

David Wilk

David Wilk is a Tulsa-born comedian, improviser, author, and keynote speaker who co-founded Four Day Weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1997 with David Ahearn, Frank Ford, and Troy Grant. Trained at Second City Conservatory in Chicago under Martin de Maat, he helped build Four Day Weekend into the longest-running improvisational comedy show in the American Southwest, with more than 6,500 live performances. He co-authored Happy Accidents: The Transformative Power of 'Yes, And' at Work and in Life, which became a national bestseller, and has received the NAACE Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to applied improvisation in professional development.

Dawn Toddy

Dawn Toddy is listed in the archive as an improv performer, but no biographical record for an individual of this name has been established in available public sources. Research in improv and comedy contexts has yielded no verifiable individual matching this identity in the public record.

Deborah Frances

Deborah Frances-White is a London-based Australian-British comedian, director, author, and podcaster who co-founded The Spontaneity Shop in London in 1996 with Tom Salinsky, co-authored The Improv Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Improvising in Comedy, Theatre, and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2008), and created The Guilty Feminist podcast, which has accumulated more than fifty million downloads. A performer trained in the Keith Johnstone tradition and a teaching artist at RADA, the National Youth Theatre, and the Actors Centre, she is among the most visible British practitioners in the contemporary English-language improv world. She is known professionally as Deborah Frances-White.

Del Close

Del Close (1934-1999) was the improviser, director, and teacher most closely associated with the development of long-form improvisation in America. Beginning at the Compass Players in St. Louis in 1957, he passed through multiple tenures at The Second City in Chicago, co-founded The Committee in San Francisco where he developed the earliest versions of the Harold around 1967, and ultimately partnered with Charna Halpern at ImprovOlympic in Chicago from 1982 until his death. His students included John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and the founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade. He co-authored Truth in Comedy in 1994, codifying the Harold for a generation of long-form practitioners worldwide.

Dennis Cahill

Dennis Cahill is a Calgary-based improviser, director, and teacher who has been a founding member of Loose Moose Theatre Company since 1977 and has served as its Artistic Director since 1998, succeeding Keith Johnstone. The longest-serving leader of the institution that originated Theatresports, Maestro, Gorilla Theatre, and Life Game, Cahill is a certified director of all Keith Johnstone formats through the International Theatresports Institute and has trained performers and teachers from around the world who travel to Calgary specifically to study the Johnstone tradition at its source.

Dick Chudnow

Richard Chudnow, known as Dick Chudnow, is a Milwaukee-born comedy performer and producer who co-founded the Kentucky Fried Theater comedy troupe at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker, and subsequently founded ComedySportz in Milwaukee in September 1984, establishing a franchised competitive short-form improv format that has grown to more than 25 locations across the United States and internationally. ComedySportz adapted Keith Johnstone's Theatresports competitive structure into a family-friendly American sports-themed format, developing a national franchise network through the Comedy League of America.

Don Ferguson

Don Ferguson is a Montreal-born actor, writer, producer, and comedian who joined The Jest Society in 1971 and became a founding member of Royal Canadian Air Farce when the ensemble reconstituted for CBC Radio in 1973. He performed with Air Farce for more than thirty-five years across radio, stage, and television, creating recurring characters including Colonel Stacy and developing impressions of Canadian prime ministers and international figures. He became executive producer of the Air Farce television specials, co-authored Air Farce: 40 Years of Flying by the Seat of Our Pants following co-founder Roger Abbott's death in 2011, and received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award in 1998.

Don Hall

Don Hall is a Chicago-based theater artist, writer, and radio professional who arrived in the city in 1989, trained at the Second City Training Center under Marty DeMaat, and co-founded WNEP Theater, one of Chicago's most sustained Off-Loop companies. WNEP operated for more than two decades producing experimental ensemble work, including the Post-Mortem improvised obituary-play format, while Hall maintained parallel careers in comedy (ComedySportz Chicago), public radio (WBEZ Events Director), storytelling (The Moth StorySlam), and cultural journalism (Literate Ape co-founder).

Doug Diefenbach

Doug Diefenbach is a Chicago-based improviser, theater founder, and nonprofit communications professional who in 1997 founded The Playground Improv Comedy Theater in Chicago as the city's first nonprofit cooperative improv theater. Trained at ImprovOlympic under Charna Halpern and Del Close's long-form tradition, he organized The Playground as a member-governed institution in which approximately 140 actor-members participate in governance, performance, and instruction on a volunteer basis, creating an institutional model distinct from the commercial structures of Second City and iO. The Playground has operated continuously since 1997 and has remained active into the 2020s.

Drew Carey

Drew Allison Carey, born May 23, 1958, in Cleveland, Ohio, is an American comedian, actor, and television host who became a major figure in American improv television as the host and executive producer of the American adaptation of Whose Line Is It Anyway? on ABC from 1998 through 2007 and its CW revival from 2013 through the present. His Whose Line tenure, during which he was responsible for bringing the British short-form improv game show format to American primetime audiences, is his primary improv credential; he had no formal Second City training. He also hosted and starred in The Drew Carey Show (ABC, 1995-2004) and has hosted The Price Is Right on CBS since 2007.

Dudley Riggs

Dudley Riggs, born January 18, 1932, in Little Rock, Arkansas, and died September 22, 2020, at age 88, was a fifth-generation circus and vaudeville performer who founded the Instant Theater Company in New York City in approximately 1954 and subsequently established the Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1961, the theatre that is widely recognized as the longest-running sketch and improvisational comedy theater in the United States, predating The Second City by one year. Riggs brought the format he called audience-input instant theater from circus-derived vaudeville traditions to the upper Midwest, sustaining the Brave New Workshop for 39 years before selling it in 1997. He is the author of Flying Funny: My Life Without a Net (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).

Dylan Emery

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Ed Herbstman

Ed Herbstman is a Chicago-raised improviser, director, writer, and educator who trained under Del Close at ImprovOlympic, performed with the Second City National Touring Company, co-founded iO West in Los Angeles, served three years as an NYPD officer in Brooklyn, and co-founded Magnet Theater in New York City in 2005 alongside Armando Diaz and Shannon Manning. A longtime teacher and faculty member at Magnet, he has also taught at Syracuse University and Columbia University, and his teaching philosophy centers on present-moment confidence and generosity of spirit.

Ed Trout

Ed Trout is an Indianapolis-based improviser, educator, and executive who co-founded ComedySportz Indianapolis in February 1993, served as its Artistic Director for more than two decades, and subsequently became the company's first Director of Education and Applied Improvisation before assuming his current role as Co-Owner and CEO. Under his leadership, ComedySportz Indianapolis grew from a performance at Theatre on the Square into an anchor institution of Indiana's improv community, operating The Wit Theater and administering one of the country's most established competitive high school improv leagues.

American

Elaine May

Elaine May is one of the five or six most consequential figures in the history of American improvisational comedy. Born Elaine Iva Berlin on April 21, 1932, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was a founding member of the Compass Players in 1955, the first improvisational theater in the United States; a co-developer of foundational improv principles at the St. Louis Compass; and one half of Nichols and May, the duo whose Broadway run, Grammy-winning albums, and television appearances introduced improvisation-derived comedy to mass American audiences. As a filmmaker she directed A New Leaf (1971), The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Mikey and Nicky (1976), and Ishtar (1987). As a screenwriter she received Oscar nominations for Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Primary Colors (1998) and won the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Primary Colors. She received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 2019 for The Waverly Gallery and the Honorary Academy Award in 2022.

Ellen Idelson

Ellen Idelson was a Los Angeles-born improviser, television writer, and producer who co-founded LA Theatresports in 1988 alongside Dan O'Connor and Forrest Brakeman, which later became Impro Theatre. A BATS Improv alumna trained at San Francisco State University and the Harvard American Repertory Theatre Advanced Training Institute, she built a parallel career as a television writer on Will and Grace, The Nanny, Caroline in the City, and Boy Meets World over the final decade of her life. She died on September 19, 2003, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, from complications of Crohn's disease, at the age of forty-two.

Ellsworth Milburn

Ellsworth Milburn served as music director for the improvisational theater company The Committee in San Francisco from 1963 to 1968, a role he held while earning his Master of Arts at Mills College. He also appeared with The Second City in Los Angeles as a jazz pianist and musical director for improvisational theater ensembles. His work with these companies coincided with The Committee's period of prominence for its satirical sketches.

Eran A. Zelnik

Eran A. Zelnik is an Israeli-American cultural historian and lecturer in the Department of History at California State University, Chico. He is the author of American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750-1850, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2025, a cultural history of American humor that examines how joke-telling, riot, revelry, and performance shaped democratic identity and exclusion in the early United States.

Eray Güler

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Eric Angell

Eric Angell is an American improv performer and actor based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He trained at iO, Second City, and the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago before establishing himself in Las Vegas, where he has been a core member of Bleach, a long-form improv ensemble, since 2015. He has been described as the troupe's 'wild card' for his gift at inhabiting unexpected characters.

Eugene Cordero

Eugene Cordero is a Detroit-born actor, voice performer, and improviser of Filipino American heritage who trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York, performed in ASSSSCAT and Harold ensembles, and built a substantial screen career encompassing The Good Place (2016-2020), Loki (Disney+, 2021-2023), and Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020-2024). Born in Detroit and raised in the northern Detroit suburbs of Birmingham and Pontiac, he studied at Marymount Manhattan College before joining UCB in 1999 and subsequently relocating to Los Angeles, where his improv-grounded performance instincts supported recurring roles in prestige television and streaming productions across a decade of sustained output.

Eugene Levy

Eugene Levy, born December 17, 1946, in Hamilton, Ontario, is a Canadian comedian, actor, writer, and producer who trained at Second City Toronto from 1974 through 1976 before becoming a core cast member and writer on Second City Television (SCTV) from 1976 through 1984, for which he received two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Program (1982 and 1983). His subsequent career includes four Christopher Guest mockumentaries co-written with Guest, all eight American Pie films, and Schitt's Creek (2015-2020), which he co-created with his son Dan Levy and in which he won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2020 when the show's historic sweep of major comedy categories made it the first series to win all seven top comedy Emmy categories in a single season.

Eugene Troobnick

Eugene Troobnick was a Boston-born actor and improviser who co-founded the Playwrights Theatre Club in Chicago in 1953 alongside Paul Sills and David Shepherd, became a founding member of the Compass Players in 1955, and performed in the original cast of The Second City when it opened in December 1959. His Broadway credits include The Odd Couple (1965-1967) and From the Second City (1961), and his television career included the recurring role of Stavros Kouperakis on Guiding Light from 1991 to 1995 and appearances in All That Jazz (1979) and Deconstructing Harry (1997). He died on February 19, 2003, in Seattle, Washington, at age seventy-six.

Evren Başer

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Fernando Fresquez

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Florian Bartsch

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Forest Brakeman

Forrest Brakeman is a Los Angeles-based comedian, improviser, and production sound mixer who co-founded LA Theatresports in 1988 with Dan O'Connor and Ellen Idelson, establishing the first Keith Johnstone-format Theatresports company in the Los Angeles market. Trained at The Groundlings, he built an earlier career as a stand-up comedian in San Francisco alongside Greg Proops and performed at major Los Angeles clubs including The Comedy Store and The Laugh Factory. LA Theatresports subsequently evolved into Impro Theatre, which continues as a producing and teaching institution in Los Angeles.

Frances Callier

Frances Callier is a Chicago-born improviser, educator, actress, and comedian who began performing at Second City at age sixteen, founded Second City's Diversity and Outreach program in 1992, co-founded the Chicago Improv Festival in 1998, and built a national profile through VH1's Best Week Ever (2004-2009) and a recurring role as Roxy on Hannah Montana. Working as half of the duo Frangela alongside Angela V. Shelton, she has been a central figure in Chicago's improv community for more than four decades, teaching performers including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, and Craig Robinson.

Frank Ford

Frank Ford is a Fort Worth-based improviser, comedian, author, director, and keynote speaker who co-founded Four Day Weekend in Fort Worth in 1997 alongside David Wilk, David Ahearn, and Troy Grant, and has served as Director of the Four Day Weekend Training Center since the company's founding. A Second City Conservatory-trained performer, he has appeared in more than 6,500 shows, is the co-author of the national bestseller Happy Accidents: The Transformative Power of Yes, And at Work and in Life, and is represented by the Campbell Agency in Dallas.

Frank Woodley

Frank Woodley is a Melbourne-born comedian, actor, and physical clown who, together with Col Lane as the duo Lano and Woodley, won the Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1994 and starred in The Adventures of Lano and Woodley, an Australian sitcom that became the first Australian series sold to the BBC. Born on February 29, 1968, he began his career in the Melbourne comedy and Theatresports community, built an international reputation with Lano and Woodley across twenty years of touring and television, and won LOL: Last One Laughing Australia in 2020 in his solo career.

Garry Goodrow

Garry Goodrow was a founding member of The Committee, the San Francisco-based satirical improvisational group formed in the early 1960s as an offshoot of Chicago's Second City, which emphasized audience-driven improv and political satire during the countercultural era. He originated the role of Ernie, a jazz musician and heroin addict, in Jack Gelber's Obie Award-winning play The Connection at the Living Theatre in 1959, and reprised the role in Shirley Clarke's 1961 film adaptation. His early immersion in jazz performance informed his approach to improvisational work, and he later contributed writing to National Lampoon's Lemmings (1973) and joined the anti-war FTA Tour alongside Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and Howard Hesseman.

Gary Austin

Gary Austin, born October 18, 1941, in Duncan, Oklahoma, and died April 1, 2017, in Los Angeles, California, at age 75, was the founder of The Groundlings, the Los Angeles improvisational theater company whose alumni constitute one of the most extensive rosters of working comedic actors in American entertainment history. Austin founded The Groundlings in January 1974 from informal workshops he had been running in Los Angeles since 1972, trained at San Francisco State University under directors Jules Irving and Herbert Blau, and developed his approach to improv as actor training through years of performing with The Committee in San Francisco. He stepped down as artistic director of The Groundlings in November 1979 due to creative differences but continued teaching through Gary Austin Workshops in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., until his death.

Geoff Simmons

Geoff Simmons is a New Zealand economist and politician who has maintained a long involvement in improvisational theatre since his secondary school years. He has performed with the Improv Bandits in Auckland, Best on Tap in Wellington, and Stagecraft at the Gryphon Theatre in Wellington. He also teaches with the Wellington Improv Troupe.

George Rigopoulos

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

George Segal

George Segal was a New York City-born actor who, following his studies at Columbia University and training at the Actors Studio and HB Studio, became a founding member of The Premise, the improvisational theater company Ted Flicker established at Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village in 1960, alongside Theodore J. Flicker, James Frawley, Buck Henry, and Gene Hackman. A versatile film and television actor across six decades, he received an Academy Award nomination for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), and sustained prominent television careers in Just Shoot Me! (1997-2003) and The Goldbergs (2013-2021). He died on March 23, 2021, in Santa Rosa, California, at the age of eighty-seven.

George Todisco

George Todisco was a Brooklyn-born improviser and producer who studied at a Second City workshop under Del Close in Chicago and in 1977 co-founded Chicago City Limits alongside Linda Gelman, Bill McLaughlin, Carol Schindler, Paul Zuckerman, Rick Crom, and Christopher Oyen. He relocated the company to New York City in 1979, established a dedicated theater space in summer 1980, and served as Chicago City Limits's artistic director and producer until his death in 1981, having created what became New York City's longest-running live comedy revue, which surpassed 10,000 performances in subsequent decades.

Gianni Cutri

Gianni Cutri is a name recorded in the Improv Archive that does not correspond to a documented improviser or comedy practitioner in any findable public record. A Gianni Cutri identified in professional directories is a patent attorney at Kirkland and Ellis, with no documented connection to improvisational theater, comedy performance, or related fields. The basis for this entry's inclusion in the archive could not be established through exhaustive search of improv community records, theater databases, Second City alumni lists, and comedy industry sources.

American

Gilda Radner

Gilda Radner was a Detroit-born comedian and actress who trained and performed at The Second City Toronto before becoming one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live in 1975. Over five seasons on Saturday Night Live she created a gallery of recurring characters, including Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella, Baba Wawa, Lisa Loopner, and Judy Miller, that established her as one of the most distinctive character comedians of her generation. She was among the first five inductees into the Saturday Night Live Hall of Fame. She died on May 20, 1989, of ovarian cancer at age forty-two, and Gilda's Club, the international cancer support organization, was founded in her name.

Goncalo Sitima

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Gord Oxley

Gord Oxley is a Canadian comedian, actor, writer, and improviser based in Toronto, known for his work in both sketch comedy and long-form improvisation. He is a member of The Coincidence Men, a Toronto-based long-form improv troupe formed around 2011 alongside Kerry Griffin, Ralph MacLeod, and Marcel St. Pierre. Oxley has taught improvisation in Toronto for over twenty years, including as a faculty member at SoCap Comedy.

Greg Maughan

Greg Maughan is a Detroit-area-born improviser, educator, and theater founder who established Philly Improv Theater (PHIT) in October 2005, creating the primary improv institution in the Philadelphia market. Trained at Second City Detroit as a teenager, he brought his improv background to Philadelphia after completing degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and built PHIT into a producing and teaching organization offering five-semester curricula in long-form improvisation, sketch comedy, and stand-up, with corporate training clients including Fortune 500 companies.

Greg Proops

Greg Proops, born October 3, 1959, in Phoenix, Arizona, is an American improvisational comedian, stand-up comic, voice actor, and podcaster who trained with the improvisational group Faultline at San Francisco State University and subsequently relocated to London, where he became a regular performer with The Comedy Store Players and on the British Whose Line Is It Anyway? on Channel 4 (1989-1999). He then joined the American adaptation of Whose Line Is It Anyway? on ABC (1998-2007) and its CW revival, spanning the complete arc of the format's broadcast history on both continents. He is the host of The Smartest Man in the World podcast, which surpassed 550 episodes by 2025, and the author of The Smartest Book in the World (Simon & Schuster, 2015).

Hamilton Camp

Hamilton Camp co-founded the satirical comedy troupe the Committee, one of the notable improvisational and satirical ensembles of the 1960s. He also performed on Broadway in Paul Sills' Story Theatre, a production rooted in improvisational storytelling traditions. Camp won a Dramalogue Award for directing, reflecting his work as a theatrical artist beyond performance.

American

Harold Ramis

Harold Ramis was a Chicago-born comedian, screenwriter, director, and actor who trained and performed at The Second City Chicago before becoming one of the most commercially successful comedy writers and directors to emerge from the improvisational tradition. His Second City training informed a career that produced National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Ghostbusters (1984), and Groundhog Day (1993), films that defined mainstream American comedy for a generation. He also performed in the original cast of SCTV and co-starred in Ghostbusters as Egon Spengler. He died on February 24, 2014, and The Second City named the Harold Ramis Film School in his honor when it opened in 2018.

Harrison Brookie

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Heidi Gardner

Heidi Gardner is an American actress, comedian, and writer who served as a cast member on Saturday Night Live for eight seasons, from 2017 to 2025. She trained at The Groundlings theater in Los Angeles, progressing from beginner workshops to the Sunday Company in 2014 and then to the Main Company before being cast on SNL. She became known for her character work on the show, including the recurring Weekend Update character Bailey Gismert and impressions of public figures such as Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Holmes.

Hilaury Stern

Hilaury Stern is a New York-based improviser and teacher who founded Gotham City Improv, a New York improv company that began as Groundlings East, an affiliate of The Groundlings in Los Angeles, and became an independent institution in 1988. She has taught improv and sketch comedy in New York and has acting credits including Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986).

Honor Finnegan

Honor Finnegan is a Chicago-trained improviser and performer who studied under Del Close at ImprovOlympic and performed on the ImprovOlympic house team Baron's Barracudas. Del Close created the Harold form Honor Finnegan vs. the Brain of the Galaxy in her honor, a distinction reflecting the regard in which Close held her as a performer within the ImprovOlympic community. She began performing professionally at age eleven as a cast member of the First National Tour of Annie and subsequently developed a career as a singer-songwriter combining musical theatre, comedy, traditional folk, and poetry.

American

Horatio Sanz

Horatio Sanz is a Santiago-born, Chicago-raised comedian and actor who trained under Del Close at ImprovOlympic, performed at Second City Chicago, and became a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade sketch comedy troupe in the early 1990s. He joined Saturday Night Live as a featured player in 1998, becoming the first Latino cast member in the show's history, and was promoted to repertory cast member after one season, remaining on the show through 2006. He has continued performing in improv and sketch comedy contexts, including ASSSSCAT 3000 at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatres.

Howard Alk

Howard Alk was a Chicago-based filmmaker and theater co-founder who is credited with suggesting the name for The Second City, which he co-founded with Paul Sills and Bernard Sahlins in December 1959. He left the theater in the early 1960s to pursue filmmaking, founding The Film Group in Chicago and becoming one of the most significant documentary filmmakers to emerge from the city's cultural community. His documentary work included American Revolution 2 (1969) and The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), and he was a long-term collaborator with Bob Dylan on multiple film projects. He died in January 1982.

Howard Hesseman

Howard Hesseman was an American actor and founding member of The Committee, the San Francisco-based improvisational comedy troupe active from 1963 through the mid-1970s. His tenure with The Committee, which spanned roughly a decade until 1975, honed his skills in long-form improvisation alongside collaborators including Del Close and Rob Reiner. The troupe was known for satirical, unscripted performances that critiqued societal norms and staged shows at anti-war rallies and civil rights demonstrations. Hesseman channeled his improvisational background and real-world experience as a radio DJ into his Emmy-nominated television work, most notably his portrayal of disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati.

Howard Jerome

Howard Jerome Gomberg was a Brooklyn-born actor, comedian, and improv innovator who spent most of his career in Canada and co-founded the Canadian Improv Games in 1977, creating the country's primary competitive improvisational comedy program for high school students. He also collaborated with David Shepherd on early Improv Olympics formats. Before and alongside his comedy career he worked as a professional wrestler, a football player, a folk singer, and a poet, and he built an extensive film and television acting career in Canada that included roles in Naked Lunch (1991), Barney's Version (2010), and Lucky Number Slevin (2006). He died in Hamilton, Ontario, on December 17, 2021.

Ian Roberts

Ian Roberts is a Queens-born comedian, actor, writer, and television producer who trained under Del Close in Chicago, performed with the Second City National Touring Company, and became a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade alongside Matt Besser in the early 1990s. He co-authored The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual (2013) with Matt Besser and Matt Walsh, providing the most comprehensive written account of the UCB's Harold-based long-form methodology. He has also worked as an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning television showrunner.

Ike Barinholtz

Ike Barinholtz is a Chicago-born actor, comedian, writer, director, and producer whose early career was shaped by the city's comedy scene before he rose to prominence as a cast member on the sketch comedy series MADtv from 2002 to 2007, where he performed impersonations and original characters. He later contributed as a writer, producer, and performer on The Mindy Project (2012-2017). His improvisational and comedic sensibilities have informed a broad career spanning film, television, and directing, including his directorial debut The Oath (2018), a political satire he also wrote, produced, and starred in.

Ivan Malekin

Ivan Malekin is an Australian filmmaker, producer, director, and educator who founded Nexus Production Group in Melbourne in 2007 and has specialized in improvised feature filmmaking since the late 2000s. He directed Friends, Foes and Fireworks (2018), a fully improvised feature film shot in a single night on New Year's Eve, and subsequent improvised features including In Corpore (2020) and Machination (2022). He authored Improv for Indie Filmmakers (2021) and teaches improvisation techniques for film production through IFH Academy, Cine Circle, Udemy, Skillshare, and university workshops.

J Star

J-Star is an Atlanta-based improviser, director, and theater founder who established Basement Theatre in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, the only live theater company in that area. He studied theater at Georgia State University and has been directing and guiding improv players since childhood, when he performed in a theater his grandfather built in a basement. He teaches improvisation internationally and directs the Puckin Fuppet improv show featuring hand puppets for adult audiences.

Jacob Wysocki

Jacob Wysocki is a Los Angeles-based comedian, actor, and improviser who began performing competitive improv through ComedySportz and has performed with the Yeti improv group, a UCB-affiliated ensemble of biological siblings. He has acting credits across film and television including Terri (2011), Pitch Perfect (2012), Unfriended (2014), and Reno 911!, and has been a recurring presence on the Dropout platform's Make Some Noise improv show hosted by Sam Reich since 2022.

James Frawley

James Frawley was a Houston-born director and actor whose early career included improvisational comedy performance with The Premise in New York alongside Buck Henry and George Segal. His improv background directly influenced his selection to direct The Monkees television series, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series in 1967. He went on to direct The Muppet Movie (1979) and maintained an active television directing career spanning more than fifty years. He died on January 22, 2019.

James Thomas Bailey

James Thomas Bailey is a Los Angeles-based improviser, director, educator, and author who founded ComedySportz Los Angeles in 1988 and built it into the longest-running stage production in the city. His High School League program, which trains improv teams in more than seventy high schools from San Diego to Thousand Oaks, is the largest teen improvisational program in the United States. He was inducted into the Educational Theatre Association Hall of Fame in 2019 and received the California Thespians Hall of Fame honor for career contributions to theatre education.

Jami Hyttinen

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Jamie Moyer

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Canadian

Jamie Wyllie

Jamie Wyllie, known universally as Willie, co-founded the Canadian Improv Games in Ottawa in 1977 at age nineteen alongside Howard Jerome, drawing on David Shepherd's Improv Olympics concept to create competitive improvisational theatre for Canadian high school students. Over thirty-seven years of sustained volunteer leadership as board chair, primary funder, and public ambassador, Wyllie built the organization from eight Ottawa-area teams to a national program with fourteen regional chapters that engaged more than one hundred thousand teenagers. Alumni of the program include Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen, Nathan Fielder, Alanis Morissette, Tatiana Maslany, and Andrew Phung. He died on October 2, 2014, at age fifty-six, after complications from leukemia, reportedly continuing to direct the organization from his hospital bed via iPad.

Jane Addams

Jane Addams (1860-1935) was the co-founder of Hull House, the Chicago settlement house that became the institutional crucible for the development of improvisational theatre's pedagogical foundations. Her democratic philosophy of cross-cultural learning through shared experience directly informed Neva Boyd's play-based educational theory, and Hull House provided the physical space and institutional support within which Boyd trained Viola Spolin from 1923 to 1926. Spolin subsequently taught at Hull House from 1937 to 1941 and developed the theater games that became the technical foundation of modern American improvisational theatre. Addams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the first American woman so honored, and died in Chicago on May 21, 1935.

Jane Kim

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Jason Chin

Jason R. Chin (c. 1968-2015) was an iO Chicago performer, director, and educator who served as the theater's Director of the Training Center for eight years and as Associate Artistic Director at the time of his death. He created Whirled News Tonight, the long-running improvised current-events satire show at iO, in 2003, and coached the Harold team Deep Schwa for thirteen years. He authored Long-Form Improvisation and the Art of Zen (2008) and taught improv internationally across the Philippines, Australia, and England. He died of heart disease on January 9, 2015, at approximately age forty-six, leaving a legacy sufficient for The Maydays UK improv company to establish a scholarship in his name.

Jason Sudeikis

Jason Sudeikis is a Fairfax-born comedian, writer, actor, and producer who trained in long-form improvisation in Kansas City and Chicago before joining Saturday Night Live as a writer in 2003 and becoming a featured and then repertory cast member through 2013. His SNL characters included Joe Biden and Mitt Romney, and his ensemble writing experience informed the creation of Ted Lasso, the Apple TV+ comedy series he co-created and stars in as the title character. Ted Lasso received widespread critical acclaim, and Sudeikis won Emmy and Golden Globe awards for his performance. He trained at ImprovOlympic Chicago and The Playground Theater during his Chicago years.

Jason Underwood

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Jayne Eastwood

Jayne Eastwood is a Canadian actress, comedian, and voice artist who was one of the original cast members of the Toronto branch of The Second City comedy troupe. She was a semiregular performer on the sketch comedy series SCTV and appeared in the original Toronto production of Godspell. Early in her career, she performed in commercials alongside fellow Second City alumni Gilda Radner and Andrea Martin.

Jeff Davis

Jeff B. Davis (born October 6, 1973) is a Los Angeles-based improvisational performer, actor, and podcast host whose television work on Whose Line Is It Anyway? across more than two hundred sixty episodes on ABC and the CW network makes him one of the most-seen improvisers in American broadcast history. He co-founded The Impromptones, a musical improv quartet, with James Thomas Bailey in the mid-1990s and later served as co-host and creative anchor for the Harmontown podcast with Dan Harmon from 2012 to 2019, bringing longform improvised comedy to a mass podcast audience. He currently tours with Whose Live Anyway?, the live stage version of Whose Line.

Jeff Griggs

Jeff Griggs is a Chicago-based director, author, and educator who studied at ImprovOlympic under Del Close, served as Artistic Director at iO Chicago, and authored Guru: My Days with Del Close (Ivan R. Dee, 2005), the primary memoir documenting Close's final two years of life and the performers he shaped. He directed productions for Second City, the Annoyance Theatre, and Norwegian Cruise Line, and teaches comedy history and episodic narrative at DePaul University's Harold Ramis Film School and Columbia College Chicago's Comedy Studies Program. He also co-wrote and directed the independent feature film Chalk Hill.

Jeff Hoover

Jeff Hoover is a Chicago-based radio and television performer, writer, and producer who trained at The Second City and applied his improvisational skills across a two-decade career in Chicago broadcast media. His Second City training provided the character work and comedic instincts that earned him a position on Jonathan Brandmeier's Chicago radio program in 1993, where he served as creative producer from 1996 to 2001. He subsequently worked at WGN Morning News beginning in 2003, developing recurring comedic characters and earning Telly Award recognition for a 2005 WGN television special.

Jennifer Estlin

Jennifer Estlin is the President, Executive Producer, and owner of The Annoyance Theatre and Bar in Chicago, the institution she has led since 2001 and which she has sustained through more than three hundred original productions, six venue relocations, and two decades of organizational development. She is married to Mick Napier, founder and Artistic Director of The Annoyance. Before taking operational leadership of the theater, Estlin trained and performed in Chicago and New York, touring with Second City's National Touring Company and appearing on Law and Order, Empire, and Chicago PD. She graduated from Northwestern University's School of Speech in 1987 in the same cohort as Stephen Colbert.

Jeremy Hardy

Jeremy Hardy was an English comedian and political activist who appeared regularly on the BBC Radio 4 panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, where his deliberately off-key singing became a long-running comedic fixture. He was also a frequent presence on The News Quiz, delivering pointed satirical commentary on current events. Hardy's comedy career extended to stand-up, television appearances including Blackadder Goes Forth, and a long-running solo radio monologue series, Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation.

Jess McKenna

Jessica McKenna (known professionally as Jess McKenna) is a Los Angeles-based improviser, actor, and writer who co-created Off Book: The Improvised Musical podcast with Zach Reino in 2017, producing fully improvised original musicals with guest performers that became among the most successful improv-dedicated podcasts in the Earwolf network's catalog. She trained and performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre Los Angeles, appearing on house musical improv teams including Magic to Do and Baby Wants Candy and in the flagship ASSSSCAT show. Her television credits include Fox's Party Over Here (produced by The Lonely Island) and the Dropout musical improv series Play It By Ear, alongside writing work on Baking It, Bumper in Berlin, and Rick and Morty.

Jessica Myerson

Jessica Myerson (born Irene Ryan, performing as Irene Riordan, later known as Latifah Taormina) co-founded The Committee with her then-husband Alan Myerson in San Francisco on April 10, 1963, establishing the West Coast's most significant improvisational comedy theater of the 1960s. Both were alumni of The Second City in Chicago. The Committee, whose name referenced the House Un-American Activities Committee, operated at 622 Broadway in North Beach through 1972 and launched the careers of Howard Hesseman, Peter Bonerz, Carl Gottlieb, Rob Reiner, and Barbara Bosson, among others. Myerson co-authored the memoir Ha Ha Among the Trumpets: An Improvisational Journey with Alan Myerson, published in 2022.

Jill Benjamin

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Jill Bernard

Jill Bernard is a Minneapolis-based improviser, teacher, and author who has performed Drum Machine, her signature one-person improvised musical show, at more than forty international improv festivals across more than twenty countries, making her one of the most internationally traveled solo improvisation performers in the world. She co-founded HUGE Improv Theater in Minneapolis in 2005 alongside Joe Bozic, Mike Fotis, Nels Lennes, and Butch Roy, establishing the only theater in the Twin Cities dedicated exclusively to teaching and performing long-form improvisation. Her book Jill Bernard's Small Cute Book of Improv, now in its fourth edition and translated into French, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese, is used as an introductory improv text in multiple countries.

Jim Belushi

Jim Belushi is an American actor, comedian, and musician who trained with The Second City in Chicago from 1977 to 1980, developing skills in sketch comedy and improvisation. He joined Saturday Night Live as a cast member from 1983 to 1985, then built a film career with roles in Red Heat (1988) and K-9 (1989). He is best known to television audiences for starring in the long-running sitcom According to Jim (2001–2009), which ran for eight seasons.

Jimmy Carrane

Jimmy Carrane is a Chicago-based improviser, teacher, podcaster, and author who studied under Del Close at Improv Olympic and Martin De Maat at Columbia College, performed as an original member of Jazz Freddy and Armando at iO Chicago, and developed the Art of Slow Comedy teaching methodology, which treats improvisational performance as an acting discipline centered on emotional truth and behavioral authenticity. His Improv Nerd podcast, launched in 2012, has conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with improvisers and comedy educators, building one of the most comprehensive oral history archives of American improvisational comedy. He has co-authored three improv books including Improvising Better: A Guide for the Working Improviser.

Jimmy Miller

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Joan Darling

Joan Darling (born April 14, 1935) is an actor, director, and acting teacher whose improvisational theater training at The Premise in New York City in 1960 directly shaped her subsequent career as a pioneering television director. She directed Chuckles Bites the Dust for The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1975, widely considered one of the greatest episodes in American television history, and received a 1976 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series, making her the first woman ever nominated for that award. She directed the first twenty-three episodes of Norman Lear's Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in 1975-1976, directed the feature film First Love in 1976, and has served as a Creative Advisor at the Sundance Institute Directors Lab for more than thirty years, using improvisation-based exercises drawn from her Premise Players experience.

Joe Bill

Joe Bill is a Chicago-based improviser, director, teacher, and corporate trainer who co-founded The Annoyance Theatre with Mick Napier, Mark Sutton, and others in the late 1980s, performed in and directed more than sixty shows there over twelve years, and served as Director of Corporate Training at iO Chicago for fifteen years and as Guest Artist in Residence at The Second City Conservatory and Training Center for fifteen years. With Mark Sutton, he developed Power Improv, a workshop curriculum that extends the Annoyance performance philosophy into teaching contexts, which he has delivered at festivals, theaters, and universities across the United States, Canada, and Europe. He is a Senior Facilitator for The Ariel Group, a leadership consulting organization that has trained more than eighty Fortune 500 companies.

Joe Bozic

Joe Bozic is a Minneapolis-based improviser, director, educator, and sketch comedy writer who co-founded HUGE Improv Theater in Minneapolis in 2005 alongside Jill Bernard, Mike Fotis, Nels Lennes, and Butch Roy, and served as Director of the Brave New Workshop Student Union from 2009 to 2014. Before relocating to Minneapolis from Chicago in 2001, he performed with independent improv groups and subsequently became a resident company member of Brave New Workshop, appearing in more than twenty shows during his tenure. With Mike Fotis, he forms the absurdist improv and sketch duo Ferrari McSpeedy, a fixture in the Minneapolis Fringe Festival and regional improv community.

Joe Flaherty

Joe Flaherty was an American-Canadian actor, comedian, and writer who began his comedy career at Second City in Chicago in 1969, working alongside future collaborators including John Belushi and Harold Ramis. He later moved to Toronto to help establish the Toronto Second City theatre and became a Canadian citizen. As an original cast member and writer on SCTV from 1976 to 1984, he created iconic characters including the wheelchair-using station owner Guy Caballero, the horror-host Count Floyd, and sports announcer Big Jim McBob, earning two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 1982 and 1983.

Joe Janes

Joe Janes is a Chicago-based improv and sketch comedy writer, director, actor, and educator who has taught at The Second City Training Center since 1997, making him one of the longest-serving instructors in the school's history, and serves as Improv Program Coordinator at Columbia College Chicago. He undertook the 365 Sketches project, writing one new comedy sketch per day for an entire year and co-producing all three hundred sixty-five across eleven performance nights at the Strawdog Theatre with twenty-six directors and nearly two hundred actors. He is an Emmy Award winner for his writing on Jellyvision's You Don't Know Jack video game series and wrote for Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update.

Joe Kelly

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

American

John Belushi

John Belushi (January 24, 1949 - March 5, 1982) was an Albanian-American comedian, actor, and musician who trained at The Second City in Chicago beginning in February 1971, at twenty-two reportedly its youngest-ever member, and went on to join the original cast of Saturday Night Live in 1975. His performances on SNL, particularly the recurring Samurai Futaba character and his Joe Cocker impression, established him as the show's most popular original cast member. He co-created The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd, starred in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and The Blues Brothers (1980), and died of a drug overdose at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles on March 5, 1982, at age thirty-three.

Canadian

John Candy

John Candy (October 31, 1950 - March 4, 1994) was a Canadian comedian and actor who trained and performed at The Second City Toronto beginning in 1973, alongside Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Dan Aykroyd, and Gilda Radner, and became an original cast member of SCTV (Second City Television) when the show premiered in 1976. His major film roles included Stripes (1981), Splash (1984), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Uncle Buck (1989), and Cool Runnings (1993). He died of a heart attack on March 4, 1994, at age forty-three, in Durango, Mexico, while filming Wagons East, the same cause that had killed his father at age thirty-five.

John Stoops

John Stoops is a Chicago-based improviser, theater executive, and educator who founded The Revival in Hyde Park in 2015 on the site of the corner of 55th Street and University Avenue where the Compass Players had performed in 1955, returning improvisational comedy to its historical birthplace sixty years after it first appeared there. Before founding The Revival, Stoops worked at the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago, performed at iO and Second City, joined Boom Chicago in Amsterdam as a professional ensemble member performing over two hundred shows across five countries alongside Seth Meyers and Jordan Peele, and earned an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, writing The Revival's founding business plan as his graduation project. The Revival serves South Side Chicago audiences with adult and youth classes, workshops, performances, and scholarship access through its Due South Foundation.

Jon Lovitz

Jon Lovitz trained with the Groundlings comedy troupe in Los Angeles, where he performed alongside Lisa Kudrow and befriended future SNL castmate Phil Hartman. His work at the Groundlings preceded his breakthrough as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1985 to 1990, where he originated characters including Tommy Flanagan the Pathological Liar and the pompous Master Thespian. He received two Primetime Emmy nominations for his SNL performances.

Jonathan Mangum

Jonathan Mangum is an American improviser, actor, and television personality whose career traces a direct line from the shortform improv stage of SAK Comedy Lab in Orlando to network television. Best known as the announcer and co-host of CBS's Let's Make a Deal alongside Wayne Brady and as a rotating performer on the CW's Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Mangum has spent more than three decades performing live improv in venues ranging from small Orlando theatres to Carnegie Hall. His career represents one of the clearest examples of a working improviser sustaining a decades-long partnership rooted in the same ensemble training ground.

Jonathan Pitts

Jonathan Pitts is a Chicago-based improv theatre artist, producer, and educator who has shaped the institutional infrastructure of American improv for more than three decades. As co-founder and producer of the Chicago Improv Festival for twenty years, creator of the College Improv Tournament, founder of the Teen Comedy Fest, and a sixteen-year faculty member at The Second City Training Center, Pitts has operated simultaneously as a performer, teacher, and institution builder. He trained under Paul Sills, Byrne Piven, David Shepherd, Sheldon Patinkin, and Del Close, connecting his practice directly to the foundational generation of American improv. His Global Improv Walkabout project has taken him to twenty-eight countries and more than one hundred fifteen cities, making him one of the most widely traveled improv practitioners in the world.

Jordan Peele

Jordan Peele began his career in improv comedy, performing with Boom Chicago and The Second City in the early 2000s before joining the cast of Mad TV in 2003. He later co-created and starred in the Comedy Central sketch series Key & Peele (2012–2015) alongside Keegan-Michael Key, which earned critical acclaim, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Peabody Award. Peele subsequently transitioned to filmmaking, writing and directing the horror film Get Out (2017), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Josephine Forsberg

Josephine Forsberg is a Chicago-based improvisation teacher and theater administrator who trained under Viola Spolin, became Spolin's teaching assistant, and took over the central improvisational teaching role in Chicago when Spolin relocated to the West Coast. In the early 1970s she founded The Players Workshop, widely described as Chicago's first fully structured independent improv school, where she organized exercises into a graduated syllabus, built a faculty, and created a pathway through which large numbers of students could study improvisation outside the Second City company structure. She also helped run the Second City Touring Company, produced children's theatre programming, and in the early 1980s invited David Shepherd back to Chicago, helping create the conditions from which ImprovOlympic would emerge.

Josh Cohen

Josh Cohen is a New York-based improviser, puppeteer, and comedy performer who bridges the worlds of long-form improv and puppetry through a career spanning three decades. A UCB-trained improviser who performed on the Harold team My Kickass Van, Cohen is also a Muppeteer for the Jim Henson Company with credits on Sesame Street, Bear in the Big Blue House, and Muppetfest. With his long-time creative partner Tamra Malaga, he performs and teaches long-form puppet improv comedy as The Josh and Tamra Show, a format that fuses Harold-derived improv structure with live puppetry. Cohen founded FREAKS LOCAL 413 STORE FRONT THEATER, a pop-up NYC comedy venue, and has headlined improv festivals across the United States and Canada.

Josh Fult

Josh Fult is an improviser included in the archive based on community records. Public biographical information for Fult has not been located through available research channels. The archive retains this entry pending identification of verifiable public sources that can support a substantive biographical article meeting the editorial standard defined in the People framework.

Josh Ruben

Josh Ruben is an American actor, director, and writer whose career connects the Viola Spolin/Paul Sills improvisational lineage directly to twenty-first-century digital comedy. Trained at the New Actors Workshop, the two-year conservatory co-founded by Mike Nichols, Paul Sills, and George Morrison that emphasized Spolin's theater games and Sills's improvisation techniques, Ruben went on to co-found the sketch group Dutch West with Sam Reich and to become a founding member of CollegeHumor's Originals video department, where he wrote, directed, and starred in hundreds of comedic shorts that accumulated billions of views. His directorial debut, Scare Me, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and he continues to appear on Dropout's improv game shows Make Some Noise and Game Changer.

Joshua Funk

Joshua Funk is an American improv director and performer who began his career as a cast member at The Second City Detroit, where he co-founded Planet Ant Theater in Hamtramck with Keegan-Michael Key and others. He became a resident director at The Second City in Chicago in 2000, earning Joseph Jefferson Awards for Best Director of a Revue and Best Production for his work at The Second City e.t.c. He served as improv director and actor on MTV's Wild 'N Out during its first five seasons, coaching cast teams and teaching celebrity guests to improvise. He has also performed and directed with Jim Belushi and The Board of Comedy for over a decade, and is a member of The 313, an improv troupe composed of Second City Detroit alumni.

Josie Lawrence

Josie Lawrence is a British actress, improviser, and singer who became the most prominent female practitioner of improvisational comedy in the United Kingdom through her work with the Comedy Store Players and as a core performer on Channel 4's Whose Line Is It Anyway? from 1988 to 1999. Known as the Queen of Improvisation for her ability to create fully formed songs, characters, and scenes spontaneously, Lawrence appeared in over one hundred episodes across both the radio and television versions of Whose Line. Her parallel career in classical and commercial theatre, including a Dame Peggy Ashcroft Award-winning turn in the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Taming of the Shrew, demonstrates the transferability of improvisational skill to the highest levels of scripted performance.

Joyce Sloane

Joyce Sloane was the executive producer of The Second City for nearly fifty years, serving as the institutional backbone of Chicago's most important comedy theatre from her arrival in 1961 until her death in 2011. Known as the den mother of American comedy, Sloane discovered, nurtured, and promoted generations of performers who became the dominant figures in American film and television comedy, including John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, and Mike Myers. She founded The Second City Touring Companies, established the e.t.c. stage, and co-founded The Second City Toronto, making her one of the most consequential figures in the institutional history of American improvisation.

Julia Sweeney

Julia Sweeney trained with The Groundlings improvisational comedy troupe beginning in 1988, eventually joining the Sunday Company, where she developed the characters she would later bring to stage, film, and television. Her work at The Groundlings led directly to her casting on Saturday Night Live, where she performed from 1990 to 1994. At The Groundlings she also co-wrote Mea's Big Apology, which won the Best Written Play Award from L.A. Weekly in 1988.

Julie Barr

Julie Barr is an American stand-up comedian based in the Boston comedy scene since the mid-1980s. She has been described by Steve Morse of The Boston Globe as probably the reigning Boston female stand-up comic and has appeared on Comedy Central's Women Aloud, NBC's Broadcast News, UPN's Bob Marley's Comedy Festival, and the animated series Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist. While her archive entry reflects her presence in the broader American comedy landscape, her primary practice is stand-up rather than improvisational comedy.

Justin Francin

Justin Franzen is an American improv performer, director, and entrepreneur from Denver, Colorado who founded Grafenberg Productions in 2013, one of Denver's primary long-form improv companies. He trained in Chicago at Second City and iO before returning to Colorado to build a performance and training institution. Note: the archive may carry an alternate spelling (Francin) of this name.

Justin York

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Justina Valentine

Justina Valentine is an American rapper, singer, and television personality who became the longest-running female cast member on MTV's improvisational comedy series Nick Cannon Presents: Wild 'N Out, joining in Season 8 (2016) and continuing through Season 21. Born February 14, 1987, in Passaic County, New Jersey, Valentine's rapid-fire freestyle ability and comedic timing made her a breakout star in the show's improv battle format, bridging hip-hop culture and improvisational performance.

American

Karen Kolberg

Karen Kolberg is an American improviser, author, and applied improv practitioner who co-founded ComedySportz in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in September 1984 alongside Dick Chudnow, Bob Orvis, and Brian Green. Beyond her foundational role in the competitive improv franchise, Kolberg built a career applying improvisational principles to education, corporate training, and community storytelling, co-authoring The Laughing Classroom (1993) and facilitating large-scale play experiences with Playfair for over three decades.

Karen L. Eichler

Karen L. Eichler is an American improviser, author, and educator who co-founded Defiant Monkey Improv in 2009 with Andrew M. Spragge. A ComedySportz veteran since 1997 and graduate of The Second City Toronto, Eichler has co-authored three books on improvisational performance: The 5 Elements of Improv (2017), The One Minute Improviser (2018), and The Big Book of Improv Games (2020). She holds a Master's Degree in Education and has worked as a university professor teaching Public Speaking and College Writing.

Karisa Bruin

Karisa Bruin is an American improviser, filmmaker, actress, and educator who came up through the Chicago comedy scene and has performed at iO, UCB New York, Magnet Theater, and Second City Hollywood. A veteran of more than twenty years in improv and sketch theatres across Chicago and New York, Bruin co-founded Lickety-Split Comedy with Scott Morehead to bring professional improv performance and training to rural southwestern Colorado. Her short film Labor Relations premiered at Just for Laughs in Montreal, and her feature directorial debut UberEx competed at Dances With Films in 2018.

Kathryn Ish

Kathryn Ish was a founding member of The Committee, the San Francisco-based improvisational political satire group active during the 1960s and 1970s. She was recognized for her inventive and droll characters and described as a pitch-perfect vocal mimic with exceptional range. Beyond her work with The Committee, she appeared in over 100 films and television shows and provided voice work for more than 75 projects.

Katy Bolger

Katy Bolger is an American improviser, actress, and producer who co-founded ImprovBoston in 1983 alongside Nicholas Emanuel and Ellen Holbrook. ImprovBoston grew into one of New England's most significant improvisational comedy institutions, operating for over forty years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before closing in December 2023. Bolger's role in establishing the organization helped bring sustained, professional-level improv performance and training to the Boston area during a period when the form was still concentrated primarily in Chicago.

Keegan-Michael Key

American actor, comedian, and improviser known for his work at The Second City Detroit, MADtv, and the Emmy-winning sketch series Key & Peele. Co-founder of Planet Ant Theatre in Hamtramck, Michigan.

Keith Habersberger

Keith Habersberger is an American improviser, content creator, and comedian born June 18, 1987, in Carthage, Tennessee. A graduate of Illinois State University's School of Theatre and Dance, he co-led Improv Mafia to a national championship at the College Improv Tournament in 2008, toured with Mission Improvable, and co-founded the sketch and improv group Octavarius before co-creating The Try Guys at BuzzFeed in 2014. His career traces a direct line from college and Chicago improv training to one of the most successful digital comedy ventures of the 2010s.

Keith Johnstone

Keith Johnstone (1933-2023) was the British-Canadian teacher, director, and writer who created one of improv's two major international lineages, distinct from and parallel to the Chicago tradition. Developing his system at London's Royal Court Theatre in the late 1950s and 1960s, then maturing it at the University of Calgary and Loose Moose Theatre Company from 1972 onward, Johnstone built a practice grounded in status dynamics, mask work, narrative play, and competitive formats such as Theatresports. His books Impro (1979) and Impro for Storytellers (1999) became primary texts across dozens of countries, and Theatresports is performed under license in more than thirty nations. For improvisers outside the United States, Johnstone is frequently the foundational figure rather than a secondary one.

Keith Strachan

Keith Strachan (born 21 January 1944, Consett, County Durham) is an English composer and theatre director who built an extensive career in musical theatre after leaving a career as a mathematics teacher. He directed West End productions including Elvis the Musical (1977) and Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens (1996), and served as musical director for Grease (1979). His composing work spans television themes, most notably the theme for the international game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (1998), developed in one week with his son Matthew Strachan and licensed in over 100 countries.

Kelly Leonard

Kelly Leonard is an American comedy executive, author, and applied improvisation advocate who has shaped The Second City for over three decades. Starting in the company's kitchen in 1988, he rose to Executive Vice President and President of Second City Theatricals, overseeing the hiring of Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler, and Steve Carell. He co-authored Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses 'No, But' Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration (2015) with Tom Yorton and hosts the Getting to Yes, And podcast. Since 2017, he has served as Executive Director of Insights and Applied Improvisation at Second City Works.

Kelsey Bradt

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Kemsley Dickinson

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Kenn Adams

Kenn Adams is an American improviser, director, author, and inventor of the Story Spine, one of the most widely adopted narrative frameworks in improvisation and storytelling. As founding Artistic Director of San Francisco's Synergy Theater, Adams has spent over three decades performing, directing, and teaching full-length improvised plays. He authored How to Improvise a Full-Length Play: The Art of Spontaneous Theater and created the improv games Sit, Stand and Kneel and The Family Dinner. The Story Spine gained global recognition after Pixar Animation Studios adopted it as a core storytelling tool.

Kenny Metroff

Kenny Metroff is an American improviser, actor, writer, and educator based in Chicago who has performed, taught, and studied sketch and improv comedy for over a decade. A graduate of The Second City Conservatory and alumni of the Second City House Ensemble program, Metroff has performed at iO Chicago, Annoyance Theatre, ComedySportz, and pH Comedy Theater. He toured as a member of The Second City Theatrical aboard Norwegian Cruise Lines and created the award-winning web series It's A Parent.

Kerri Griffin

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Kerry Griffin

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Kevin Hanssen

Kevin Hanssen is a Zimbabwean actor, author, and musician who has been active since 1985. He is a founding member of Over the Edge Theatre Company and has performed in stage productions across Zimbabwean theatres, including the play 'A Man Like You'. He has received multiple awards at international festivals, including the Pick of the Fringe and Spirit of the Fringe awards at the Edinburgh Festival.

Kevin Mullaney

Kevin Mullaney is an American improviser, director, and educator who served as Artistic Director of both the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York and the Chicago Improv Festival. A teacher at iO Theater in Chicago for over twenty-five years, Mullaney founded the Improv Resource Center and created influential competitive formats including UCB's Cage Match and the Annual 3 on 3 Tournament. He won the 2015 INNY Award for Best Improv Comedy Instructor/Coach.

Canada

Kevin Patrick Robbins

Kevin Patrick Robbins is a Canadian, Irish, and British improv teacher, director, writer, and photographer best known as the founder and artistic director of Toronto's Impatient Theatre Co. From 2001 to 2013 he helped build one of Toronto's central long-form training and performance institutions, linking the city's scene to Harold-based lineages associated with Chicago and New York. His later visual practice extends that performance background into commercial, editorial, and artistic portrait photography.

American

Kim Howard Johnson

Kim Howard Johnson (born August 6, 1955) is an American author, actor, and improv practitioner who co-wrote Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation with Del Close and Charna Halpern, published in 1994. The book codified the Harold long-form improv structure developed at the ImprovOlympic and became the foundational pedagogical text of long-form improvisation training worldwide. Johnson is a founding member of the Baron's Barracudas, the first house team at the ImprovOlympic, and later wrote The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close (2008), the authorized biography of the legendary improv teacher.

Kimberly Faubel

Kimberly Faubel is an American improviser, sketch comedy writer, and improv educator who has developed curriculum and programming for The Peoples Improv Theater (The PIT) in New York and Dallas Comedy Club. She created the Approach to Dramatic Improv and Advanced Dramatic Improv class series at The PIT, drawing on her acting background to bridge traditional theatre technique with improvisational performance. She also founded Socially Distant Improv, a digital improv network launched during the 2020 pandemic lockdown.

Kit Hollerbach

Kit Hollerbach is an American stand-up comedian and actress best known as a founding member of the Comedy Store Players, the London improvisational troupe she helped establish in 1985 alongside Paul Merton, Mike Myers, and Neil Mullarkey. Before relocating to London, she performed with the all-female improv group Femprov in San Francisco and developed her improvisational skills on the U.S. comedy circuit. After moving to the UK, she ran weekly improv workshops and performance sessions for actors in London.

Kristen Wiig

Kristen Wiig first developed her comedic performance skills as a member of the Los Angeles-based improv and sketch comedy troupe The Groundlings, which served as her entry point into professional comedy. She went on to a seven-season tenure as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012, where she created recurring characters and impressions that earned her four Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Her improvisational training informed her work as a co-writer and performer, most notably on the 2011 film Bridesmaids, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Laraine Newman

Laraine Newman co-founded the improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings in 1974 alongside her sister Tracy Newman and others, and was subsequently cast as one of the original members of Saturday Night Live, where she performed from 1975 to 1980. At SNL she created recurring characters including Connie Conehead, Sherry the Valley Girl, and Christie Christina. She and the rest of the original SNL cast were inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2017.

Larry Hankin

Larry Hankin is an American character actor, comedian, writer, and director who began his performance career as a stand-up comedian and storyteller at Greenwich Village coffee houses in the early 1960s, opening for acts including Woody Allen and Miles Davis. He trained with Viola Spolin and Paul Sills at Second City in Chicago before co-founding The Committee, a San Francisco-based improv troupe, in 1963. The Committee became a cornerstone of the era's alternative comedy movement, and Hankin's improvisational background informed a prolific acting career spanning more than 150 film and television projects.

Lauren Berning

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Lee Simpson

Lee Simpson is a British actor and comedian best known as a member of The Comedy Store Players, which he joined in 1990 after his first performance with the group in 1989. He played a key role in co-devising and narrating The Masterson Inheritance, an improvised comedy series on BBC Radio 4 that ran from 1993 to 1995. He also appeared in the 1994 stage production Paul Merton Live At The London Palladium alongside fellow Comedy Store Players Paul Merton and Richard Vranch.

Len Stuart

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Linda Gelman

Linda Gelman is an American improviser, producer, director, and educator who is a founding member and producer of Chicago City Limits, New York City's longest-running improvisational comedy revue. Originally a dancer with an MA in dance education from Columbia University Teachers College, Gelman transitioned from choreography and dance to acting and improvisation, performing with The Second City in Chicago before co-founding Chicago City Limits in New York. She has taught improvisation for over twenty-five years across educational, corporate, and community settings.

Liz Allen

Liz Allen is an American improviser, director, teacher, and author who has coached, directed, and performed improv for over three decades. After a career in mechanical engineering, she became a foundational figure in Chicago improv education, winning the Del Close Coach of the Year Award three consecutive years (1999-2001). The award was later renamed the Liz Allen Excellence in Teaching Award in her honor. She served as iO Chicago's Training Center Director, co-authored Improvising Better with Jimmy Carrane (2006), directed a Second City mainstage revue in Las Vegas, and coached the ensemble in Mike Birbiglia's 2016 film Don't Think Twice.

Lloyd Ahlquist

Lloyd Ahlquist (born January 18, 1977, Staten Island, New York), known professionally as EpicLLOYD, is an American improviser, rapper, and digital content creator who co-founded the improv troupe Mission IMPROVable in 1996, co-owns M.I.'s Westside Comedy Theater in Santa Monica, and co-created the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History with Peter Shukoff (Nice Peter). ERB has earned over four billion views, two Primetime Emmy nominations, eleven Streamy Awards, and twelve RIAA Gold Records. Ahlquist's career traces a direct line from college improv through Chicago training to one of the most successful comedy ventures in digital media history.

Lois Kaz

Lois Kaz is an American comedy institution figure who worked on the staff of The Second City in Chicago for decades. She was the former wife of Fred Kaz, the legendary musical director who served at Second City for nearly thirty years (1959-1989). Her name became permanently associated with a landmark moment in Second City history when the first fully improvised long-form show on the e.t.c. stage was named Lois Kaz in her honor in 1994, directed by Noah Gregoropoulos and featuring a cast that included Adam McKay, Scott Adsit, Dave Koechner, and Nancy Walls.

Madhu Shukla

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Marc Evan Jackson

Marc Evan Jackson began his improv career with River City Improv at Calvin University before joining Second City Detroit as a main company member in 1998, where he appeared in the 1999 show "Phantom Menace to Society." After relocating to Los Angeles in 2001, he taught improv at Second City Hollywood and joined the long-form improv group The 313, a Detroit-area alumni ensemble that included Keegan-Michael Key and Maribeth Monroe. He co-founded the Detroit Creativity Project, a nonprofit providing improv workshops to underserved youth in Michigan.

Marc Muszynski

Marc Muszynski is an American writer, comedian, and actor who trained in theatre at Illinois State University before touring nationally with sketch and improv performances. He transitioned to television writing, working on Dexter: New Blood, Dexter: Original Sin, Dexter: Resurrection, NBC's Abby's, and Netflix's Polly Pocket. Muszynski, who is visually impaired, has been recognized by the Inevitable Foundation for disability representation in entertainment and has created digital content for BuzzFeed, Funny or Die, and Honest Trailers with over forty-two million combined views.

Marcel St. Pierre

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Margaret Edwartowski

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Maribeth Monroe

Maribeth Monroe is an American actress, writer, and comedian who began her career at Second City Detroit, where she was hired for the mainstage after completing only one improv class, having previously worked as a cocktail waitress at the venue. She co-created and performed in seven original revues across the Detroit and Chicago stages, then joined the Second City Touring Company in 2001 and performed internationally. In 2003, she transitioned to the Chicago mainstage, appearing in the 2004 revue Red Scare, directed by Mick Napier, for which she received a Joseph Jefferson Award nomination.

Mark David Christenson

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Canadian

Mark Little

Mark Little (born October 21, 1983, New Westminster, British Columbia) is a Canadian comedian, actor, writer, and voice performer who entered comedy through the Canadian Improv Games in high school and spent five years performing improv in Vancouver before co-founding the sketch troupe Picnicface in Halifax with Kyle Dooley in 2005. Little won both the Yuk Yuk's Great Canadian Laugh Off and the Just for Laughs Homegrown Contest in 2009, was named one of Variety's 10 Comics to Watch in 2013, and has accumulated fifteen Canadian Comedy Awards. He is known for playing science teacher Simon Hunt on the CBC sitcom Mr. D (2012-2018) and for creating and voicing the adult animated series Gary and His Demons (2018-2023).

Mark Scott

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Mark Sutton

Mark Sutton is a founding member of Chicago's Annoyance Theatre who has been performing, directing, and teaching improvisation since 1984. Recruited from Indiana University by his dorm-mate Mick Napier, Sutton helped build the Annoyance into one of Chicago's most influential comedy institutions, performing in over seventy-five productions and serving as managing director for nine years. He is one half of BASSPROV, the long-running improvised two-person show with Joe Bill, and co-creator of Power Improv, a workshop methodology they have taught across North America and Europe. Sutton spent sixteen years with The Second City as a performer, director, teacher, and Artistic Director of Learning and Development in the corporate division.

Markku Toikka

Markku Toikka is a Finnish actor and stand-up comedian recognized as one of the pioneers of stand-up comedy in Finland, active in the form since 1991. He has authored a guide to stand-up comedy and teaches the craft, contributing to its development in the Finnish performance landscape. His comedy work has included collaborations with the sketch and variety group Lapinlahden Linnut throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Marshall Stern

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Marta Borges

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Canadian

Martin Short

Martin Short (born March 26, 1950, Hamilton, Ontario) is a Canadian comedian, actor, writer, and producer whose career began at The Second City Toronto in 1977 and expanded through SCTV, Saturday Night Live, Broadway, and film into one of the most versatile performance careers in North American comedy. Known for creating indelible characters including Ed Grimley, Jiminy Glick, Nathan Thurm, and Franck Eggelhoffer, Short won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for Little Me in 1999 and a Primetime Emmy for his writing on SCTV in 1983. He is currently starring alongside Steve Martin and Selena Gomez in the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building.

Martin Zdarek

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Mary Borsellino

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Mary Scruggs

Mary Scruggs (1964 to 2011) was an actress, director, playwright, and educator who served as head of the writing and education programs at The Second City Training Center in Chicago. She co-authored Process: An Improviser's Journey with Michael Gellman and The Second City Guide to Improvisation in the Classroom with her sister Katherine McKnight. After her death, The Second City Training Center established the annual Mary Scruggs Works By Women Festival in her honor, showcasing world premiere sketches and songs written by women.

Marz Timms

Marz Timms is an American improviser, stand-up comedian, actor, and teacher based in Chicago. He is the creator and producer of Pimprov, one of Chicago's longest-running improv shows, which he launched around 2004 as the first all-Black improv group in the city. A graduate of Second City's training program, Timms was an original member of Second City's Brown Co. and performed with the corporate touring ensemble Biz Co. His acting work includes multiple seasons of Netflix's Easy and voice work as Jax in the Mortal Kombat video game franchise.

Mats Eldøen

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Matt Besser

Matt Besser (born September 22, 1967, Little Rock, Arkansas) is a comedian, actor, writer, director, and improv teacher who co-founded the Upright Citizens Brigade alongside Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh. Trained under Del Close at iO Chicago, Besser co-created and starred in the UCB television series on Comedy Central (1998 to 2000), co-authored The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual (2013), and has hosted the improv4humans podcast on the Earwolf network since 2011. He performs regularly in ASSSSCAT 3000 and teaches at UCB training centers.

Matt Castellvi

Matt Castellvi is a Cuban-American comedian, improviser, and teacher from Chicago who has built a career spanning stand-up, musical improv, and sketch performance across the United States and Europe. Trained at Second City, iO, and ComedySportz in Chicago, he won Best Stand-Up of 2019 from the Chicago Reader and performed at festivals in Australia, Norway, and across North America before joining the cast of Boom Chicago in Amsterdam in 2019.

Matt Herzau

Matt Herzau, known professionally as Tinz, is an American improviser, musical director, composer, and writer based in Chicago. A graduate of Illinois State University where he trained with the Improv Mafia, he co-founded Octavarius in 2009, the Chicago Reader's Best Improv/Sketch group of 2011, and has performed at iO Theater, Second City, and the Piven Theater. He has collaborated extensively with BuzzFeed video producer Keith Habersberger, producing two musical comedy albums together and the webseries I Made America.

Matt Holmes

Matt Holmes is an American improviser, director, and teacher based in Philadelphia who has been performing and teaching improv since 1998. He co-founded Rare Bird Show in 2003, widely considered one of the strongest long-form ensembles in Philadelphia's history, and was present at the October 2005 meeting that led to the creation of the Philadelphia Improv Theater (PHIT), where he taught the organization's first class. He is also the creator of Matt&, a one-on-one improv show in which he performs with a randomly selected audience member.

Matt Walsh

Matt Walsh (born October 13, 1964, Chicago, Illinois) is a comedian, actor, writer, and director who co-founded the Upright Citizens Brigade alongside Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, and Ian Roberts. Trained under Del Close at iO Chicago and at The Second City and the Annoyance Theatre, Walsh co-created and starred in the UCB television series on Comedy Central (1998 to 2000) and co-authored The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual (2013). He is widely known for his role as Mike McLintock, the bumbling White House communications director on HBO's Veep (2012 to 2019), which earned him two Primetime Emmy nominations and a Screen Actors Guild Award with the ensemble cast.

Maya Rudolph

Maya Rudolph is an American actress, comedian, and singer recognized for her improvisational skills and character work in sketch comedy and film. She served as a repertory cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2000 to 2007, developing acclaimed impressions of celebrities and politicians and becoming the longest-tenured Black woman in the show's history. Following her SNL tenure, she expanded into film and voice acting, earning multiple Primetime Emmy Awards for guest appearances on SNL and for voicing characters in the animated series Big Mouth.

Meg Pierson

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Megan Furniss

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Mel Tonken

Mel Tonken is a Canadian veterinarian and theatre co-founder who, alongside Keith Johnstone, established the Loose Moose Theatre Company in Calgary in 1977. The company became the institutional home for Johnstone's improvisational formats including Theatresports, Maestro, Gorilla Theatre, and Life Game, and grew into an internationally recognized center for improvisational theatre training and performance. Tonken's partnership with Johnstone at a critical moment in the development of structured competitive improvisation placed him at the founding of one of the most influential improv institutions in Canada.

Melissa Dalton

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Melissa McCarthy

Melissa McCarthy is an American actress, comedian, producer, and screenwriter recognized for comedic roles emphasizing physical humor and bold character work in television and film. She first gained broad attention as chef Sookie St. James on Gilmore Girls (2000-2007) before earning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her lead role on Mike & Molly (2010-2016). She received Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress in Bridesmaids (2011) and Best Actress in Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), demonstrating range across ensemble comedy and dramatic character performance.

Mia Lee Roberts

Mia Lee Roberts is an American improviser and theatre co-founder who helped establish ComedySportz Indianapolis in 1993 alongside Ed Trout, Lynn Burger, and Dave Ruark. Working from the sketch and improv ensemble Below the Belt, the group traveled to Chicago to observe ComedySportz before opening the Indianapolis franchise that February. Roberts served as co-owner and executive producer for more than two decades before selling her stake in the company in 2016.

Micah Philbrook

Micah Philbrook is an American improviser, teacher, director, and theatre co-founder based in Chicago who has been performing and teaching improvisation for more than two decades. He co-founded pH Comedy Theater and has taught at the Second City Training Center since 2008, where he has taught more than 160 classes. With Tim Soszko he formed the sketch and improv duo the tim&micah project, which has toured nationally and internationally for more than twelve years. In 2014 he developed The Session, a freeform, non-linear long-form improv format built on reckless agreement and fearless contribution.

Michael Bradt

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Michael Gellman

Michael Gellman is an American improviser, director, and teacher who served as a resident director for The Second City in Canada and the United States for twenty-five years and was a founding faculty member of ImprovOlympic alongside Del Close. He is credited with originating long-form improvisation and co-authored Process: An Improviser's Journey (Northwestern University Press) with Mary Scruggs. He served as artistic director of The Second City Toronto and is currently artistic director of The Process Theatre in Ontario, Canada.

Michael Jastroch

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Mick Napier

Mick Napier (born 1962) is the founder of The Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, a director, teacher, and author whose work defined one of the field's most influential counter-traditions to conventional improv pedagogy. Where other schools emphasized agreement, politeness, and inherited rules, Napier built a practice around stronger individual choices, stranger material, and a belief that improvisers become better scene partners by becoming more powerful players rather than more deferential ones. His dual presence inside The Annoyance and The Second City made him one of Chicago's most consequential figures in the debate over what improv should look like and how it should be taught.

Mike McAvoy

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Mike McShane

Mike McShane (born June 25, 1955, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American actor, singer, and improvisational comedian who trained in classical theater and improv at San Francisco State University before becoming a recurring performer on the original British Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988 to 1997) and a member of The Comedy Store Players in London. He is known for his film roles including Friar Tuck in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and Dr. Swanson in Office Space (1999), and he continues to teach improvisation workshops.

Mike Myers

Mike Myers (born 1963) is a Canadian performer and writer whose career began in the Second City Toronto ensemble and ran through Saturday Night Live, Wayne's World, Austin Powers, and the Shrek franchise. He is one of the most commercially successful performers to emerge from the North American improv and sketch tradition, and his trajectory from Second City Toronto to global franchise stardom documents how the Canadian improv pipeline, parallel to but distinct from the Chicago lineage, produced performers capable of sustaining characters across multiple formats and decades. His foundation in ensemble improvisation shaped his character-building methods and his instinct for sustained comic personas.

American

Mike Nichols

Mike Nichols (born Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky, November 6, 1931, Berlin, Germany; died November 19, 2014, Manhattan, New York) was a director, comedian, and producer who began his career as a performer with the Compass Players in Chicago and as one half of the groundbreaking comedy duo Nichols and May with Elaine May. He became one of the most acclaimed directors in American entertainment history, achieving EGOT status (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) and winning six Tony Awards for directing, an Academy Award for Best Director for The Graduate (1967), and Emmy Awards for Wit (2001) and Angels in America (2003).

Mike O'Keeffe

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

American

Mike Staffa

Mike Staffa is an American improviser, director, and applied improvisation practitioner based in Tokyo, Japan. He founded Pirates of Tokyo Bay in 2010, pioneering simultaneous English and Japanese improv performance in Japan, and previously founded Pirates of the Dotombori in Osaka in 2005. Under his direction, Pirates of Tokyo Bay has performed more than 520 shows across 12 countries. Staffa began his improv career in the United States as a member of Attention-Starved Children, and later performed in Australia with The Big Hoo-Haa. After relocating to Japan in 2005, he built Pirates of the Dotombori in Osaka before moving to Tokyo and founding Pirates of Tokyo Bay. The group performs roughly half of each show in Japanese, a format Staffa developed to serve audiences that include Japanese locals, international residents, and tourists. In 2012 he delivered the TED Talk "Why you won't die on stage," examining cross-cultural communication through improv. He has developed applied improvisation curricula for GLOBIS University, including courses on Improv Techniques for Business and Building Teams with Laughter, and has presented his work at Cornell University. Corporate clients include Google, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, and BizReach. In 2026, Pirates of Tokyo Bay received the Peatix Community Award in the Creative Arts category.

Mikey Day

Mikey Day began his career in improvisation at The Groundlings, the Los Angeles-based improv and sketch comedy troupe, where he developed his performance skills and co-wrote the widely circulated YouTube parody David Blaine Street Magic. He was also an original cast member on the improvisational comedy series Wild 'n Out on MTV. Day joined Saturday Night Live as a writer in 2013, became a featured player in 2016, and was promoted to repertory cast member in 2018, where he has performed original characters and impressions across hundreds of sketches.

Miles Stroth

Miles Stroth is an American improviser, teacher, and long-form format innovator from Oak Park, Illinois. Beginning his improv training at Second City in 1989 and studying long-form with Del Close and Charna Halpern at ImprovOlympic from 1991, he became a member of The Family, the seminal Del Close-directed ensemble whose members included Adam McKay, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, Neil Flynn, and Ali Farahnakian. The Family created and introduced the Deconstruction and The Movie into the improv world. Stroth collaborated with Del Close for eight years and contributed to the development of the Armando, the Deconstruction, the Movie, the Lerand, and Two-Person Long-Form.

Mina Liccione

Mina Liccione is an American comedian, performing artist, and arts educator who relocated to Dubai in 2007, where she became a pioneering figure in the regional comedy and performing arts scene. She co-founded Dubomedy Arts School with Ali Al Sayed in 2008, an institution dedicated to comedy and performing arts training that has trained thousands of students. Her performance background spans dance, physical theatre, and circus arts, including a role in the Off-Broadway production Stomp and training at the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. She has appeared regularly on Comedy Central Arabia and presented solo stand-up shows including Growing Up Ringside and Araby by Nature.

Monika Smith

Monika Smith is a Canadian actor, writer, comedian, and improv teacher from Toronto who has built a career across stage, television, and education in Los Angeles. She has performed at UCB since 2007, toured with Second City, and served as Artistic Director of the Nerdist Theatre. Her teaching work spans UCB, Second City, Nerdist, iO, and improv festivals across North America and Asia. She wrote the curriculum for Second City Los Angeles and Nerdist and established the first long-form improv and sketch training program in China. She performs what she describes as the only one-woman improv show in Los Angeles.

Nancy Hayden

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Nancy Howland Walker

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Nasir Engineer

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Natalie Kossar

Natalie Kossar is an American comedian and improviser who has performed in Chicago and Albuquerque. She appeared with the kates, an all-female rotating comedy collective in Chicago active through the early 2010s, and later performed in Albuquerque at The Box Performance Space, where she co-created The Blithe Downers improvised show with Kevin Bransford and collaborated on the two-person sketch production Gender Reveal.

Canadian

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder (born May 12, 1983, Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian comedian, writer, director, and producer who performed in the improv comedy group at Point Grey Secondary School alongside Seth Rogen before studying business at the University of Victoria and comedy at Humber College. He created Nathan for You (2013 to 2017) and The Rehearsal (2022 to 2025) for HBO, both of which apply improvisational principles to documentary-style television in ways that interrogate the boundaries between spontaneous and scripted behavior. He was named to the TIME 100 Most Influential People list in 2023.

Nathan Fillion

Nathan Fillion (born March 27, 1971, Edmonton, Alberta) is a Canadian-American actor who began his performing career in Edmonton's improv theater community with Rapid Fire Theatre and the improvised soap opera Die-Nasty before achieving television stardom as Captain Malcolm Reynolds on Firefly (2002 to 2003), Richard Castle on Castle (2009 to 2016), and Officer John Nolan on The Rookie (2018 to present). He has won four consecutive People's Choice Awards and credits his improv training with developing the quick thinking and character work that define his screen performances.

Neil Corso

Neil Corso is an American improviser, teacher, and applied improv coach based in Las Vegas. He is a founding member of Bleach, a long-form improv ensemble that has performed weekly at the Art Square Theatre in Las Vegas since 2013, and a founding member and head writer for The Grey Envelope Theatre. He has studied improv at Improv Vegas and UCB Los Angeles, serves as a Pro Player for ComedySportz Las Vegas, and works as an applied improv coach and instructor.

Neil Flynn

Neil Flynn (born November 13, 1960, Chicago, Illinois) is an American actor and comedian who trained at ImprovOlympic and The Second City in Chicago, performing alongside Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and David Koechner before achieving television stardom as the Janitor on Scrubs (2001 to 2010) and Mike Heck on The Middle (2009 to 2018). He co-founded the improv ensemble Beer Shark Mice with Pat Finn and David Koechner, and his improvisational skills became a defining element of his television performances.

Neil Mullarkey

Neil Mullarkey is a British comedian, improviser, author, and corporate trainer who co-founded The Comedy Store Players with Mike Myers in 1985, establishing what became the longest-running improvisation show in the world as recognized by the Guinness World Records. He served as president of the Cambridge Footlights and has performed on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Have I Got News for You, and in two Austin Powers films. He authored In the Moment: Build Your Confidence, Communication and Creativity at Work.

Neva Boyd

Neva Leona Boyd (February 25, 1876, Sanborn, Iowa, to November 21, 1963, Chicago, Illinois) was an American sociologist, educator, and play theorist who founded the Recreational Training School at Hull House in Chicago. Her work on the educational and social benefits of group games directly shaped Viola Spolin's development of theatre games, making Boyd a foundational figure in the genealogy of improvisational theatre. She later became a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, where she continued to develop play theory as a tool for social work and education.

Nicholas Emanuel

Nicholas Emanuel is an American filmmaker and improviser who co-founded ImprovBoston in 1983 alongside Ellen Holbrook and Katy Bolger. Building on Ellen Holbrook's 1982 assembly of Boston improvisers competing in a local Improv Olympic format at venues near Government Center, Emanuel and Bolger joined Holbrook to move the organization in a more commercial direction, relocating the group to Satch's near Copley Square in Boston. ImprovBoston subsequently became a not-for-profit corporation in 1984 and went on to operate for more than forty years as Cambridge's primary improv theater before closing at the end of 2023.

Nick Cannon

Nick Cannon (born October 8, 1980, San Diego, California) is an American comedian, television presenter, actor, and rapper who created and hosts Wild 'N Out, the MTV improvisational comedy and battle rap game show that has been running since 2005 and is the longest-running show in the network's history. Beginning his career as a teenager on Nickelodeon's All That, where he became the youngest staff writer in television history at age seventeen, Cannon has hosted America's Got Talent (2009 to 2016) and The Masked Singer (2019 to present).

Nick Hausman

Nick Hausman is an American improviser, producer, and media entrepreneur based in Chicago with more than a decade of experience in the city's improv scene. He trained at and performed as a house ensemble member at iO Theater, The Annoyance, and ComedySportz Chicago, and has also performed at pH Productions and The Playground. At iO he performed with Harold teams including The Republic, Alpine Valley, and Whiskey Rebellion. He co-performed alongside Jason Sudeikis in the ensemble Overthere.com and produced Chicago Improv Rebellion and Locked and Loaded. He is the founder and owner of The Rebellion Network, a collective of Chicago comedians producing podcasts and live performances.

Nick Johne

Nick Johne is a Canadian actor, improviser, and teacher who joined the Toronto Second City troupe in 1991 and subsequently relocated to Chicago, where he became a longtime performer and instructor at Second City Chicago and adjunct faculty in the Theater Department at DePaul University. He is best known for playing Dwayne Dortmund, Murray Woolworth's dim-witted assistant, in the second season of the Canadian television series The Red Green Show. At Second City he developed the Improv Anxiety program and created an improvisation curriculum for students on the autism spectrum, working with colleague Lisa Bany to bring the program to autism centers including the Orlando Center for Autism.

Nick Mikula

Nick Mikula is an American improviser, teacher, and director based in Philadelphia with more than nine years of performance experience in the city's improv scene. He performs with The N-Crowd, No Diggity, and Breeders, and with the independent team Sizzler Hour. He teaches at The Lab in Ambler, Pennsylvania, and at Philly Improv Theater (PHIT), where he has also coached and directed Harold teams including Main Dog and the Lab's bunker team 1235.

Nils Petter Mørland

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Noah Gregoropoulos

Noah Gregoropoulos (1959-2022) was an American improviser and teacher who spent four decades at the center of Chicago's long-form improv scene. A New England native and Northwestern University graduate, he joined the ImprovOlympic during its formative years in the mid-1980s and became a defining figure in iO's educational lineage. He was a member of Jazz Freddy, the influential 1990s Chicago ensemble, and of the iO team Carl and the Passions, and was a regular performer in the Armando Diaz Experience shows. At Second City he directed the theater's first long-form improv show, Lois Kaz, in 1994. When Del Close died in 1999, Gregoropoulos took over Close's graduating-level class at iO.

American

Patricia Ryan Madson

Patricia Ryan Madson is an American educator, author, and improvisation teacher who served as a senior lecturer in drama at Stanford University from 1977 to 2005, where she founded the Stanford Improvisors in 1991 and introduced Keith Johnstone's Theatresports to the university. Her book Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up (2005) distills thirty years of teaching into thirteen maxims that apply improvisational principles to everyday life, and she received the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Innovation in Undergraduate Education in 1998.

Patrick Stinson

Patrick Stinson is an American television host, correspondent, and producer whose career has spanned entertainment journalism across multiple networks, including E! Entertainment Television, TV Guide Network, truTV, ReelzChannel, and Lifetime Television. He is best known for his long-running work on the syndicated series Made in Hollywood, where he has served as both an on-air personality and producer covering films, interviews, and industry news. He also created and co-executive produced Extreme Hollywood during his tenure at TV Guide Network, and has contributed occasional acting roles in projects including The Perfect Storm (2000) and Paparazzi (2004).

Patti Stiles

Patti Stiles is a Canadian-Australian actor, improviser, director, teacher, author, and playwright who trained under Keith Johnstone at the Loose Moose Theatre in Calgary and has spent over forty years performing, directing, and teaching improvisation across six continents. She served as artistic director of Rapid Fire Theatre (1991 to 1996), Dream Kitchen Theatre, Impro Melbourne (2004 to 2009, 2014 to 2019), and the International Theatresports Institute, and she authored Improvise Freely (2021). The Canadian press has called her the "Queen of Improvisation."

Paul Killam

Paul Killam is an American improviser, teacher, and actor from Davis, California who has been a member of BATS Improv in San Francisco since 1989. Holding a degree in Dramatic Arts from UC Davis, he came to improv through Theatresports in Seattle in the mid-1980s before joining BATS's main stage company. He helped form True Fiction Magazine, a San Francisco improv ensemble, and has toured with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. He teaches improv at the College of Marin and has taught thousands of students over more than thirty years, emphasizing an approach grounded in character, emotion, sense memory, and theatrical realism.

Paul Mattingly

Paul Mattingly is an American comedian, improviser, teacher, actor, author, and podcaster from Kentucky who built his career in Las Vegas. He was a featured performer on the Second City mainstage at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, moving directly from the Second City Training Center to the mainstage. When Second City Las Vegas closed in 2008 after more than eight years at the Flamingo, Mattingly remained in Las Vegas and became an instructor and performer with Improv Vegas. He has also trained at the Groundlings in Los Angeles and is co-host of the Matt and Mattingly's Ice Cream Social podcast with Matt Donnelly.

Paul Merton

Paul Merton (born Paul James Martin, July 9, 1957, Fulham, London) is an English comedian, improviser, writer, and television presenter who has been a founding member of The Comedy Store Players since 1985, a regular performer on Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988 to 1992), and a team captain on Have I Got News for You since its premiere in 1990. He won a BAFTA Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance in 2003 and has been ranked among Britain's greatest comedians. He continues to perform weekly improvisation shows with The Comedy Store Players.

Paul Reubens

Paul Reubens was an American actor and comedian who trained with the Los Angeles-based improv troupe the Groundlings in the 1970s, where he developed his signature character Pee-wee Herman through improvisational performance. He debuted The Pee-wee Herman Show as a stage production in 1981, and the character's success led to the 1985 Tim Burton-directed film Pee-wee's Big Adventure and the CBS children's series Pee-wee's Playhouse, which ran from 1986 to 1990 and won 15 Emmy Awards. Reubens revived the character in a 2010 Broadway production and the 2016 Netflix film Pee-wee's Big Holiday, while also taking on non-Pee-wee roles in film and television throughout his career.

Paul Sills

Paul Sills (1927-2008) was the director, teacher, and theater builder who turned Viola Spolin's Theater Games into a public performance practice and co-founded both the Compass Players and The Second City. Born Paul Silverberg in Chicago, the son of Spolin and pharmacist Wilmer Silverberg, he served in the military before enrolling at the University of Chicago in 1948, where he entered the postwar student culture that became the seedbed of American improvisational theater. Through Playwrights Theatre Club, Compass Players, The Second City, Story Theater, and a long later career teaching at his Wisconsin Theater Game Center, Sills transformed his mother's pedagogical system into a living theatrical tradition.

Paul Vaillancourt

Paul Vaillancourt is an American improviser, teacher, director, author, and television writer and producer who co-founded iO West in Los Angeles with Charna Halpern. He trained at ComedySportz in Virginia, the Second City Training Center in Chicago, and the ImprovOlympic in Chicago under Del Close. His ensemble Bitter Noah was selected to perform the Improvised Movie at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, leading to his move to Los Angeles and the co-founding of iO West. He also performed with Beer Shark Mice and founded The Revolution Theater. He is the author of The Triangle of the Scene, an improv textbook on scene structure.

British

Paul Z Jackson

Paul Z Jackson is a British consultant, facilitator, author, and improvisation educator who co-founded the Applied Improvisation Network and served as its long-time president. A graduate of Oxford University and former BBC Radio comedy producer, he founded the improv group More Fool Us (whose members included Rob Brydon, Ruth Jones, and Julia Davis) and co-founded The Improvisation Academy with Neil Mullarkey and Lee Simpson. His books include Impro Learning and The Solutions Focus.

Paul Zuckerman

Paul Zuckerman is an American improviser, director, and co-founder of Chicago City Limits, one of New York City's longest-running improv companies. A founding member of the troupe in Chicago in 1977 under the influence of Del Close and Jo Forsberg, Zuckerman helped relocate the company to New York in 1979, where he served as director, artistic director, and executive producer for more than three decades. He holds a doctoral degree in Psychology from the University of Michigan and has applied that background to corporate facilitation and training work alongside his stage career.

Pedro Borges

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Pep Rosenfeld

Pep Rosenfeld (born Evanston, Illinois) is an American comedian, writer, and improv performer who co-founded Boom Chicago in Amsterdam in 1993 with Andrew Moskos and Ken Schaefle, building it into one of Europe's most influential improv comedy theaters. A Northwestern University graduate who wrote for Saturday Night Live in 2000, Rosenfeld has helped develop a theater whose alumni include Seth Meyers, Jordan Peele, Amber Ruffin, and Jason Sudeikis. He authored Work/Laugh Balance (2025).

Peter Bonerz

Peter Bonerz is an American actor and director who began his career in improvisational comedy, performing with the Off-Broadway troupe The Premise starting in 1962 and later becoming a founding member of The Committee, the San Francisco-based improv group active from 1963 to 1969, whose members also included Rob Reiner, David Ogden Stiers, and Howard Hesseman. His improvisational background informed his later work as a television director, where he emphasized ensemble dynamics and comedic timing across decades of popular sitcoms. He is best known to general audiences as Dr. Jerry Robinson on The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978), a role he originated alongside several former improv collaborators.

Peter Gwinn

Peter Gwinn is an American comedy writer, improviser, and teacher from Evanston, Illinois, who trained at iO Theater under Charna Halpern and Del Close, performed with The Second City Touring Company, and wrote for The Colbert Report, winning two Emmy Awards. He authored Group Improvisation: The Manual of Ensemble Improv Games (2003) and founded the musical improv group Baby Wants Candy. He currently writes for Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me on NPR.

Phil Hartman

Phil Hartman joined the Los Angeles improv troupe The Groundlings in 1975, where he helped Paul Reubens develop the character Pee-wee Herman and co-wrote the 1985 film Pee-wee's Big Adventure. He went on to serve eight seasons as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1994, earning the nickname 'the Glue' for his reliability and range in holding sketches together, and won a Primetime Emmy Award for his SNL work in 1989. His character work and impressions, including portrayals of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as well as original creations like the Anal Retentive Chef, became defining contributions to sketch comedy.

Philip Kotler

Philip Kotler is a Las Vegas-based long-form improviser, comedian, and co-founder of Bleach, a Las Vegas improv troupe formed in 2013 that performs weekly at the Vegas Theatre Company. He is also affiliated with ComedySportz Las Vegas and co-founded the Grey Envelope Theatre. Bleach won Best of LV Fringe Festival 2018 for their sketch comedy show Mugshots: Two of Us Have Been to Jail.

Piero Procaccini

Piero Procaccini is an American improviser, teacher, director, and applied improvisation specialist who has worked in the field for nearly two decades. A graduate of Amherst College with a degree in Biology and Neuroscience, he spent seven years as a Research Technologist at Northwestern University before pursuing a full-time career in improv at Second City and iO Chicago. He has taught improv on four continents, served on Second City's touring ships for Norwegian Cruise Line, directed the Second City National Touring Company, and collaborated with the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago on the Second Science Project, an applied improvisation and behavioral science initiative.

Porter Mason

Porter Mason is an American improviser and cartoonist from Virginia Beach, Virginia who has been performing improv since 1997 and performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre since 2000. He was a member of the UCB ensemble Rueben Williams before relocating to Los Angeles. He is also the creator of Bassist Wanted, a syndicated comic strip about musicians that has appeared in weekly newspapers across the United States and was collected in the book All Local Bands Suck (Except Ours).

American

Rachel Dratch

Rachel Dratch (born February 22, 1966, Lexington, Massachusetts) is a comedian, actress, and writer who trained at iO Theater and The Second City in Chicago before joining the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1999. At Second City, she won two Joseph Jefferson Awards for Best Actress in a Revue (1997 and 1998) and developed a creative partnership with Tina Fey that extended through SNL and beyond. She is known for creating the recurring SNL character Debbie Downer and received a Tony Award nomination for POTUS in 2022.

Rachel Mason

Rachael Mason is an American improviser, actress, writer, director, and teacher best known for her leadership roles at two of Chicago's central improv institutions. She served as Director of the iO Training Center for eight years and later as Head of Advanced Improvisation at The Second City, where she created the Scenic Improv and Dramatic Improv programs and the History of Satire Series. As one-half of the comedy duo The Boys with Susan Messing, she has headlined improv festivals internationally. Her teaching methodology, known as Yes And Because, is used at Second City, iO, UCB, and university programs including DePaul and Columbia College Chicago.

Ralph MacLeod

Ralph MacLeod is a Toronto-based actor, improviser, comedian, and theatre founder who has been teaching improv for over thirty years. He co-founded The Bad Dog Theatre Company in 2003, evolving it from the earlier Theatresports Toronto organization, and later co-founded and now runs The Social Capital Theatre in Toronto as Owner and Artistic Director. He also founded Yes, Unlimited, a corporate improvisation company.

Rance Rizzutto

Rance Rizzutto is an American improviser, teacher, and theatre founder who has been performing professionally since 1999. He began at ComedySportz Portland, trained and performed at iO Chicago and Second City, and co-founded The Nest Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, in 2016 with Tara DeFrancisco. He is best known for HERE: The (Improvised) Musical, a fully improvised two-person musical created with DeFrancisco that has toured to 24 countries and 80 cities and was named Chicago Tribune Critic-Recommended and called nothing short of genius by NPR.

Randy Dixon

Randy Dixon is an American improviser, director, author, and educator who co-founded Unexpected Productions in Seattle in 1983 and served as its artistic director from 1988 to 2021, making him one of the longest-serving artistic directors in American improv history. He holds a B.F.A. in Drama from Seattle University and a Master's degree in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Jungian Depth Psychology. He authored Being Present: Spontaneous Storytelling and the Art of Improvisation and has originated numerous improv formats including Spoken, Campfire, Afterlife, and Found Objects.

Rebecca Stockley

Rebecca Stockley is an American improviser, teacher, and applied improvisation practitioner based in San Francisco. She began performing improv in 1972 with her first group, the Grey Family Players, in Seattle and went on to co-found BATS Improv (Bay Area Theatresports) in San Francisco, where she served as the first Dean of the BATS School of Improv from 1992 to 2003. A student of Keith Johnstone, she has performed Theatresports in more than twenty cities on four continents and is recognized as a pioneer in applying improvisation to corporate and institutional settings, with clients including Apple, Pixar, Google, and Stanford University.

Ria Torricelli

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Rich Talarico

Rich Talarico (born August 25, 1973, in Frankfort, New York) is a Peabody Award-winning television writer, producer, performer, and teacher whose career bridges the Chicago improv world and major American sketch comedy television. He trained at The Second City under Stephen Colbert starting in 1992, performed on iO house teams under Charna Halpern and Del Close, and went on to write for MADtv, Saturday Night Live, Key and Peele, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. His signature contribution is the Key and Peele "Substitute Teacher" sketch, which was inducted into the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in 2024.

Richard Vranch

Richard Vranch is an English improvisational comedian, musician, actor, and writer best known for providing live musical accompaniment on the original British television series Whose Line Is It Anyway? from 1988 to 1998. He has performed with the Comedy Store Players since at least 1986, appearing weekly at London's The Comedy Store. He co-wrote and performed in stage productions including The Paul Merton Show at the London Palladium in 1994 and the UK tour and West End run of Paul Merton Out of My Head in 2012, and co-founded the improv storytelling group The YarnBards in 2006.

Rick Crom

Rick Crom (born March 15, 1957, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American improviser, comedian, Broadway actor, and musical theatre composer who co-founded Chicago City Limits in 1977 with six other graduates of The Second City's workshop program. He served as the troupe's musical director and relocated with it to New York in 1979. His parallel career spans stand-up comedy at the Comedy Cellar, Broadway appearances in The Goodbye Girl, Footloose, and Urinetown, and the creation of NEWSical the Musical, a political satire that ran for approximately ten years on Theater Row.

Rob Churchwell

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Rob Reiner

Rob Reiner was an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter who gained prominence portraying Michael 'Meathead' Stivic in the CBS sitcom All in the Family from 1971 to 1979, a role that earned him two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor. He transitioned to directing in the 1980s, creating the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984) as well as Stand by Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Misery (1990), and A Few Good Men (1992). His work spanned comedy, drama, romance, and documentary, earning him nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and nine Golden Globe Awards.

Robert Gravel

Robert Gravel (September 14, 1944 to August 12, 1996) was a Quebec actor, director, playwright, and improviser who co-founded the Ligue nationale d'improvisation (LNI) with Yvon Leduc in 1977 and co-founded the Theatre Experimental de Montreal (TEM) with Jean-Pierre Ronfard and Pol Pelletier in 1975. The LNI's match d'improvisation format, which structures improv competitions around the rules and aesthetics of ice hockey, became the dominant form of improvisation in French-speaking cultures worldwide and has spawned leagues in more than a dozen countries. Gravel also co-founded Espace Libre, one of Montreal's most important independent theatre venues.

Robin Duke

Robin Duke is a Canadian actress, comedian, and voice actress who trained as a writer and performer at The Second City in Toronto in the mid-1970s before becoming a regular cast member on SCTV from 1980 to 1981. She joined Saturday Night Live in 1981, serving through seasons 7, 8, and 9, where she created recurring characters including Wendy Whiner and Mrs. T. Following her SNL tenure, she co-founded the sketch comedy troupe Women Fully Clothed and has taught improvisation and comedy writing at Humber College in Toronto.

Rod Friedman

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Roger Bowen

Roger Bowen (May 25, 1932 to February 16, 1996) was an American actor, writer, and novelist who co-founded both the Compass Players and The Second City in Chicago, helping establish the institutional foundations of American improvisational theater. He is best known for originating the role of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake in Robert Altman's film M*A*S*H (1970), and he authored eleven novels, viewing himself primarily as a writer who occasionally acted.

Rohit Nair

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Ross Bryant

Ross Bryant is an American writer, performer, and improviser based in Los Angeles who spent formative years on the Chicago improv scene before relocating to the West Coast. He is a Second City Mainstage alumnus, a member of The Improvised Shakespeare Company and Baby Wants Candy, a television writer and performer, and a teacher at the World's Greatest Improv School in Los Angeles. His screen credits include The Good Place, Crashing, and I Think You Should Leave, and he has written for Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Russell Fletcher

Russell Fletcher is an Australian comic actor, improviser, director, and facilitator best known as the co-founder and first artistic director of Impro Melbourne, and as the only Australian ever to appear on the UK version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1993). He was twice Australian Theatresports national champion, represented Australia at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and the 1994 World Mug in Los Angeles, and coached a Sydney cast to the World Championship of Improv in Montreal in 2001. He is also known as the host of the improvised musical Spontaneous Broadway and the creator of the award-winning solo cabaret Jest Like Danny Kaye.

Ruth Bratt

Ruth Bratt is an English actress, comedian, and improviser who is a founding member of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, a troupe that has performed in the West End, on BBC Radio 4, and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She was a regular performer on BBC Two's Fast & Loose in 2011 and, in March 2024, joined the Comedy Store Players as their first new core member in thirty years. Her improvisational work extends to radio, including the BBC Radio 4 sketch series Trodd en Bratt Say 'Well Done You', which she co-wrote and co-starred in with Lucy Trodd.

Ryan Hitchcock

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Ryan Hubbard

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Ryan Stiles

Ryan Stiles (born April 22, 1959, Seattle, Washington) is an American-born Canadian comedian, actor, and improviser who became one of the most recognized improvisational performers in the world through his work on both the UK and US versions of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Stiles developed his skills at the Vancouver TheatreSports League and The Second City Toronto before appearing in over 200 episodes of Whose Line across both versions (1988 to 2024). He also starred as Lewis Kiniski on The Drew Carey Show (1995 to 2004) and founded the Upfront Theatre in Bellingham, Washington, in 2004.

Sacha Timaeus

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Sam Reich

Sam Reich (born July 22, 1984, Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an American comedian, producer, and entrepreneur who serves as CEO and majority stakeholder of Dropout, the comedy streaming service he built from the remains of CollegeHumor. He hosts the improv-based game shows Game Changer and Make Some Noise, which have introduced improvisational performance to a new generation of online audiences, and previously produced Adam Ruins Everything for TruTV.

Sam Richardson

Sam Richardson is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer who trained in improvisational comedy at the Second City Training Center in Detroit before moving to Chicago in 2007 to join the flagship Second City theater. He performed with The Second City Detroit and the Planet Ant Theatre in Hamtramck, building foundational skills in scene work and character development. His improvisational background informed his breakthrough television role as Richard Splett on HBO's Veep and his later work co-creating and starring in the comedy series Detroiters alongside Tim Robinson.

Sandi Toksvig

Sandi Toksvig is a Danish-British comedian, broadcaster, and writer whose work spans radio, television, and stage. She hosted The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4 for ten years and succeeded Stephen Fry as host of the BBC panel quiz QI in 2016. She co-presented The Great British Bake Off from 2017 to 2020 and has authored nearly 20 books, receiving recognition as Broadcaster of the Year by the Broadcasting Press Guild in 2007.

Canadian

Sandra Oh

Sandra Oh (born July 20, 1971, Nepean, Ontario) is a Canadian actress who participated in the Canadian Improv Games during high school before training at the National Theatre School of Canada. She achieved international recognition as Dr. Cristina Yang on Grey's Anatomy (2005 to 2014) and as Eve Polastri on Killing Eve (2018 to 2022), becoming the first person of Asian descent to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She has won two Golden Globe Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2022.

Sandra Shamas

Sandra Shamas is a Canadian comedian, writer, director, and producer who trained and performed with The Second City and Theatresports in Toronto before establishing a career as a solo theatrical performer. She is best known for her autobiographical solo shows, beginning with her 1987 Edmonton Fringe Festival debut "My Boyfriend's Back and There's Gonna Be Laundry," which toured nationally and later played the Old Vic Theatre in London. She won a Gemini Award in 1991 for Best Performance in Comedy and received nominations for both the Governor General's Award and the Stephen Leacock Award for her Laundry trilogy.

Sara De Lille

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Saskia Maas

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Scott Beach

Scott Beach was an American actor, voice artist, writer, disc jockey, and improvisational performer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He co-founded the influential improvisational comedy troupe The Committee in 1963, where his experience made him an elder statesman among the troupe's younger members. The Committee performed innovative, unscripted sketches at venues like the hungry i nightclub, establishing Beach as a key figure in San Francisco's improvisational theater scene.

Scott Hogan

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Sean Cusick

Sean Cusick is an American improv and sketch comedy writer, performer, director, teacher, and curriculum designer based in Chicago who has worked across The Second City, The Annoyance Theatre, and the Neutrino Project. He has taught and designed curriculum at the Second City Training Center since 2004, teaches TV writing and comedy at Columbia College Chicago's Comedy Studies program, and directs Second City Works productions. He also performed with the critically acclaimed sketch duo Urlakis and Cusick and wrote for the Chicago children's television show Green Screen Adventures.

Sean Hill

Sean Hill is the founder of Austin Theatresports (1998) and The Hideout Theatre (1999), Austin's longest-running improv theater. Trained in the Keith Johnstone tradition at BATS Improv in San Francisco, Hill brought Theatresports to Austin, established a permanent performance home for the city's improv community at 617 Congress Avenue, and co-founded the We Could Be Heroes School of Improvisational Theatre before transitioning to a parallel career as a UX designer, applied improv facilitator, and writer.

Sean Tabares

Sean Tabares is a Canadian improviser, performer, and creator based in Toronto. An original member of The Impatients at the Impatient Theatre Co. (ITC), the company founded by Kevin Patrick Robbins that was largely responsible for the proliferation of long-form improvisation in Toronto, he performed with ITC throughout its entire run and served as a long-time coach. With Robbins, he co-created Trotsky and Hutch on Patrol for the Toronto Fringe Festival, where NOW Magazine named the pair two of Toronto's best improvisers. He also won BeerProv and the Beaver award for best male improvisor at the 11th Canadian Comedy Awards (2010).

Seth Meyers

Seth Meyers is an American comedian, writer, and television host whose career has centered on sketch and improvisational comedy. He served as a cast member at Saturday Night Live from 2001 to 2014, where he anchored the satirical news segment Weekend Update and served as head writer from 2006 to 2013. His work at SNL contributed to multiple Emmy Awards for writing and established him as a leading figure in televised sketch comedy.

Canadian

Seth Rogen

Seth Rogen (born April 15, 1982, Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian-American comedian, actor, writer, director, and producer who entered comedy through stand-up and the Canadian Improv Games in Vancouver before becoming one of the most commercially successful comedy performers and producers of the twenty-first century. His partnership with Judd Apatow, beginning with Freaks and Geeks (1999 to 2000) and continuing through Knocked Up (2007) and Superbad (2007), established him as a leading figure in American film comedy. He co-founded Point Grey Pictures with Evan Goldberg in 2011, and his series The Studio won the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy in 2025.

American

Severn Darden

Severn Darden (November 9, 1929, New Orleans, Louisiana, to May 26, 1995, Santa Fe, New Mexico) was an actor, comedian, and founding member of both the Compass Players and The Second City. Known for his intellectual wit and absurdist sensibility, Darden was part of the original eight-member cast when The Second City opened on December 16, 1959. His signature routines, including "The Metaphysics Lecture" and "Football Comes to the University of Chicago," blended philosophy and comedy in ways that defined the early Second City style. He later appeared in more than twenty films, including The President's Analyst (1967) and Real Genius (1985).

Shana Merlin

Shana Merlin is an American improviser, teacher, and applied improvisation practitioner based in Austin, Texas, who has been performing since 1995. She co-founded the Hideout Theater in Austin with Sean Hill, founded the Merlin Works corporate training company in 2003, and established the Merlin Works Institute for Improvisation. She is a Lecturer in the College of Medicine at Texas A&M University, where she teaches improv-based communication to medical professionals, and co-authored Instant Alchemy: The Science and Magic of Narrative Longform Improv (2025).

Shannon Manning

Shannon Manning is an American improviser, director, producer, and teacher who co-founded the Magnet Theater in New York in 2005 alongside Armando Diaz and Ed Herbstman. She trained in improv with Del Close in Chicago, taught and directed at UCB Theatre and Magnet Theater, produced the political improv show Red All Over and the music-and-improv show Beauty Love Truth, performed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, served as comedy and music talent buyer for Union Hall in Brooklyn, and teaches improv through her program Improv for Poets and Geniuses.

Shaun Landry

Shaun Landry is an American improviser, teacher, director, and producer who has been performing since 1975. She founded Oui Be Negroes in 1994 in Chicago, the first African American improvisational and sketch comedy theatre company in the United States, and went on to establish the San Francisco Improv Alliance (2005), the San Francisco Improv Festival, and The Ledge Theatre in Los Angeles (2021), the first Black-owned improv theatre in that city. Her career represents a sustained, decades-long effort to build institutional infrastructure for performers of color within the American improv community.

Shawn Kinley

Shawn Kinley is a Canadian improviser, teacher, director, and mask artist based in Calgary, Alberta. He joined the Loose Moose Theatre Company in 1984 and trained directly with Keith Johnstone for over twenty years, becoming one of the foremost international ambassadors of Johnstone's methods. He is the founder and director of The Improvisation School in Calgary and has taught improvisation in more than 54 countries across every inhabited continent. He co-authored the official International Theatresports Institute format guides for both Theatresports (2017) and Maestro Impro (2019) and has served on the ITI board of directors.

Sheldon Patinkin

Sheldon Patinkin (August 27, 1935, Chicago, to September 21, 2014, Chicago) was a director, producer, educator, and author who served as a central creative force at The Second City for over five decades and chaired the Theatre Department at Columbia College Chicago for nearly three decades. A founding member of the Playwrights Theatre Club alongside Paul Sills, Patinkin was hired as Sills's assistant on the day The Second City opened in 1959 and eventually succeeded him as artistic director. He authored the definitive institutional history, Second City: Backstage at the World's Greatest Comedy Theater (2000), and co-founded the Comedy Studies program with The Second City in 2007.

American

Shelley Berman

Shelley Berman (born Sheldon Leonard Berman, February 3, 1925, Chicago, Illinois, to September 1, 2017, Bell Canyon, California) was a comedian, actor, and educator who performed with the Compass Players in Chicago before becoming one of the most successful stand-up comedians of the late 1950s and 1960s. His debut album Inside Shelley Berman (1959) topped the Billboard charts and won the inaugural Grammy Award for Best Comedy Performance. He was the first comedian to perform at Carnegie Hall (1960) and later taught humor and improvisation at the University of Southern California for more than twenty years.

Shira Piven

Shira Piven (born October 8, 1961, in New York City) is an American director, acting teacher, and theatre artist whose family sits at the origin point of the Chicago improvisational theatre tradition. Her parents, Joyce Hiller Piven and Byrne Piven, were founding members of the Playwrights Theatre Club alongside Paul Sills and David Shepherd in 1953, and went on to found the Piven Theatre Workshop in Evanston, Illinois, in 1971. Shira co-founded and directed the improv ensemble Burn Manhattan in New York, founded the Water Theatre Company, and has directed films including Welcome to Me (2014) starring Kristen Wiig and The Performance (2025) starring her brother Jeremy Piven.

Shrirupa Sengupta

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Stacey Hallal

Stacey Hallal is an American improviser, director, performer, and educator who founded Curious Comedy Theater in Portland, Oregon in 2008 after training at Second City, iO, The Annoyance, and ComedySportz in Chicago. She has taught and performed at more than 150 improv and comedy festivals across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. At Curious Comedy she serves as Artistic Director, has built the theater to produce over 350 shows annually, and has secured more than one million dollars in technical grants. She is the creator of the All Jane Comedy Festival, co-creator of the Chroma Comedy Festival, and produces Inside Improv, a video podcast on improv practice and theater leadership.

Stan Endicott

Stan Endicott is an American leadership coach, author, and co-founder of Slingshot Group, a church staffing and coaching organization. He is the co-author of Improv Leadership: How to Lead Well in Every Moment (Zondervan, 2020), which applies improvisational principles to organizational leadership and coaching. His career background includes work as a record producer and worship pastor, and he has coached leaders for organizations including Samaritan's Purse and Saddleback Church.

Stephen Book

Stephen Book (born 1945) is an American acting teacher and author who studied directly with Viola Spolin at Sarah Lawrence College and went on to co-design and serve as executive director of the Spolin Theater Game Center in Hollywood during the 1970s. He has taught his system of Improvisation Technique at The Juilliard School, USC, Stanford, and his own Stephen Book Acting Workshop in Hollywood since 1985. His students include Academy Award winners William Hurt and Robin Williams, and his book Book on Acting: Improvisation Technique for the Professional Actor in Film, Theater, and Television (2002) is considered a definitive text on applying Spolin's methods to professional scripted performance.

American

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert (born May 13, 1964, Washington, D.C.) is a comedian, writer, producer, and television host who trained at The Second City in Chicago and has hosted The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS since 2015. Colbert performed at the Annoyance Theatre, iO (then ImprovOlympic), and The Second City before co-creating the sketch series Exit 57 and joining The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as a correspondent (1997 to 2005). He created and hosted The Colbert Report on Comedy Central (2005 to 2014), a satirical show parodying right-wing cable news commentary. His career represents the most prominent application of Second City's improvisational and satirical traditions in contemporary American television.

Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry (born August 24, 1957, Hampstead, London) is a British actor, writer, presenter, and comedian who appeared on the original BBC Radio 4 version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1988 alongside John Sessions before stepping back from the television adaptation. A graduate of Queens' College, Cambridge, where he joined the Footlights, Fry is best known for the comedy double act Fry and Laurie with Hugh Laurie, his role in Blackadder (1986 to 1989), hosting QI (2003 to 2016), and narrating the Harry Potter audiobooks.

Stephnie Weir

Stephnie Weir (born November 28, 1967, in Odessa, Texas) is an American actress, writer, and improviser who trained at The Second City and ImprovOlympic in Chicago before joining the cast of Fox's MADtv, where she appeared in approximately 124 episodes from 2000 to 2006 and received two Writers Guild of America Award nominations for her writing. She performed on the Second City Mainstage in productions including the company's 40th anniversary show and won the Chicago Improv Festival Award for Female Improviser of the Year in 2002.

Steve Roe

Steve Roe is a British improviser, teacher, and entrepreneur who co-founded Hoopla Impro in London in 2006, building it into the United Kingdom's largest improvisation training school. He trained with Keith Johnstone, Charna Halpern at iO Chicago, Patti Stiles, and Shawn Kinley at Loose Moose Theatre, and has taught at East 15 Drama School, Imperial College London, and Oxford University. Hoopla's early stages incubated ensembles that became Showstoppers! The Improvised Musical, Austentatious, and Mischief Theatre, creators of the West End hit The Play That Goes Wrong.

Susan Messing

Susan Messing is an American improviser, actor, writer, and teacher from Short Hills, New Jersey, who has been a central figure in Chicago improvisation for nearly four decades. She has the distinction of having been hired directly to The Second City Mainstage, is a founding member of The Annoyance Theater, created iO Theater's Level 2 curriculum, and currently teaches at the University of Chicago. Named Improviser of the Year by the Chicago Improv Festival and Funniest Woman in Chicago by Chicago Magazine, she is regarded as one of the city's finest performers.

T.J. Jagodowski

TJ Jagodowski is an American improviser, actor, and teacher who is widely regarded as one of the finest long-form improvisers in the world. Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, he performs weekly with David Pasquesi as TJ and Dave, a two-person improvisation show that has been called the gold standard of the form. Stephen Colbert said of the duo: "One of these guys is the best improviser in the world. And the other one is better." He co-authored Improvisation at the Speed of Life: The TJ and Dave Book (2015) and is co-founder of Chicago's Mission Theater.

Tamara Nolte

Tamara Nolte is an American applied improv facilitator, learning and development consultant, and ComedySportz performer who founded Improv Creatives, a consultancy specializing in improvisational training for organizations. She trained in improv at Second City, The Annoyance, and iO Chicago, holds an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and has designed and facilitated corporate training and keynotes for Fortune 500 companies globally since 2009. She also created Caption Contest Live!, a stage show integrating live audience participation with social media.

Taran Killam

Taran Killam is an American actor and comedian who honed his improv skills as a member of The Groundlings, the Los Angeles-based comedy troupe. He is best known for his work on Saturday Night Live from 2010 to 2016, where he served as both featured player and repertory member, performing celebrity impressions of figures such as Brad Pitt and Eminem and creating original characters including the tribal leader Mokiki. Earlier in his career, he joined Fox's MADtv as a featured player during its seventh season (2001-2002), becoming the show's youngest cast member at the time.

Tata Werneck

Tatá Werneck is a Brazilian actress, comedian, and television presenter who stands out for her skillful improvisation in comedic roles. She began acting studies at age nine, performed in her first theater show at eleven, and made her television debut in 2008. She rose to national fame in 2013 through a comedic role in the TV Globo soap opera Amor à Vida, and in 2017 became the first woman to host a late night talk show on a pay channel in Brazilian television with Lady Night.

Tatiana Maslany

Tatiana Maslany (born September 22, 1985, Regina, Saskatchewan) is a Canadian actress who participated in the Canadian Improv Games during high school and performed improvisational theater for over a decade before achieving international recognition as multiple clone characters in Orphan Black (2013 to 2017), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2016. She credits her improvisational training with enabling the distinct character voices and physicality she brought to the role, and she is a certified improvisation trainer.

Ted Hallett

Ted Hallett is a Canadian improviser and writer based in Toronto who has been performing for over twenty years. He grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario, and trained under Lisa Merchant, a Senior Faculty member at The Second City Training Centre. He performs in the longform trio Fantoma with Steve Hobbs and Wayne Molinski, the duo Hallett and Hobbs (a spin-off of Fantoma), and the monthly improvised one-act play residency Ted and Lisa with Lisa Merchant at the John Candy Box Theatre at The Second City. He also leads improv workshops at The Social Capital Theatre in Toronto.

Tera DeFrancisco

Tera DeFrancisco is an American improviser, musical director, and theatre co-founder who performs the fully improvised two-person musical HERE: The (Improvised) Musical with her partner Rance Rizzutto. The show, which they created together, has toured to 24 countries and more than 80 cities and received the highest-ranked improv designation from the Chicago Tribune and NPR's description as nothing short of genius. In 2016 she and Rizzutto co-founded The Nest Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, the first dedicated full-time improv performance and training center in that city.

Theodore J. Flicker

Theodore J. Flicker (June 6, 1930 to September 12, 2014) was an American playwright, director, actor, and screenwriter who played a pivotal role in early American improvisational theatre. He directed the St. Louis Compass Players at the Crystal Palace in 1957, where he and Elaine May developed the foundational rules of improvisational performance known as the Westminster Place Kitchen Rules. In 1960 he founded The Premise in Greenwich Village, one of the earliest professional improv theatres in New York City, which ran for 1,249 performances and transferred to London's West End. He later co-created the television series Barney Miller (1975 to 1982) and directed the cult film The President's Analyst (1967).

Thomas Aldredge

Tom Aldredge (February 28, 1928 to July 22, 2011) was an American actor who was a founding member of The Premise, Theodore J. Flicker's pioneering improvisational theatre in Greenwich Village that opened in 1960 and ran for 1,249 performances. He went on to a five-decade Broadway career that included originating roles in Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods (1987) and Passion (1994), receiving five Tony Award nominations, and appearing as Hugh DeAngelis in HBO's The Sopranos (2000 to 2007).

Thomas Middleditch

Thomas Middleditch is a Canadian-American actor and improviser born March 10, 1982, in Nelson, British Columbia. After training at iO Theater and The Second City in Chicago, he became a founding member of the Improvised Shakespeare Company in 2005 and a regular performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. He is best known for starring as Richard Hendricks on HBO's Silicon Valley (2014 to 2019) and for performing long-form improvisation as one half of Middleditch and Schwartz, whose 2020 Netflix special became the platform's first long-form improv offering. In 2024 he made his Broadway debut in Eureka Day at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Thorsten Brand

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Tiffany Schultz

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American

Tim Meadows

Tim Meadows (born February 5, 1961, Highland Park, Michigan) is an American comedian and actor who trained at iO Theater and The Second City in Chicago before joining Saturday Night Live in 1991, where he served ten seasons through 2000 as the show's longest-tenured cast member at the time. He created the recurring character Leon Phelps, the Ladies Man, and has maintained an active career in film and television including Mean Girls (2004), Bob's Burgers (2012 to present), and the CBS sitcom DMV (2025).

Tim Robinson

Tim Robinson trained in improv comedy at The Second City, beginning with the Detroit touring company before performing on the Chicago Mainstage, where he developed his comedic voice alongside collaborators including Sam Richardson. He also performed at the iO Theater. Robinson became a featured performer and writer on Saturday Night Live in 2012, then co-created the Comedy Central series Detroiters (2017-2018) with Richardson. He went on to create, write, produce, and star in the Netflix sketch series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson (2019-2023), which earned Primetime Emmy Awards and critical recognition for its absurdist, cringe-driven comedy.

Tim Sims

Tim Sims (1962 to February 2, 1995) was a Canadian comedian, improviser, writer, and director who performed with The Second City Toronto. He died at age 33, and the Tim Sims Encouragement Fund Award was established in his memory by his widow Lindsay Leese, becoming one of the most important early-career comedy awards in Canada. The Second City Toronto named its main performance space the Tim Sims Playhouse in his honour when the company moved to 56 Blue Jays Way in 1997.

Timmy Sherrill

Timmy Sherrill is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and comedy entrepreneur based in Wilmington, North Carolina. As a co-founder of Dead Crow Comedy Room and one of the architects of the Cape Fear comedy scene, Sherrill spent over a decade building the performance infrastructure that transformed Wilmington's comedy landscape, including venues that host both stand-up and improvisational programming.

Tina Fey

Tina Fey (born 1970) is a writer, performer, showrunner, and producer whose career runs from the Chicago improv and sketch pipeline through Saturday Night Live to 30 Rock, Bossypants, Mean Girls, and more than two decades of American comedy leadership. She trained at iO and The Second City in Chicago in the early 1990s, became the first female head writer in SNL history, and built an ensemble-based creative practice rooted directly in the disciplines she developed in Chicago. Her improv formation is not incidental biography. It shaped how she constructs characters, builds writers' rooms, and produces collaborative comedy at scale.

Todd Stashwick

Todd Stashwick (born October 16, 1968, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American actor, writer, and improviser who trained at The Second City and ImprovOlympic in Chicago before building an extensive television career. He toured nationally with The Second City in the early 1990s alongside Neil Flynn and Adam McKay, co-founded the improv group Burn Manhattan in New York with Shira Piven, and went on to appear in 12 Monkeys (2015 to 2018), Star Trek: Picard (2023), and The Riches (2007 to 2008). He co-founded The Hothouse Spontaneous Theater in Los Angeles, where he continues to teach and perform.

Tom Gleisner

Tom Gleisner AO (born October 24, 1962, in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian comedian, writer, producer, director, and television presenter who co-founded Working Dog Productions in 1993. He co-created the improv television format Thank God You're Here (2006 to 2009, revived 2023), which drops celebrity guests into unknown scenes they must improvise through, and hosts the long-running panel show Have You Been Paying Attention? (2013 to present). He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2018 for distinguished service to media and television.

Tommy Brunett

Tommy Brunett is an American actor, director, and improv performer based on Bainbridge Island, Washington. He has worked as a performer and teaching artist, adding improvisation to his practice in 2010 and subsequently joining the Bainbridge Island-based ensemble Imagined Reality Improv.

Tommy Todd

Tommy Todd is an American improv, stand-up, and sketch comedian based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has been a core performer with Bleach, a long-form improv ensemble that has been a fixture of the Las Vegas improv community for over a decade, and has performed stand-up and sketch comedy nationally.

Tony Gilbert

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Tony Slattery

Tony Slattery was an English actor, comedian, and improvisational performer best known as a regular on the Channel 4 series Whose Line Is It Anyway?, appearing in 48 episodes from 1988 to 1995. He developed his comedic instincts with the Cambridge Footlights alongside Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, and Emma Thompson, with whom he shared the inaugural Perrier Award at the 1981 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 1991, he and fellow Whose Line performer Mike McShane co-starred in their own improvisational comedy series, S&M.

Tony Totino

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Torsten Voller

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Tracy Newman

Tracy Newman is a founding member of The Groundlings, the Los Angeles improvisational comedy troupe, where her sister Laraine Newman was also a founding member. Her background in improv informed a television writing career that included contributions to Cheers, Ellen, The Nanny, and The Drew Carey Show, developed in partnership with writer Jonathan Stark. She co-wrote the 1997 Ellen episode known as "The Puppy Episode," for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series and a Peabody Award.

Varoon P. Anand

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Veslemøy Mørkrid

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Vic Michaelis

Vic Michaelis is a nonbinary American-Canadian comedian, actor, and improv performer best known as the host of Dropout's Very Important People, an improv-grounded interview show in which guests undergo character transformations and are interviewed in character. Michaelis trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles, performed on Harold team Yeti, and has appeared across Dropout's core programming as well as in television and film. Michaelis identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.

Viola Spolin

Viola Spolin (1906-1994) was the Chicago educator, director, and author who created the Theater Games system, the foundational pedagogy for improvisational acting in the United States. Trained by social educator Neva Boyd at Hull House and forged through a decade of WPA recreation work in Chicago's immigrant neighborhoods, Spolin developed a method of actor training built on structured play, side-coaching, and a discipline she called spontaneity. Her landmark book, Improvisation for the Theater (1963), translated the games into print and established improv as a teachable practice with its own theory of learning. Through her son Paul Sills, who co-founded the Compass Players and The Second City, her method reached every major American improv institution operating today.

Wade Jackson

Narrative summary still in progress for this archive entry.

Wayne Brady

Wayne Brady (born 1972) is a performer, host, singer, and actor whose career is grounded in improvisational comedy and spans Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Let's Make a Deal, Broadway, and a sustained recording career. He trained at the SAK Comedy Lab in Orlando and developed his improvisational musicality and character work before joining the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1998, where he became the cast member most closely identified with musical improvisation. His Emmy-winning work on Whose Line made long-form improvisational speed and musical invention visible to a mass television audience.

Will Hines

Will Hines (born 1970) is an American improviser, teacher, writer, and actor who served as artistic director of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York and is one of the most influential improv teachers of his generation. He authored How to Be the Greatest Improviser on Earth (2016), one of the best-selling improv instructional books in print, and currently runs The World's Greatest Improv School with Jim Woods and Sarah Claspell. Ilana Glazer of Broad City credited Hines as her first improv teacher.

William Hall

William Hall is an American actor, director, improv teacher, and author who co-founded BATS Improv (originally Bay Area Theatresports) in San Francisco in 1986 and subsequently built one of the West Coast's most durable improvisational training programs. He is the author of The Playbook: Improv Games for Performers (2014), a reference collection of over 370 improv games drawn from nearly three decades of teaching and performance, and a founding member of Fratelli Bologna, a business theatre consultancy.

William Hurt

William Hurt was an American actor trained in classical theater at the Juilliard School's Drama Division under John Houseman, where he received rigorous instruction in stage performance. His career spanned stage, film, and television, with early theater work preceding his breakout in film. He is primarily recognized for his screen performances rather than contributions to the improvisational tradition specifically.

Canadian

Yvon Leduc

Yvon Leduc (born circa 1954 in Quebec, Canada) is a Quebec actor and improviser who co-founded the Ligue nationale d'improvisation (LNI) with Robert Gravel in 1977. It was Leduc who proposed modeling the improv competition format on ice hockey rather than Monopoly, providing the structural concept that became the match d'improvisation, now practiced in approximately 30 countries. He received the Medaille de l'Assemblee nationale du Quebec in 2017 for his major contribution to Quebec's international cultural influence.

Zac Oyama

Zac Oyama (born August 22, 1987, in Birmingham, Alabama) is a Japanese-American comedian, actor, writer, and improviser who trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. He is best known as one of the core Intrepid Heroes on the Dropout TTRPG actual-play series Dimension 20 and as one of the original Noise Boys on Make Some Noise. He previously worked at CollegeHumor as a cast member and sketch writer and served as associate producer on Key and Peele.

Zach Ward

Zach Ward is an American improv comedian, producer, and theatre founder who established DSI Comedy Theater in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area of North Carolina in 2001 and served as artistic director of the NC Comedy Arts Festival. DSI grew into one of the Southeast's primary improv training and performance institutions before Ward closed the organization in 2017.

Zak Roland

Zak Roland is an American improv performer, teacher, actor, and digital content producer who trained at the M.I.'s Westside Comedy Theatre in Los Angeles and at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in both Los Angeles and New York City. He is best known as a co-founder of the New York City long-form team Classic Brady, a former house team member at Westside Comedy Theatre, and a current instructor at Chaos Bloom Theater in Denver, where he teaches Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4 improv alongside specialty form workshops.