We’re multinational! This year’s VIF faculty hails from eight different countries and seven different states.
JESSICA ARJET
An improvisor, actor, director, teacher and producer, Jessica is a co-owner of the Hideout Theatre in Austin, Texas. The Hideout performs many of the standard types of improv, but they specialize in delightfully improvise full length plays.
Jessica performs The Arjet Universe every Thursday in the Free Fringe at the Hideout. In the Arjet Universe she invites different people to play with her in duos or larger groups, creating delightfully devised new formats and genres. She is also part of Fabarjet, a duo with Andreas Fabis improvising silly fairy tales, space stories and everything in-between. Their signature style is fast and absurd, but grounded in real relationships. Strangely, she is also a member of J Names, a troupe based in Portland full of amazingly smart and talented improvisors whose names all start with J. She often guests with other improv troupes and is a frequent performer in the Hideout’s improvised plays such as Sexy Future Space Lady, The Black Vault, Live Nude Improv, and Next Week…on Game of Thrones. And while it may not have been a wise decision to do them, she has performed in 3 different improv marathons performing continuously for between 41 and 47 hours at a time.
Jessica has directed improv shows and scripted work for children as well as adults. She is known for providing delightful challenges for her cast so that they can rise to their potential and fully realize the artistic vision of the show.
Jessica teaches at the Hideout in the regular series classes as well as in workshop series and one offs. She also frequently travels to teach at festivals and other theaters around the US. Her teaching style is challenging, irreverent and joyful. She prefers to set up exercises and situations where people can find their way to their own unique voice. Her classes are a journey of guided discovery.
REMY BERTRAND
Remy is in the small club of improvisation teachers with more than 10,000 hours of experience. Currently based in London, UK, he has been teaching improvisation internationally since 2006 with imprology, in drama schools and other institutions. He has directed several large scale improvised performances with Zootrophic, a multi-discipline ensemble, co-directed a few improvised short films with Peter Snowdon and is hosting Love Explosion, an improvised open-stage show currently online.
Remy has trained most recently with John Write (Impro, Clown) Kate Hilder and Sten Rudstrom (Action Theatre) Mary Overlie (Six Viewpoints), Lee Simpson (Open Space, Impro), Lucy Hopkins (Clown) and Punch Drunk (Immersive Theatre).
He has learned most from his students and teaches improvisation as a transformational process focusing on pleasure, curiosity and courage.
DIANA BROWN
Diana’s an improv artist, actor, voice actor, playwright, producer, and teaching artist. Diana is a teacher, director, and member of the leadership team at Leela in San Francisco. She leads the improv program at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s School of Theatre. Diana was voted most valuable Mentor and Teacher in 2018 at the San Francisco Improv Festival.
Independently, she’s a communications consultant and acting coach. She’s led Master Classes in San Francisco, Salt Lake City DuoFest, 2nd Best Comedy Fest, Camp Improv Utopia West, New Orleans Improv Festival, Denver Improv Festival, 2020 Virtual Improv Festival, and with the Global Improv Project online.
Diana has studied with master teachers Jonathan Pitts, Jill Bernard, Brian James O’Connell (BOC), Joe Bill, Tracy Burns, Carla Cackowski, Tara De Francisco, Rance Rizzuto, Peter Rogers and Lindsey McGowen, Jane Morris, Dee Ryan, Jay Sukow, The Cast of Shrew: Improvised Shakespeare.
Diana studied acting with The Arizona Theatre Company Conservatory, and she performs as half of the nationally touring improv duo Bingewatch.
DEANA CRIESS
Deana Criess has been a professional improviser for more than 20 years. A master instructor, director, and performer, Deana has done shows and workshops at festivals, theaters, colleges, and Fortune 500 companies all over the country. Deana’s work has been featured on PBS, NPR, KBS (the Korean Broadcasting System), The Boston Globe, CNN, and Slate.com. She is the founder and former Director of IBCreative, where she created training programs for corporate and academic settings. She has worked with hundreds of corporate clients including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Intel, Novartis, Moderna, Procter & Gamble, Ocean Spray, and many more. Her academic work ranges from pre-K through post-grad programs including work at Harvard School of Business, MIT Sloan, Northeastern, Emerson, Berklee School of Music, Boston University, Boston College, and others. She also has extensive nonprofit experience including her wellness workshops at Childrens’ Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, her programs for dementia patients and their caregivers, and her current work at Perkins School for the Blind.
During her years in comedy, she has worked with some amazing artists including Dan Castellaneta (The Simpsons), Laura Hall (Whose Line Is It Anyway), Kevin McDonald (The Kids In The Hall), Shantira Jackson (SNL), Lauren Ash (Superstore), Ryan Stiles (Whose Line Is It Anyway), Eric Drysdale (Full Frontal), Jen Kirkman (Drunk History), Janeane Garofalo (Wet Hot American Summer), Dave Razowsky (The Second City), Faith Soloway (Transparent), Josh Gondelman (Desus & Mero), Richie Moriarty (Ghosts), Anthony Atamanuik (What We Do in the Shadows) and many more.
Deana is currently the Associate Director of Recruitment & Admissions and Applied Improvisation Specialist for Career Launch@Perkins, an innovative job training program she helped to develop at Perkins School for the Blind. There, she uses improvisation to teach job readiness and job acquisition skills to adults who are blind and visually impaired.
RANDY DIXON
Randy is regarded as one of the most experienced improvisational artists in the Pacific Northwest and around the world. In 1983, he was a founding member of Unexpected Productions (Seattle) and has served as the company’s Artistic Director since 1988. Randy also founded and directs The Orcas Island Project, an international performance group consisting of 15 performers from 12 countries. He has taught, directed and performed improvisational theater in Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Italy, Germany, Austria, Holland, and all over the U.S. and Canada. Outside of his improvisational work, Randy served on the editorial board for The Salt Journal a journal of Myth, Religion, Psychology and Ideas. His book, Being Present: Spontaneous Storytelling and the Art of Improvisation has been published in German, Slovene, soon in Swedish, and Japanese. Randy has B.F.A. in Drama from Seattle University and a Master’s Degree in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Jungian Depth Psychology.
SARAH FRENCH
For as long as she remembers, Sarah has been interested in how people play. She was a practicing psychotherapist when she stumbled into the paradoxical world of Clown, which set her on a very enlivening path, despite her hesitations & fears. She has collaborated with Vivian Gladwell of Nose to Nose, since 2012. She considers that she has many teachers, including the spinner dolphins of Hawaii, who are the clowns of the sea. In 2015, Sarah created OOFA to share and promote discoveries with larger communities.
OOFA offers clowning workshops & creativity labs, & makes books & games that are playful, if not also practical (The Book of Greetings, The Dance of Pants & Other Dances, Party of Animals…). Sarah’s approach to teaching is inspired by her adventures as a social worker, psychotherapist, English language teacher, elementary school teacher, actor, museum docent, & more. In 2021, Sarah moved to Ghent, NY, & started Fool Tree, a center for the playful arts, where she continues to facilitate clowning workshops & community events.
MICHAEL GELLMAN
Michael J Gellman now resides in Ontario, Canada, and is Artistic Director of The Process Theatre. He teaches at Loyalist College as well as Master Workshops for Second City International and Artistic New Directions NYC.
Michael is an alumnus of the Second City mainstage and was a resident director for Second City in Canada and the USA for 25 years. He was Artistic Director of the Second City Toronto where his shows were nominated for 7 Dora Mavor Moore Awards including twice for Outstanding Direction, nominated for Best Director for Chicago’s Joseph Jefferson Award, and won a Chalmers Award for Best Director. Michael was a senior faculty and founding member of the Second City Training Center where he was a Program Head and also Director of the New York Training Center.
Michael was an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago teaching Acting For Directors in the Film Directing department and he designed and taught Improvisation and Acting III for the Comedy Studies department. In addition to Second City and Columbia College Michael has taught and designed classes and workshops in directing, acting, and improvisation since 1976 at such notable institutions as Actors Centre London, The Audition Centre, Victory Gardens Training Centre, Act One Conservatory and Loyola Law School, as well as master workshops for hundreds of Universities, festivals, theatre companies and improv groups around the world.
Michael is credited with originating long-form improvisation and his book Process: An Improvisers Journey (Northwestern University Press), co-authored with Mary Scruggs, is a summary of his workshops on improvisational training.
STEPHEN GILBANE
Stephen Gilbane has been accompanying improvisational troupes since 1991, when he joined ImprovBoston as music director and helped develop their signature improvised musical structure. He was artistic director and founding member of Musical Improv Company, and Hidden Falls, improvisational troupes that specialized in developing and performing full-length improvised musicals around such items as the rock opera, the 7 deadly sins, the Rom-Com, a famous movie supplied by the audience, and the musical biopic.
He has been teaching improvisers how to do songprov both locally in Boston and at improv festivals from California to Washington DC. He has co-written a number of short musicals, including The History Of Nails!, Romance101!, Hollywood Insider, and 10 Gorefest musicals, ImprovBoston’s annual scripted Halloween musical. He has workshopped his full-length musical Showstopper! A High-Tech Musical with NOMTI, the Boston-based musical theater workshop, of which he has been a member for 4 years. He has played keyboards with a variety of bands, including a neo-Cabaret ensemble, a jump-blues band, and a jazz standards group. He studied jazz piano with the late, great Charlie Banacos and film scoring at Berklee School of Music.
VIVIAN GLADWELL
Vivian is the founder and director of Nose to Nose and has given hundreds of workshops around the world. He lives both in the UK and France, where he started clowning in 1978. He speaks French and English fluently.
Vivian began teaching in 1988 as part of the Lifeways Festival at Emerson College UK. He trained as a facilitator with the Bataclown in 1990 and joined their team in 1991 also working as a modern day Court Jester (Clownanalyst).
He created Nose to Nose UK in 1990, Nose to Nose of North America in 2006, Nose to Nose Germany in 2008, NTN Italy in 2016 and Fool View, the Social Clowning group and has trained facilitators in the UK, the USA, Germany and Italy.
He continues his role as ambassador for the work by researching the applications of clowning in the context of teacher training, medicine, conflict management, ecology and intercultural work in many countries (South Africa, USA, Senegal, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Italy, Germany, Norway…).
He holds clowning as a social playground for exploring our humanity.
BETSE GREEN
Betse Green has been a very active member of the Portland Improv scene since 2002. Currently, she is an ensemble member and teacher at Curious Comedy Theater and ComedySportz Portland. She also performs regularly with the indie teams B&B, B.A.B.E., Broad Selection, and Unbreakable Chain.
Betse has directed festival ensembles at the San Diego Improv Festival, Impride Festival (San Diego), Laugh Riot Festival (Phoenix), and directed the first-ever festival ensemble at the San Francisco Improv Festival.
She currently teaches classes and performs using Zoom and has adapted her style of teaching and performing to accommodate this new medium.
Betse has studied with ComedySportz and IO Chicago. She has also been taught by Master Class instructors including Coco Galore, Jill Bernard, Susan Messing, Joe Bill, David Razowsky, and Tracy Burns. As a Certified Applied Improvisation Architect/Teacher Betse has created and facilitated applied improv curricula in classrooms and corporate business.
With more than two decades of improv experience, Betse Green knows a thing or two about yes-and, while still finding a way to address barriers both nervously personal and inherently societal. As a player & instructor, she has performed all over North America and Europe.
Betse focuses on creating strong, grounded characters, whose honest relationships form the heart of the scene. She likes to play for the “others”—people and situations that can otherwise be forgotten on the improv stage. This is apparent in her work with people possessing a wide range of abilities and experience.
Betse’s workshops explore a variety of topics-from improv basics, to guiding experienced players through complex territories such as race and gender, and how artists can incite and continue these conversations from the stage. Yet paramount to any ideology is FUN! Betse’s lust for life has made her a staple of the Oregon improv community and continues to propel her imagination and dedication to Portland’s improv stages and beyond.
KEN HALL
Ken Hall is a Canadian Comedy Award Winner (Best Breakout Artist) and multiple CCA award nominee, including most recently Comedic Artist of the Year. Ken plays the lovable Herb and provides motion capture as the body of Pogo in Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy.
Ken is also is one-half of the critically acclaimed comedic duo 2-MAN NO-SHOW with his comedic soulmate, Isaac Kessler, and has had the pleasure to work for Cirque de Soleil.
Ken has appeared in numerous film and television roles including two seasons on TBS’s hit series People of Earth and has appeared as a guest on Conana and most recently performed in Canadian Stage’s Shakespeare adaptation of As You Like It for its Dream In High Park series as well as playing no less than 15 characters in Young People’s Theatre Production of Snow White.
Ken teaches Public Speaking at The Second City, Clownprov at Bad Dog Theatre, and improv at The Assembly and The Social Capital Theatre in Toronto. In 2019, Ken was awarded the Frank McAnulty Award for Faculty Instructor of the Year at The Second City.
STEVE KLEINEDLER
Steve Kleinedler has been improvising on and off for the past 32 years and consistently since 2000. He graduated from the Players Workshop of Second City in 1987 and from ImprovBoston in 2002. He’s taken workshops and classes from Del Close and Charna Helpern, Martin deMaat, Amy Poehler, Susan Messing, Joe Bill, Will Luera and countless others. Steve Kleinedler has taught at ImprovBoston from 2003 to 2011 and Philly improv Theater from 2011 to the present. He’s taught workshops in Baltimore, Bethlehem (PA), Boston, Chapel Hill (NCCAF), Chicago, Detroit (DIF), Providence (PIF), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh (PCF), San Juan, and Sarasota.
In 1985 he cofounded the improv troupe Spontaneous Art at Michigan State University. In 1991 he was one of the founders of the still-running Shattered Globe Theatre in Chicago. He was a member of the video sketch comedy group Abneria in the late 1990s in Boston. He performed with ImprovBoston from 2001-2011 in Micetro, with the Harold team Marjean, and in many other shows including Directions…. With Steve & Harry and The Dream Show. In Philadelphia, he’s a member of Chaperone and Sad Trombone, among several other groups. He’s appeared in numerous festivals, including Boston, the Del Close Marathon, Providence, Detroit, Toronto, San Juan, Carrboro NC, and Baltimore.
From 2003 to 2011, for ImprovBoston, he directed the Improv Boston Family Show, the sketch team The Ruckus, the improvised Shakespearean show The Robert Cycle, the Memento-inspired BacksStory, among many others. At PHIT, he directed house team Hot Dish, as well as PHIT fringe shows twenty-four, BackStory, and Page One, and was the inaugural director for the PHIT Mainstage cast. He also manages and co-hosts The Dean’s List, a weekly show that provides students in the PHIT training program and opportunity to perform with instructors.
CHRISTOPHE LE CHEVILLER
Christophe is an actor and improviser, trained in the visual arts, having dreamed of becoming a cartoonist. He came to improvisation in the 1990s, where he met Samuel Doux (actor, author, director, screenwriter), with whom he founded the company L’Oeil Ecoute in Paris in 1998. Within this company, they created several youth theater shows and performed plays for all audiences, as well as improvisation shows.
In Rennes since 2005, he joined the ranks of La Puzzle Compagnie , a professional improvisation company, where he created with Julien Gigault the site “Impro-Bretagne.” During these years, he explored the space existing between the text, dramaturgy and improvisation, seeking to create a simple form, direct and sensitive of his work. But it was in 2015 that he saw a different way of approaching theatrical improvisation by meeting Marie Parent and embarking on the creation of “We Are Family.” In 2016, they created La Morsure together. He has since devoted himself to directing theater and videos, occasionally acting in certain company shows.
INBAL LORI
Inbal is a graduate of Jerusalem Art High School (1994) and Nissan Nativ Acting Studio (2000). Since then she has been writing and acting for television and theater, winning prizes and scholarships. Inbal started improvising in Tel Aviv in 2001 where she had her group 3FALLING and ran an improvisation school in the city from 2013 to 2017.
In 2015 Inbal moved to Berlin and since then she has taught and performed all over the world in places like: USA, Canada, Australia and Europe. Her performances include her solo show Fragments of Life and duo shows such as CLICK with Tim Orr (San Fransisco), The Lorilees with Lee White (Canada), The Fun Fatales with Paula Galimberti (Spain) and Playing with the Enemy with Arab improviser Zaki Zikani.
BRONWYNN MERTZ-PENZINGER
Bronwynn was born in the USA but grew up in Australia. She received her theatre degree from Murdoch University and since then has been working internationally as an actress for both stage and screen. She is also an impro player/teacher/director, CliniClown, voice-over artist, and more!
She has lived in Vienna since 1992 where she performs in both English and German (often simultaneously!) with the English Lovers, the Vienna Theatre Project, TAG All Stars, amongst others. Since 2002 she has been a regular collaborator and participant in countless major international impro-theatre festival/ensembles. Since 2006 she has
been part of the Orcas Island Project, an international theatre ensemble, focussing on
improvisation performance research and experiments.
Bronwynn is also a qualified Feldenkrais Practitioner. In 2021 she graduated from the advanced training program called Child’Space (2019-2021), created by Dr. Chava Shelhav, specializing in the needs and development of babies and children from birth to independent walking. She has taught Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) group lessons as part of the curriculum at the Vienna English Theater Academy (VETA) since 2019, as well as open classes at Schule des Theaters since 2017. In May 2020 she began teaching ATM classes every Sunday live online via Zoom. She also teachwa these group lessons as part of Theater Festival Programs, either in-person or online (Babylon, Törn, Vintage Improv, Tennessee Arts Festival and IFO).
Her greatest inspirations come from her sons Zackery and Jeremy, her partner Roland
and the love and laughter they all find in life.
TIM ORR
Tim Orr has improvised since 1988 with many San Francisco-based groups, including BATS Improv, Rafe Chase’s groundbreaking long-form troupe Improv Theatre, the renowned True Fiction Magazine, and the acclaimed troupe 3 FOR ALL.
In 2009, he founded the Improv Playhouse of San Francisco with the goal of touring and teaching nationally and internationally in improv formats such as The Naked Stage (in the style of stage plays), Shakespeare, and others.
Tim has appeared in numerous plays in the San Francisco Bay Area and received critical acclaim for his leading roles in the improvised feature films, Suckerfish and Security. With Stephen Kearin, Tim co-wrote and originated the role of Dirk Manly in An Evening with Dirk & Blaine.
Tim has served for many years as the director of many BATS Improv long-form courses in San Francisco. He has performed and taught improvisation at the American Conservatory Theatre, BATS Improv, Stanford University, and many other venues nationally (Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Austin, Louisville, Atlanta, Minneapolis, etc.) and internationally (Amsterdam, Beirut, Belgium, Helsinki, London, Paris, Saudi Arabia, Stockholm, and Tel Aviv).
Tim cried when the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in 2010, and many times afterward just thinking about it. He cried some more when the Giants, improbably, won another title in his lifetime in 2012.
MARNIE CHAISSAC (A.K.A., MARIE PARENT)
Actress, improviser, singer, performer, trainer. . . Marie has been consuming and practicing multiple artistic expressions since childhood. After having working for many popular and artistic education projects for 12 years, she joined La Puzzle Compagnie where she plays with and trains all ages.
In 2015, she decided to get involved in the “We Are Family” project, led by Christophe Le Cheviller. Building on this first exploratory experience, they decide to start a company together, La Morsure. They co-lead creations at the border between improvisation and established dramaturgy, with visual artists, musicians, performers and psychoanalysts. She leads and develops and also in parallel a poetic work, virtual, performative and plastic. She publishes in specialized journals. She has worked since 2019 as a dancer-actress on the pro- creation chain of the Zutano Bazar company directed by Florence Loison: “Human Scale” creation supported by the CCNN of Nantes and Paperie et Yvan Alexandre’s Vasse theater.
CAROL FOX PRESCOTT
Master teacher Carol Fox Prescott is renowned for her transformative, physical approach to acting, performance, and presentation. Based on breathing, awareness, and joy, it is designed to open hearts, craft deeply human characters, and encourage outrageous bouts of imagination while happily re-channeling performance anxiety into free-flowing, intuitive, genuine self-expression.
She brings 50 years of experience in professional theater to individuals from all walks of life, enabling breakthroughs in authenticity, personal growth, and creativity. Carol’s clients include professional actors, comedians, improvisers, dancers, singers, clergy, attorneys, doctors, artists, writers, public speakers, life coaches, and educators, anyone for whom presentation and self-discovery are essential for success.
She is one of fifty teachers in The United States chosen to be included in the book Acting: A Vital Tradition, by Ronald Rand, and is one of four master teachers in New York recommended byThe Actor’s Pocket Guide to NYC. She studied acting with Joshua Shelley, Robert Lewis, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Michael Moriarty, and has played leading roles in New York, National Touring Companies, and Regional Theaters throughout the United States, playing opposite such luminaries as Zero Mostel, Mickey Rooney, Hal Holbrook, Luther Adler, Theodore Bikel, and Robert Guillaume.
Carol’s teaching career began at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the T. Schreiber Studio in New York City after which she created Carol Fox Prescott: Acting Classes, a studio of her own. From New York, she brought her work to many cities including Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Seattle, and countries including Australia, Canada, France, and Switzerland.
Now, having taught throughout the globe, her virtual classes are filled with people from many different places enjoying an amazing blend of personalities and nationalities.
Carol is the author of Breathing Awareness and Joy: An Approach to Acting for the 21st Century; Some of These Days, a one-woman show, about vaudeville star Sophie Tucker, which was performed both in the United States and Canada; and In The Voice of Our Mothers, a 90-minute, five-character play taking us deep inside the lives of our biblical matriarchs. She spent two years working with incarcerated men in a program called Exodus at The Shawngunk Correctional Facility, a men’s maximum-security prison in upstate NY. where she introduced the men to her breathing techniques and helped to facilitate their journey in becoming good citizens in or out of prison.
LUANA PROENÇA
Luana Proença is a Brazilian artist with a Master of Arts in acting and specialization in Cultural Management. Her background is also in Dance, Physical Theater, Dramaturgy and Animation Theater. She had her own school for theater and producing in Brazil from 2008 to 2016, and taught directing and acting in college from 2014 to 2017. She is a member of the Brazilian groups Novos Candangos and Saída Sul, with which she created her solo show “Aleatório.”
Luana moved to Lisbon in September 2018 in order to begin her PhD studies and continue her research in Improv. Her Master’s work was a proposal applied for improv training using sports, viewpoints techniques, and improv games. In 2018 she started the project “Visando Impro” (blogging about Improv in Portuguese) and she also made the Improv documentary “It was necessary to listen to other ” She completed the Improv program at The Second City Training Center Hollywood and a few Master Classes from 2016 to 2018.
She teaches and performs internationally with her theater and improvisation workshops and shows. In Europe, she has been a member of the improv groups Lilimprov and Codfish Waters, and also in THE SIN (a European Improvisation Network), and the cast of the international improv show “Room 3” (Dance, Improv and Tarot) with the improvisers Amy Lamier and Jamie Graham from the United States. She created the monthly project Impro.Lab, where she teaches and coordinates improv master classes, and also the project Jelly Jams with Stephen Thornton (USA) in Lisbon. She is one of the creative minds, curator and manager of IRREVERENTE, the International Impro Festival of Lisbon. Luana was Dramaturgy and Performative Techniques teacher at Chapitô Circus School in Lisbon. In 2023 she taught workshops and performed in Lisbon (Portugal) , Canberra (Australia), and Brasília (Brazil).
Luana has published the books Our Direction on Stake: Directing is Part of Improvising (2021); Have you ever wondered if…? Questions for Teaching Impro (2020), written with 11 other female improvisers from the Feminist Pedagogical Laboratory’s La Otra Escena; and Essays on Improv with members of the European Impro network The SIN. She also translates “Status” magazine to Portuguese.
STEPHANIE SKURA
“A radical & perpetual innovator,” Stephanie has created interdisciplinary movement-based performances for over 30 years. Her process focuses on the power and totality of each performer, collaboratively discovering and developing material. Called “a major American experimentalist,” she has an international reputation for adventurous work, performing and teaching in 32 of the United States and 14 countries. Her New York City-based touring company performed worldwide for 15 years. Skura’s current work, including Surreptitious Preparations for an Impossible Total Act, Sacrilege is Needed. Competency is Hell, The Corduroy Prayer, Two Huts, and Noir Noir Noir, integrates a radically visceral approach to language with dance and theater.
Now based in the Pacific Northwest, she works independently with several companies, artists and institutions. Formerly on Graduate Faculty at the University of Washington School of Drama Professional Actors Training Program, and Core Faculty of the Skinner Releasing Institute, she’s taught at such places as the American Dance Festival, Florida Dance Festival, European Dance Development Center, Naropa Institute, Movement Research in New York, and in residencies at many colleges and universities around the country.
She instigated and directs Open Source Forms, a practice and teacher certification program deeply rooted in fluidly expanded from Skinner Releasing Technique. From 2005 to 2010, she was Associate Artistic Director of The Gravity Project, an integrative theater company weaving movement, design, music, and poetic text. She was a frequent guest artist at Juniata College’s innovative theater department during 2004-16: teaching, mentoring, creating and directing performances. She has often taught and created work at I.dan.ce International Dance Center in Brescia, Italy, at La Caldera in Barcelona, and in the United Kingdom.
Skura has received seven choreography fellowships and five dance company grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, one of the first “Bessie Awards” for Choreography, and many other government, foundation and corporate grants, as well as commissions from several dance companies. She holds a BFA and MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
PATTI STILES
Based in Melbourne, Australia, Patti is an actor, improviser, director, teacher, author and playwright who’s been working professionally in theatre since 1983. She served her theatre apprenticeship at the world-renowned Loose Moose Theatre and was trained by Keith Johnstone. She has an infectious enthusiasm for improvisation. Mix this with her insightful improvisation technique, strong narrative skill and her spirit of play, and it is no wonder she is responsible for inspiring many hundreds of people to improvise. Her understanding of Johnstone’s work and philosophy, combined with her own discoveries and her wealth of experience on the world impro stage, has made her a “must have” teacher for performers and companies wishing to create spontaneous theatre with fine skill, strong narrative, heart and elegant style.
Patti is a former Artistic Director of Rapid Fire Theatre (CA), Dream Kitchen Theatre (CA), Impro Melbourne (AU) and the International Theatresports Institute (CA), and a founding member of the award winning Die Nasty – the live improvised soap opera (CA). In 2021 she released her first book Improvise Freely. It has received an enthusiastic response from improvisors, teachers and impro companies around the globe. Patti has taught and performed in North and South America, Europe, Scandinavia, Asia, UAE and the Oceania region for numerous improvisation companies, festivals, and theatre schools and in the corporate arena.
TOM TOLLENAERE
Tom Tollenaere was introduced to improv in 1997 and was instantly hooked.
Tom is the founder and artistic director of RIOT, the Royal Improphonic Orchestra & Theatre, specializing in musical long-form improv theatre, and now celebrating its 13th year. Prior to that, between 1999 and 2005 he was artistic director for The Lunatics, one of Belgium’s oldest short-form collectives. He also performed with them as an improv actor from 1997 until 2006.
Tom has been training and coaching improvisers since 1999. He likes to teach and theorize about narrative long-form and long- and short-form musical improv.
As an improv musician, Tom can sometimes be seen outside of his home country of Belgium, at festivals in Europe and North America. He loves to travel to teach, or to showcase his solo performance “Cookbook.”
Tom is a guest blogger for the Dutch improblog.nl, and several of his articles have appeared—in English and Spanish—in the international improv magazine Status. He is one of the producers of the “Improovelicious” international improv festival in Leuven, Belgium. Tom has been editing and maintaining ImprovEncylopedia.org, a reference site devoted to improv, since 1999, and he has been the Music Director of Vintage Improv since 2019.