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For the past 3 decades, Liz has coached, directed and performed improv. In 1995, her improv troupe performed the first-ever improv show at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. For 3 years, Liz was iO’s Training Center Director. She has coached many teams, including Valhalla, Judgement Free Tailor Shop, and Mission Improvable, founders of the Westside Comedy Theater in Los Angeles.
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In 1999, 2000 & 2001 Liz won iO Theater’s Coach of the Year Award, renamed the Liz Allen Excellence in Teaching Award.
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In 2004, Liz directed a main stage revue for The Second City at the Flamingo Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The Vegas Theater Hub awarded Liz as Guest Speaker of the Year and Best Workshop of the Year 2015.
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Liz was honored to coach The Commune, the improv ensemble in Mike Birbiglia’s 2016 feature film Don’t Think Twice.
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Before discovering improv, Liz worked for ten years as a consulting engineer. After receiving a BS Mechanical Engineering from NC State, Liz worked with United Engineers-Raytheon. In 1990, after moving to Chicago for a pharmaceutical construction project with Abbott Laboratories, Liz attended a show at The Second City, got bit by improv, eventually shifted careers.
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Visit www.lizallenimprov.com for more information on Liz.
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Kevin Reome has been studying improv for over 30 years, starting first at The Second City Training Center in Chicago and then also at iO Chicago with Del Close. He is a founding member of the long-form improv team “Inside Vladimir” which performed as a house team at iO and The Playground Theater. Kevin starred in The Real, Real World with the Upright Citizens Brigade at the Del Close Theater in the 90’s.
Between facilitating improv students and corporate groups improv training has taken Reome to the University of Michigan, Detroit, Atlanta, Cincinnati, San Diego, Baltimore, Mexico City and many others including the Western Michigan University football team and the Detroit Tigers. The Chicago theater groups and corporate entities Kevin has trained are too numerous to mention. He currently teaches at the Second City Training Center in Chicago as a faculty member and has since 2005. In 2014 he taught in Osaka, Japan for The Second City. Kevin has a B.A. in English and a teaching degree from Western Michigan University.
Dee Ryan is an Adjunct Professor of Improvisation and Comedy at Northwestern University in the department of Radio,Televison and Film. She’s an alumna of The Second City having written and performed three shows on their ETC stage. She toured nationally and internationally with The Reduced Shakespeare Company in “The Millennium Musical - Abridged” performing at such venues as, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC and the Jerusalem Theater Festival in Israel. She performed with “Modern Problems of Science” at The Adelaide Comedy Festival in Australia. In 2012, she directed a reduced “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at an English immersion camp in Beijing, China. She has worked as a writer at Disney Animated Studios and has written and performed two one-person shows “DeeConstruction” and “Broadguess.” This past fall she performed in “Misery Loves Company” an improvised horror-comedy with Second City alum Joe Liss. “Louder Than a Mom” her bi-monthly female forward storytelling show is now in its eleventh year at Martrys in Chicago. Dee has also worked as a corporate speaking coach and speech writer. She continues to appear in her students' short films and has appeared on TV in “The United States of Tara” and “The Office” as Michael Scott’s improv partner.
Pants is a West Michigan-based improv troupe with one leg in Kalamazoo and the other in Grand Rapids. Pants delivers on-the-fly comedy that seamlessly combines the absurd and the eclectic. For a complete improv comedy experience, Pants has you covered from the waist down.
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