Bill Arnett
Bill Arnett is a founding member of both Maximum Party Zone and the iO house team People of Earth. He attended the University of Florida where he wrote and performed with Theatre Strike Force, the theatre department’s sketch and improv group. In Chicago, Arnett has performed with several other improv ensembles including Chicago ComedySportz for almost seven years. He has performed in Chicago Sketchfest, the Chicago Improv Festival and for an HBO showcase. He recently optioned a screenplay.
Teams: Swanel
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, 3033
Joe Bill
Joe Bill is one of the co-founders of Annoyance Theater, where he performed in and directed over 50 productions from 1987-2000, including smash hits “Co-ed Prison Sluts”, “The Real Live Brady Bunch” and “The Screw Puppies”. Bill has coached and performed with numerous ensembles at iO from 1985-1987 and 1995-present. Highlights include Georgia Pacific and the innovative lights out long-form, “The Bat”. He currently performs with the improv supergroup Weasilicious and co-stars with fellow Annoyance co-founder Mark Sutton, in the nationally touring production “Bassprov”, which headlined the 2003 Chicago Improv Festival with special guest Fred Willard. “Bassprov” has toured the United States since 2002, and also was named one of the top 10 comedy shows in Toronto in that same year. Bill teaches improvisation for iO, the Second City Conservatory and Training Center, the Annoyance, the Playground and around the U.S., Canada, UK and Netherlands. He started doing improv in 1977.
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience
Jim Carlson
Jim Carlson has been improvising, directing, and acting in Chicago since 1995. He was on the iO house team Valhalla and currently plays in the Armando Diaz Experience on Monday nights. Jim directed over 15 shows at the iO including The Awesome Show, The Goodtime Hour, and The Awesome Show 2 ‘Still Awesome.’ He directed Disposable Nation and Immaculate Deception on the Second City etc. stage, Second City Las Vegas, Bobble Heads of State at Second City Detroit, two Second City touring companies, Second City’s Lollapalooza show, The Second City Political Show, and has spent some time at sea directing cruise ship comedy. Jim has taught improvisation at Columbia College, The Second City and Writer’s Theater.
Shows: Middle Age Comeback
Jason Chin
Jason R. Chin was the iO Associate Artistic Director, as well as the Director of their Training Center. He has coached several teams including the famed teams Deep Schwa and Alpha Squad. He has directed several critically acclaimed improv shows including the improvised news satire, “Whirled News Tonight.” Check out his web page at www.argosagency.com
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience
Erin Davidson
Erin Davidson discovered improv while studying writing at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. She moved to Chicago to study at iO Chicago, where she performed with The Placebo Effect and Jihahad; currently she performs every Wednesday night in the Cabaret with Carl & The Passions. She has also been performing independently for the past seven years with her best friends, the ladies of Cheetarah.
Teams: Carl & The Passions
Mike Enriquez
Mike Enriquez took his first step on the iO stage as a performer in 2000 after completing the iO Training Center, as well as The Second City Conservatory and the ComedySportz Training Program. He had the privilege of being an original member of the former iO house team, Fox Force Five, during its entire five years but now enjoys performing with the amazing team The Signatures. Enriquez is currently an ensemble cast member and an assistant artistic director for ComedySportz Chicago. He has coached several Harold teams at iO, including the wonderfully talented Revolver. His only known flaw is that he uses the word “NICE!” way too much.
Teams: The Signatures
Jet Eveleth
Jet understands her fortune to play and travel with The Reckoning. She also performs in The Armando Diaz Experience and in the scripted show Jet and Holly Present. She currently teaches level 4 at IO and level 3 at The Second City Conservatory. She also works with the Theater of the Oppressed to create a fusion between dance and theater. She is in the process of getting her masters to teach movement and improv at a university level.
Teams: The Reckoning
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, The Reckoning
Dina Facklis
Dina Facklis has been performing improv in Chicago since 1995. She has performed with and now directs The Second City National Touring Company. At iO, she has performed with The Armando Diaz Theatrical Experience, and the teams Tobacco Lobby and The Pat Shay Dancers. Independent projects include the long-running show CUFFS, Duplex, Hot Glue Gun, Panties Happy, and currently Stubs on Thursday nights. Past directing credits include Girls Night Out for Second City Theatricals and Summer Rental for the Second City Unhinged series. Dina made her feature film debut this year as Nicholas Cage’s secretary in The Weather Man.
Teams: Virgin Daiquiri, Swanel
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, Stubs, The Lindbergh Babies 2.0, Writer's Workshop
Noah Gregoropoulos
Noah Gregoropoulos has been performing, directing and teaching improvisation for over eighteen years. He began teaching at iO in the late 1980’s, and in 1999 he took over the Performance Level workshops when his predecessor, Del Close, passed away halfway through a class session. Gregoropoulos has also taught improvisation at iO West, Second City and Columbia College, as well as free-lance workshops throughout the U.S. and Europe. As an improvisational performer, he has played on several house teams at iO including his current team, Carl and the Passions. He was a founding member of the critically acclaimed troupes Jazz Freddy and Atlantis, toured much of the English speaking world with “Modern Problems in Science” and was part of the original cast of iO’s “Armando Diaz Experience”, in which he still performs every Monday. As a director, Gregoropoulos mounted “Lois Kaz” the first-ever long-form improvisation show at Second City, “Close Quarters” which has become a standard form for advanced improv classes and troupes, and the first Atlantis show, along with several other lesser efforts that don’t warrant mentioning. he directed the revue “If the White House is a Rockin’, Don’t Come a-Knockin’” at Second City’s e.t.c., as well as two of The Second City National Touring Companies. Gregoropoulos has appeared in films, plays and on television and radio (big whoop), and was a staff writer on the ABC sitcom, “Dharma and Greg.”
Teams: Carl & The Passions
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience
Lyndsay Hailey
Lyndsay Hailey is proud to add depth to the Virginia contingent at iO. She is a graduate of the iO Training Center, the Second City Conservatory Program and the Second City Music Program. She recently closed Love is Dead at the Annoyance Theater, and can currently be seen in the Annoyance Production, Space Future. The Pegasus Players Theater Company, Beverly Arts Center, and After School Matters apprenticeship program enable Lyndsay to teach improv to any human in the Chicago Public School system who will listen. Teaching Level 2 for iO is one of her greatest successes. Lyndsay owes all of those successes to her incredible, patient and supportive friends, family and iO family. GO HOKIES!
Teams: The Confessional
Shows: The Deltones, Klusterphuk
Charna Halpern
FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF THE iO THEATER
Charna Halpern has been teaching performers how to work together for more than 25 years. Having founded the world famous iO in Chicago and Hollywood, Halpern’s theaters are the meccas of training in the art of improvisation and act as a recruiting stop for television shows like Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and MADtv, supplying Hollywood with writers and performers. She is the author of the improv training manuals Truth in Comedy and Art By Committee.
Nate Herman
Nate Herman is from Chicago and wrote for “Saturday Night Live” for four years. He won a Jeff Award for directing a show in the Second City ETC called “America Lite,” which both reminded Second City of its potential and helped to introduce that institution to the use of long form improv in a 22 minute sketch called “The Last Liberal.” Nate also performed on the mainstage of Second City. He is an accomplished musician having, in an earlier life, played piano for Second City (not to mention National Lampoon’s "Lemmings"), and recorded several albums with his band Wilderness Road on Columbia Records (there are some that credit him with helping to create country rock). He invented fast forward, powdered milk and “the pause that refreshes.”
Greg Hess
Greg Hess is a native of Virginia and graduate of the College of William & Mary. He moved to Chicago to study improvisation at iO. Greg is an ensemble member of Baby Wants Candy and understudy to The Second City’s National Touring Company. He loves to fly fish.
Teams: Bullet Lounge
Shows: Cook County Social Club, Improvised Shakespeare
TJ Jagodowski
TJ Jagodowski used to perform, teach, and direct at Chicago’s Second City. Now he performs, teaches, and directs at Chicago’s iO Theater. He’s originally from Massachusetts. Go Red Sox!
Teams: Carl & The Passions
Shows: TJ & Dave, The Armando Diaz Experience
Jordan Klepper
Jordan Klepper has been involved with iO for the past six years. He currently plays with Carl and the Passions and Armando Diaz. In the past, he has been a member of Whirled News Tonight, Cougars, The Late Night Late Show, Shared Property and others. In addition to iO, he has toured with the Second City Touring Company and was a correspondent on the show Friday Night Tailgate on the Big Ten Network. He has taught at the Second City Training Center, and has directed the Harold team Sturgis and the two-person group, Nogoodnicks.
Teams: Carl & The Passions
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, Steve and Jordan, Respectively, Razzmatazz
Holly Laurent
Besides The Reckoning’s Harold and Experimental Shows each week at iO Theater you can also see Holly Laurent in the new sketch show I Live Next Door to Horses directed by Pat O’Brien and written and performed with Jet Eveleth. Laurent enjoys the weekly road trip show Shotgun!, and teaching the Harold to her Level 4 students in the iO Training Center. She directs the veteran ensemble The Promise Keepers, in one of the best improv shows in town. Laurent is earning her masters degree in Inter-Disciplinary Arts at Columbia College Chicago and plans on writing and performing forever and ever amen.
Teams: The Reckoning, Virgin Daiquiri
Shows: The Reckoning, Shotgun!, Promise Keepers
Lisa Linke
Lisa Linke has studied at The Second City, The Annoyance and The iO Training Centers. She performs with Cougars at iO, and elsewhere with Mustang Repair, Double Date, Big Yellow Bus, and occasionally with DSI. In 2007 she co-wrote and performed in Flawed as Rain, and wrote and performed in the weekly scripted show Ink. She has previously performed with The Baritones & Sex In The Suburbs with Noble Fool Theater, Indra’s Net, Improvidate, LEAP, and Corporation, Inc., which performed at the Chicago Improv Festival as well as the dc comedyfest.
Teams: Cougars
Shows: Big News
Evan Makela
Evan Makela began studying and performing at iO in 2000. He has performed with a number of Harold teams, including Sandbox Democracy, and independent projects, including Courtesy Sleeve and Moat. He has coached various Harold teams at iO, most recently Airbourne!, and is currently the director of the independent group Strippers Picnic.
Rachael Mason
DIRECTOR OF THE TRAINING CENTER
Rachael Mason began her career in improvisation at Skidmore College, home of the National College Comedy Festival, with the Ad-Liberal Artists. After graduating with a degree in English Literature, concentrating on Shakespearean Studies, she moved to Chicago to dive into the world of improv comedy. She trained at iO, The Annoyance, and The Second City. Her credits include an almost 4 year stint with The Second City National Touring Company, “WWW.com All Over My Face”, “Big Trouble at Hairy Gulch”, “Donkey Improv”, and “Screw Puppies” at the Annoyance, and at iO she has played with the “Armando Diaz Theatrical Experience and Hootenanny”, Monster Island, Jane, Preponderate, Genealogy, The Lindbergh Babies, Swanel, The Deltones, and iO’s former Resident Company Baby Wants Candy. When not traveling with the iO Road Show Touring Company or getting dirty on Sundays with Children of a Lesser God, she can be found in her office upstairs at iO, presiding as Director of the iO Training Center. She most recently completed a run with ComedySportz’s The Hot Karl, Second City’s Jewsical the Musical, and The Second City Norwegian Dawn Cruise Cast… and is most happy when she is the friend in Susan Messing’s Messing with a Friend at The Annoyance.
Shows: The Deltones, Children of a Lesser God, The Lindbergh Babies 2.0
Michael McCarthy
McCarthy has written for “Saturday Night Live” (for which he was nominated for an Emmy), “Sesame Street” and “The Drew Carey Show”; created a comedy festival in Kilkenny, Ireland called “The Murphy’s Cat Laughs” and produced it from 1995-99; he’s worked on many, many Comedy Central shows including “Battlebots” and “Beat The Geeks” not to mention specials such as “Comedy Central On Trial: Bobbit vs. Bobbit” and “Spunk: The Tonya Harding Story”. He is an alumnus of The Second City Chicago Mainstage. He is elated to be working with/for/at iO having found its spirit intoxicating.
Shows: Big News
Susan Messing
Messing, a New Jersey native, is a graduate of Northwestern University. She has performed for over eighteen years with Chicago’s iO Theatre, and created and teaches their Level 2 Curriculum which is used in Chicago and LA’s iO West. At the legendary Second City, Messing wrote and performed in two mainstage revues and directed their National Touring Company. Messing is a founding member of the infamous Annoyance Theatre where she has created roles in over thirty original productions, including Co-Ed Prison Sluts, The Miss Vagina Pageant, and Your Butt. In addition, she conceived, co-adapted (with Mary Scruggs) and directed the critically acclaimed What Every Girl Should Know…An Ode to Judy Blume for the Annoyance stage, where she also continues to teach. You can see Messing’s critically-acclaimed show, Messing with a Friend, now in its third year, every Thursday night at The Annoyance. Messing is an adjunct professor for Loyola University, DePaul University’s Theatre School, and The University of Chicago. Her standup act with her puppet, Jolly, has been featured at the HBO/US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, and on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend and NBC’s Late Fridays. You can hear her voice on radio and tv ads. Susan has been cut from several blockbuster films, but her recent movie role in Let’s Go to Prison! as a bad stripper in a halo brace, made her very happy. Her daughter, Sofia Mia, is very four, very ridiculous, and very awesome.
Shows: Children of a Lesser God
Colleen Murray
Colleen Murray has been performing improvisation and sketch comedy in Chicago for the last 8 years. Currently she performs with veteran groups like the iO Chicago house team Deep Schwa, the world-renowned Cheetarah and a lady crew called Virgin Daiquiri. This February, Colleen’s sketch ensemble, the Ragdolls, were selected to perform their critically acclaimed sketch show “Moist” at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. In addition, Murray is honored to be an iO Chicago Level 2 Instructor and has a great time working with the business division of Second City Communications facilitating corporate workshops. And she is a commercial real estate mogul. No joke. She can do it all, so don’t be surprised if you see her dressed as Wonder Woman flying across the skyline of Chicago in a local car commercial. For real!
Teams: Deep Schwa
Shows: Razzmatazz, You Are Not Alone
Jessica Rogers
Jessica Kelley Rogers is an alumnus of the University of Florida where she began studying improvisation while teaching theatre and improv to young adults through the Gainesville Association for the Creative Arts and All Children’s Theatre. While in Gainesville, Rogers co-created and performed with A.C.I.I., an improvisational comedy troupe that specialized in short-form, long-form and original sketch material. After graduation she moved to Chicago to study improvisation. She has had the opportunity to study at the Annoyance Theatre and play with the ensemble Trigger Finger, in addition to performing with several ensembles at the Playground Theatre. Rogers is a devoted company member of WNEP Theatre where she co-produces and performs in Angry White Guy Reads the Paper. She has also had the pleasure of performing with and directing several iO ensembles.
Jason Shotts
Jason Shotts is honored to be teaching at iO’s Training Center. He performs improv at iO with his friends on Cougars and with the long- running, improvised puppet show, Felt. In addition, he performs with Otis, The Wichita Blue Knuckles and Brad Renfro.
Teams: Cougars, The Diplomat Motel
Shows: The Lindbergh Babies 2.0
Craig Uhlir
Craig Uhlir has been learning/playing at iO since 1996. He was on teams with names like Varmit and Spank until becoming an early member of the house team Deep Schwa and later a member of the house team Valhalla. Craig still plays on Deep Schwa and also in a two man show called Middle Age Comeback on Sundays. Craig toured with the Second City for over two years culminating with a tour of Kuwait and Iraq for the USO. Craig spent the last two years in Las Vegas performing for The Second City at the Flamingo, as well as teaching there too. Craig also played with ComedySportz Chicago in the 2000’s, and has hosted iO’s Jam on at least three separate stints starting all the way back in ‘97. Jam.
Teams: Deep Schwa, Swanel
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, Middle Age Comeback
Steve Waltien
Steve Waltien began improvising and acting at Middlebury College in Vermont where he majored in Philosophy and Theatre. He is a graduate of the iO Training Center and the Second City Conservatory Program and has taught many classes and workshops for both institutions as well as independently. He can be seen performing at iO with the house team Bullet Lounge, Whirled News Tonight and The Armando Diaz Experience. Steve also performs at The Second City and has appeared in plays such as Amnesia and Other Means of Escape as part of the Potomac Theatre Project in Washington, DC. He is proud to be teaching at iO.
Teams: Bullet Lounge
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, The Frank Hayes 4, Improvised Shakespeare, Steve and Jordan, Respectively, Whirled News Tonight
Seth Weitberg
Seth Weitberg is currently a cast member with The Second City National Touring Company. He began studying improvisation with Duke University Improv and is thrilled to now call himself a Chicagoan. Weitberg has been seen at iO with the two-man powerhouse Nogoodnicks and was the creator and co-host of The Late Night Late Show. He has written and performed two one-man shows, the john doe project, a 2004 Single File Festival selection, and America Gives Itself A Hero’s Welcome. He has performed at the Chicago Sketchfest with Family Freud and Hooray For Fun, and was thrilled to be in the premiere cast of The Second City’s Jewsical The Musical. Weitberg has served as co-head writer for 104.3 Jack FM and has also been heard and seen on Mancow’s Morning Madhouse, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and performing poetry at The Green Mill. He is the author of the touring blog Easy Writer and his alter ego Matty is the author of politicoool.blogspot.com.
Teams: Bullet Lounge
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, The Frank Hayes 4, The Deltones