Mike Bertrando
Michael Bertrando performed at the iO in Chicago with the famed groups Prefontaine, Atlantis and Somebody Say Charna. He currently performs at the IOWest.
Currently Teaches Level 1 & Level 4
Teams: Sweetness
Shows: Cog
Craig Cackowski
Craig has been involved with Improv Olympic as a performer, coach, teacher, and director since 1992. He recently relocated to L.A. after 11 years in Chicago, where he also performed with Second City on their 2 resident stages, and with their National Touring Company.
Currently Teaching Level 3, Level 6 & Dr. Cacki’s Improv Cleansing Workshop
Shows: Dasariski
George Caleodis
George Pete Caleodis was born and raised in Steubenville, Ohio, and attended The Ohio State University, earning a Master of Science degree in Mathematics. This document now hangs neatly on his wall, requiring dusting only once per month.
George is a main-stage alum of The (short-lived) Second City, Cleveland, where he also served as Conservatory instructor. He currently writes and performs with Big News, The Main Stage Sketch Show, and directs iO West’s “POP” company.
In addition to teaching, coaching, and performing improv and sketch comedy, George has spent much of the last 15 years as a radio DJ and stand-up comic – opening for the likes of Kathleen Madigan, Frank Caliendo, and The Righteous Brothers. His past corporate improv workshop clients include Nationwide Insurance, Victoria’s Secret, and Columbus State Community College.
Currently Teaching Writing Level 3
Teams: Hullabaloo
Shows: Big News, Main Stage Sketch Show: Three's Company, Four's a Conglomerate, I Group, Wikipedia LIVE
Shulie Cowen
Shulie Cowen has taught improv to kids, senior citizens, and everyone in between. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, a former member of The Second City National Touring Company, and a member of the original cast of the long running musical Schoolhouse Rock Live! in Chicago and Off-Broadway, where she created the role of “Shulie”. She studied improv in Chicago at The Second City Training Center, the Improv Olympic with Del Close and the Annoyance Theatre. Shulie currently performs at The Improv Olympic in Los Angeles, where she directs and performs in Opening Night: The Improvised Musical! every Friday at IO West. Movie and television credits include Just Like Heaven, World Cup Comedy, Yes Dear, Reno 911!, Bubble Boy, and Hellcab.
Currently Teaches Level 3
Shows: Opening Night: The Improvised Musical
James Grace
James Grace, Artistic Director of IO-West, has been performing, writing and directing comedy in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Europe. His stage credits range from “The Real Live Brady Bunch” to “The Oerol Theatre festival” in Holland. Some film and television credits include SUPER TROOPERS and Third Rock From The Sun. James has been performing and teaching imrovisation for over a decade.
Artistic Director of iO West, Currently Teaches Level 5
Shows: The Armando Show
Karen Graci
A proud native of Buffalo, NY, Karen is a veteran improvisational performer, writer and actor, having performed with The Second City for more than three years. While touring with The Second City National Touring Company, Karen performed in The Second City’s first-ever USO Tour, entertaining American troops in Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. She was also a resident cast member of the Second City Las Vegas cast for over a year. Karen’s one-woman show, “Feel Something”, was seen in both Chicago and LA, and she currently performs with IO West’s Baby Wants Candy. Karen has taught at IO West and the Second City Las Vegas Training Center, and happily coached veteran Chicago groups such as Lesbos of Providence and KOKO.
Currently Teaches Level 2
Shows: Karen, Darrin, and Arron
Dave Hill
Dave Hill is a Chicago native and veteran improvisational performer, writer and actor who has been performing at IO (Chicago and West) for several years. Trained at ImprovOlympic, the Annoyance Theater and the Second City, he was a member of the celebrated house team People of Earth at IO Chicago in addition to performing with numerous other wonderful ensembles including Atlantis and Jimmy Jimmy Do. Here at IO West he performs with King Ten and Cog as well as regularly appearing in the Armando show and the occasional sketch affair. He has done several commercials and TV and film work, but he does not think it germane to this biography.
Currently Teaches Level 6 & The Advanced Character Workshop
Teams: King Ten
Shows: The Armando Show, Cog, King Ten
Eric Hunicutt
Eric is a die-hard Tarheel from North Carolina via Chicago, where he spent six years performing, writing, and directing improv, sketch comedy, and scripted theater. In Chicago, Eric studied at iO and The Second City, performed with half a dozen Harold teams, and in shows around town, including Moat, Asterisks, & Don’t Drink the Water. Currently he plays several nights a week at I.O.West and travels to performances & festivals nationwide with I.O. Chicago’s critically-acclaimed ensemble The Reckoning.
Training Center Director, Currently Teaches Level 4
Teams: Trophy Wife
Shows: SWEATS!, Zubaz, Apple Bottom Gang
Bridget Kloss
Bridget began performing with IO in Chicago in 1997, when she was asked to join the house team Missing Fersons. She later performed with Prefontaine for several years, and was in the shows Two Slow, Epic Prattle, and Ask Charna. In 2000 she joined the cast of The Second City National touring company, and in 2004, became a member of The Second City Mainstage cast in Las Vegas. She has taught and coached improv for over 5 years, with IO, Second city and independently around the country.
Currently Teaches Level 3 and Level 5
Teams: Sweetness
Aaron Krebs
Aaron Krebs, from Texas by way of Chicago, has been involved with improv for over twelve years. He is part of the National Improv Touring Company, Mission IMPROVable, where he performed in such noted comedy festivals as: Chicago Improv Festival, Memphis Comedy Fest, Orlando Fool s Festival, Great Lakes Comedy Fest, Big Stinkin Improv Festival, as well as others. After three seasons of touring the US, he is proud to find his home here with the Improv Olympic West.
Currently Teaches Level 3
Shows: Inside The Improvisers Studio: TBA, Karen, Darrin, and Arron, Wikipedia LIVE
Derek Miller
Derek hails from Chicago where he grew up watching improv and started IO in the summer of 1994. He is the co-founder of the Indiana University troupe FullFrontal Comedy, which is in it’s tenth year. He has performed improv in London with 100% Fiction and at Second City and Ultimate Improv in Westwood. His IO credits include Bitter Noah: The Improvised Movie, Squadron and Opening Night! The Improvised Musical, now in its seventh smash year at IO west. Derek has appeared on Scrubs, Mad TV, Crossballs and MTV’s Fear (he’s the one that cried like a little girl).
Currently Teaching Level 2
Shows: Opening Night: The Improvised Musical, Red Bicyclette
Molly Prather
Molly Prather is a writer/performer whose one-woman show That Girl: A Cautionary Tale has run for over a year at the UCB Theatres in L.A. and N.Y., as well showcasing at the Comedy Central Stage in Los Angeles. As a storyteller, Molly has appeared in ASSSSCAT at UCB, is a StorySLAM winner at The Moth (N.Y. & L.A.), and in the storytelling shows Show & Tell,Spill Your Guts (UCBTLA), and Chicken Scratch (iO West). Molly’s writing is featured on TMZ, in the Off-Broadway musical The Hampton Sisters, TimeOut NY, AOL Television, and in the short story anthology Have I Got A Guy For You.
Scot Robinson
Scot can be seen every Saturday night as Hori Pismo in “The Lampshades” as well as other shows at ImprovOlympic West. From Chicago, Scot helped create over thirty original shows, including Chicago’s longest running musical Coed Prison Sluts, and The Real Live Brady Bunch as a performer, writer, teacher, and director at the nationally renowned Annoyance Theatre. After appearing in the independent film Fatty Drives the Bus, he moved to Los Angeles in 1997. Scot appears in King Pictures Treasure Island, and was featured in The Second City’s “The Untitled Second City Project” as well as a successful two year run of the original sketch comedy show The Dickie Bell Twist Dance Party, gracing the stages of the HBO Workspace, The Comedy Store, ImprovOlympic, Bang Theater, and New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.
Currently Teaches Level 1, 4
Shows: The Lampshades
Brandon Sornberger
Brandon Sornberger is originally from serene Upstate New York. He has performed and taught improv in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and now Los Angeles. While at iO Chicago, he performed with the iO Muscial Featuring The Deltones, Bullet Lounge, and Let Them Ho’s Fight. He is happily married and has an affinity for cowboy boots.
Currently Teaching Level 1
Teams: Powerhouse
Miles Stroth
A Chicago native, Miles has been persuing the art of improvisation since 1989 and has been with the iO since 1991. A member of the seminal house team “The Family,” directed by Del Close, Miles had a hand in creating “The Movie,” “The Deconstruction,” “The Armando,” “The Living Room,” “The Check-in Expansion,” “The Horror” and more. Miles paired with Dan Bakkedahl in 2000 to create the first two-person long-form show “Zumpf.” Miles had the grim pleasure of working with Del Close for eight years. Del saw the improv community as a tribe with himself as the “Mojo Man,” Charna Halpern as his “High Priestess” and before his passing in 1999 he named Miles his “Warchief.” Miles has been teaching since 1993, performing weekly since 1993 and can currently be seen in multiple shows at the iO West.
Currently Teaches Level 5B
Shows: The Armando Show
Paul Vaillancourt
Paul Vaillancourt has appeared on such shows as “The Drew Carey Show”, the UPN sitcom “Half & Half”, and the Oxygen Network’s stand out “Girls Behaving Badly”. Paul began his improv career in college and since then has performed all over the country including such notable venues as HBO’s Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Chicago’s iO (where he studied with the immortal Del Close), New York’s UCB Theater, and the ImprovOlympic West here in Los Angeles. Paul has also had success as a writer, co-creating and serving as supervising writer for the MTV hit “The Blame Game” as well as lending his writing talents to a score of other shows for MTV, USA, Oxygen, and AMC. Paul currently teaches improv at the ImprovOlympic West in LA where he lives with his wife Lindsey.
Currently Teaching Level 1
Irene White
Irene White hails from the great state of Texas where she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. She has studied at the Second City in Chicago and IOWest. Her Chicago theatre work includes The All-Female Bonanza at Live Bait Theatre and Chamber Music at the Transient Theatre. Her Los Angeles theatre credits include Carnality, Blue Window, The Women, The Red Coat and her one-woman show Open to the Public. Irene can be seen in lots of commercials and in episodes of Brothers & Sisters, Friends, Will & Grace, and Scrubs. She currently recurs on Carpoolers.
Currently Teaches Level 2
Shows: The Armando Show, Studio City Committee, White Shorts
Jim Woods
Jim performed at IO in Chicago with the long standing house team, “Deep Schwa” before being hired and moving out to Amsterdam to perform with the famed comedy theater, Boom Chicago. He has taught, coached and directed at IO, Boom Chicago, UCB and Comedy Sportz. Jim recently moved to L.A. and currently performs with his Harold Teams “Sweetness” at IO West and “Last Day of School” at UCB.
Currently Teaches Level 2
Teams: Sweetness