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.
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, 3033
Dave Asher
Dave Asher graduated with a BA in Drama from Northwestern University in 1999. At Northwestern, he performed in its sketch-improv group The Mee-Ow Show (1999) as well as in The Titanic Players troupe (1996-1997). While in school, he took the iO classes and then performed on the iO house team Valhalla from 1996 to 1999. After graduation in ‘99, he moved to Amsterdam in The Netherlands to perform improv and sketch in Boom! Chicago (1999-2004). In addition to hundreds of shows in the 300 seat home theater, he did Boom! shows at private events, music festivals, universities, and a week on the Second City main stage as part of the Comedy Swap in 2002. Dave returned to Chicago in 2004. He joined the company of Child’s Play Touring Theater and toured the country performing adaptations of stories and poems written by children (2005-2006). Dave has also worked in improv as a musician. He music directed with The Second City National Touring Company (2004) and has been the Music Director of The iO since 2006 (That’s over 2000 Harolds!). As an improv teacher, he has taught classes and workshops at iO since 2006. He coached the harold team The Republic (2007-2008) and is currently the director of the iO musical house team The Del Tones. At Northwestern, he taught improv to theater majors. In Amsterdam, he served as Boom! Chicago’s head improv instructor for two years, training improv hopefuls as well as businessmen and women having their first taste of improv presented as team building.
Tim Baltz
Tim started seeing shows at iO Theater in 1995 at the age of 14. He has seen the country with Second City’s National Touring Company, and he performs at iO with the Harold team Bullet Lounge, and the Armando Diaz Experience. His past credits include Traffic & Weather, TAG, Blatzberg, Promise Keepers, and the long-running two-person show Nogoodnicks, among many others. He is a graduate of Loyola University-Chicago with a double major in French and Communication.
Teams: Bullet Lounge
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience
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 Deltones, The Armando Diaz Experience
Allison Bills
Allison has been on/performed with 25-30 harold teams and shows at iO, toured for years with the Second City National Touring Company and Second City Communications, and performed/taught improv, (and comedy inspired through improv) internationally for most of her adult life. She has written and performed show featured in the Chicago Improv Festival and in a showcase for the HBO Comedy Festival. At iO, currently, she can be seen sometimes with Armando and the Lindbergh Babies 2.0, or sitting in with whoever needs her. She can also be seen frequently performing at the Apollo, the Annoyance theater, the Playground, Comedy Sportz with the Hot Karl, and at the Second City.
Andy Carey
Andy Carey has studied improvisation with iO Chicago, The Second City and the Annoyance. After receiving his B.F.A. in Theater Arts from the University of Idaho he worked as an actor and teacher for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. He can currently be seen performing with Quincy and The Improvised Shakespeare Company at iO, and also with Chrysalis Clark, The Big Yellow Bus, Homey Loves Chachi and The Beatbox.
Teams: Willie Nelson Slept Here
Shows: Improvised Shakespeare
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
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
Kate Duffy
Teams: The Signatures
Shows: Children of a Lesser God, The Lindbergh Babies 2.0, Felt
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, Lyndsay and Jet Scripted
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
Paul Grondy
Paul Grondy has been improvising for 15 years. While performing each Wednesday night at the iO, with Carl & The Passions, Paul can also be seen improvising on Monday nights in The Armando Diaz Show.
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 Signatures
Shows: The Deltones, Lyndsay and Jet Scripted
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 Virginian: born, bred, and educated. After graduating from the College of William & Mary, Greg moved to Chicago to study improvisation at iO and Second City. He has performed with such groups as Show Pony, Athens, Sturgis, Shecky Kulhan: Theatre of the Mind, and Mission:Improvable. Currently, Greg is an ensemble member of Baby Wants Candy, the Improvised Shakespeare Company, the incomparable Cook County Social Club and Second City’s National Touring Company. He is a graduate of the School at Steppenwolf.
Shows: Cook County Social Club, Improvised Shakespeare
Brian Jack
Teams: Deep Schwa, The Reckoning
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, The Reckoning
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
Rob Janas
Teams: Deep Schwa
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
Shad Kunkle
Shad Kunkle performs with Carl & The Passions each Wednesday at iO, where he also coaches The Reckoning. He has also played with The Placebo Effect, 5 Chinese Brothers and The Rooftop Players.
Teams: Carl & The Passions
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, The Lindbergh Babies 2.0
Holly Laurent
Holly grew up in Niles, Michigan dreaming of living in the big city someday. After moving to Chicago she trained at the Second City, iO, and Annoyance Theatres. She is a writer and performer, and member of the long-standing Chicago improv group The Reckoning. She enjoys teaching in the iO training center and performing every Tuesday and Thursday at iO Chicago with The Reckoning and in the show Shotgun. Holly earned her Masters Degree in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College in 2007 and joined the Second City Touring Company the same year.
Teams: The Reckoning
Shows: The Reckoning
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.
Shows: Close Quarters
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.
Teams: Willie Nelson Slept Here
Shows: The Deltones, Children of a Lesser God, The Lindbergh Babies 2.0
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, Virgin Daiquiri
Pat O'Brien
Teams: The Reckoning
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, The Reckoning
Katie Rich
Katie Rich is so proud to be a part of the iO Chicago faculty! Katie has performed all over the world with The Second City on their National Touring Company and on the MS Norwegian Jewel. You can see her in commercials for Sonic Drive-In and for 2.5
seconds in The Ice Harvest. Katie would be nowhere without all friends and her Fella, and worse than nowhere without her family.
Teams: Carl & The Passions
Shows: The Frank Hayes 4, The Deltones
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.
Kevin Sciretta
Kevin Sciretta has been improvising, writing and performing in Chicago for 6 years. In the past he’s performed with pH Productions, DSI’s The Beatbox, Ghettoblaster and for The Second City abroad the Norwegian Pearl. Currently, he improvises with The Deltones, Bullet Lounge and the New American All-Stars, while writing/performing with the Cupid Players and Hot Toddler. He is very happy to teach here.
Teams: Bullet Lounge
Shows: The Deltones, Black Ted Williams
Jason Shotts
Jason Shotts has been studying long-form improvisation at the iO Theater for the past seven years. He’s been lucky enough to perform with the groups Henrietta Pussycat, Willie Nelson Slept Here, Cougars, The Lindberg Babies 2.0, Brad Renfro and FELT. He has also performed at the Chicago Improv Festival, Del Close Marathon, The Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, the Raleigh Longform Improv Festival, the Dirty South Improv Festival, and Chicago Sketchfest with the ensembles Dummy, BirdDog, OTIS, Sketchcore and International Stinger.
Teams: Henrietta Pussycat, Willie Nelson Slept Here
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, 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, as well as the production, A Moment Alone, a collection of monologues, slam poetry and 60s-era soul ballads, which he also directed. HIS NEW ONE MAN SHOW, WITHOUT INTERMISSION, OPENS AT iO ON JUNE 4th. 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, his alter ego Matty is the author of politicoool.blogspot.com, and he thinks you should check out the best podcast on the planet, The Chicago Sessions.
Teams: Bullet Lounge
Shows: The Armando Diaz Experience, The Frank Hayes 4, The Deltones