Beth Melewski

Nationalities

Chicago New York City Milwaukee United States

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.

Career

Beth Melewski is a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who built a performing career across Chicago's major improv institutions spanning more than two decades. She performed with ComedySportz in Milwaukee, Chicago, and New York City before establishing herself in Chicago as a fixture of the Second City, iO Chicago, and Annoyance Theatre ecosystems.

At iO Chicago she performed with the all-women improv team Virgin Daiquiri, appeared in The Armando Diaz Experience (the longest-running improv show in history), and performed with Baby Wants Candy, a fully improvised musical ensemble performing with a live band.

At Second City she was a member of the Touring Company, which included performing aboard Norwegian Cruise Line ships during the long-running Second City and NCL partnership, in which touring casts mounted full revues and conducted improv workshops for passengers.

Her Second City e.t.c. writing and performing credits include Studs Terkel's Not Working (2009), directed by Matt Hovde, with a cast including Christina Anthony, Amanda Blake Davis, Tom Flanigan, Timothy Edward Mason, and Andy St. Clair. The show won the 2009 Joseph Jefferson Award for Production of a Revue. She also performed in The Absolute Best Friggin' Time of Your Life, directed by Billy Bungeroth, with a cast including Brendan Jennings, Timothy Edward Mason, Katie Rich, Sam Richardson, and Tom Flanigan, which received a Jeff Award nomination.

In 2012 and 2013 she was a member of The Second City Guide to the Opera, a co-production with the Lyric Opera of Chicago featuring Second City performers alongside opera singers. The show's January 2013 gala was co-hosted by soprano Renee Fleming and Sir Patrick Stewart. The production won a Jeff Award. Melewski performed alongside Joey Bland, Molly Brennan, Tim Ryder, Timothy Sniffen, and Lili-Anne Brown.

At the Goodman Theatre she played the Ghost of Christmas Present in Twist Your Dickens, or Scrooge You!, a December 2014 to January 2015 co-production with Second City written by Peter Gwinn and Bobby Mort. Reviewers described her as the standout performer in the cast.

She is one half of the improv duo Dual Exhaust, named by the Chicago Sun-Times as one of the top ten comedy duos of the past ten years.

In 2011 she was the host of Cash Cab: Chicago, a one-season Discovery Channel spin-off of the Emmy-winning game show format, filmed in Chicago.

Screen credits include Arrested Development (Season 4, 2013), Work in Progress (Showtime), and the web series Beth, from Chicago (2013), in which she played five different women named Beth, produced by Improv Partners. She voiced Tanya in Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004), Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (2005), and additional characters in Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (2004).

In 2012 she co-founded Super Human, an all-female improv team that entered the Chicago scene at The Upstairs Gallery, which grew into the Super Human Collective, a female-owned applied improv business offering corporate team-building workshops and comedy events. She also co-owns The Shalom Collaboration, which provides improv comedy, music, and communications workshops for Jewish organizations.

In 2023 she completed a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Northeastern Illinois University and became a Licensed Professional Counselor in Illinois, practicing at Next Step Counseling Chicago and At Peace Therapy with specialties in grief, life transitions, and anxiety.

Historical Context

Melewski's career spans the period when Chicago's improv infrastructure expanded from a Second City-centered ecosystem to a multi-institution ecology including iO, ComedySportz, the Annoyance, Baby Wants Candy, and smaller independent venues. Her work across all of these contexts, from ComedySportz competition to iO long-form ensemble to Second City revue writing, reflects the breadth of formal training available to a working Chicago improviser during the 2000s and 2010s.

The Second City Guide to the Opera represented one of the institution's most visible co-productions, bringing Second City into collaboration with one of Chicago's premier classical music institutions and attracting Renee Fleming and Patrick Stewart as the gala's hosts. Melewski's membership in that cast documented her standing within Second City's performing ensemble at a moment of heightened institutional profile.

Her dual trajectory from performing into applied improv facilitation (Super Human Collective, The Shalom Collaboration) and then into clinical mental health counseling reflects a pattern that has emerged among a generation of Chicago improv performers for whom the ensemble skills developed in comedy training translated into professional practice in organizational development and therapeutic contexts. Her 2023 counseling credentials make her one of the more formally documented examples of this career arc.

Teaching Philosophy

Melewski's work with the Super Human Collective and The Shalom Collaboration extended improv ensemble techniques into corporate and community educational contexts, treating the listening, support, and spontaneity skills developed in performance training as transferable competencies for workplace teams and organizational groups. Her subsequent credential in Clinical Mental Health Counseling extends this trajectory, applying the relational dynamics she developed across two decades of ensemble work into a formal therapeutic practice with a focus on grief, life transitions, and anxiety.

Legacy

Melewski's Jeff Award-recognized writing and performance at Second City across three productions, including two winners and one nomination, place her within the documented record of the institution's most recognized ensemble work during the 2000s and early 2010s. Her co-founding of Super Human and the Super Human Collective in 2012 contributed to Chicago's applied improv field and to the specific development of female-led comedy business models in that city. The Chicago Sun-Times naming of Dual Exhaust among the top ten comedy duos of its decade constituted a public critical recognition of her long-form duo work.

Early Life and Training

Beth Melewski was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she performed with ComedySportz before relocating to Chicago to continue her career in improvisation and comedy.