Instructors

Michael J Gellman teaches Master Workshops all over the world. He 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. He was a senior faculty and founding member of the Second City Training Center where he was Program Head and also Director of the NY training Center. Michael was an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago teaching Acting For Directors in the Film Directing department and designed and taught Improvisation and Acting III for the Comedy Studies department. In addition to Second City and Columbia College he 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. He 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.

Tony Rielage is DIF’s Festival Director and the Artistic Director/Head Instructor at Theatre Momentum. He has been performing, directing, and producing improv theatre since 1992, with the past 15 years focused entirely on dramatic/grounded improv. He has trained at iO Theater, the Annoyance Theatre, and the Playground Theater, and founded TM’s predecessor workshop, Workshop-in-Progress. His training style centers around an outside-in approach focused on neurology and psychology, leading to improv about vulnerable human beings acting naturally, bravely, and honestly.

Asaf Ronen is the author of Directing Improv: Show the Way By Getting Out of the Way. He regularly performs, teaches and produces in Austin, and has been the Education Director at The Institution Theater and at ColdTowne Theater. He is a Producer and Education Director of Austin’s annual Out of Bounds Comedy Festival. Asaf has taught and performed improvisation in Canada, Great Britain, Norway and in 30 of these United States with such groups as the B. Iden Payne Award winning Confidence Men (improvised plays in the style of David Mamet) and imp (mostly silent improv). He was producer on Trust Us, This Is All Made Up, a documentary on legendary improvisers TJ & Dave that premiered at Austin’s South by Southwest Festival in 2009 and helped develop the improvised film Days of Delusion with director Scott Myers. In 1999, Asaf founded the improv website, YESand.com of which he was Editor-in-Chief.

Blake Wanger is a Minneapolis, Minnesota based improv performer and teacher with over 24 years of experience. He currently performs regularly with Last Action Movie Improv, Jesters Comedy Improv and Fantastic Voyage Improv. He has been teaching improv since 2011, at Yes and Foods, HUGE Theater, numerous community education programs and independently. Blake is an educator by training, having previously taught elementary and middle school for many years, and currently works as a historical tour guide in St. Paul, MN. With Last Action Movie Improv, Blake has performed at numerous improv festivals around the US and Canada, and taught his "Death in Improv" workshop at several venues in the Twin Cities and at the Spontaneous Combustion improv festival in Atlanta.

Stephanie Kilper (she/her) is an ensemble member with Theatre Momentum in Chicago. Stephanie dances and choreographs throughout the Chicagoland area and enjoys creating work that evokes emotion and curiosity for audiences. She is a member of Outlet Dance Company and dances and choreographs dance performances in the Chicagoland area. Outside of the stage, Stephanie is a dance/movement therapist, licensed and providing services in multiple states in her areas of specialty.

Ben St. John is a product of the Chicago Comedy and Theater scene. Earning his BA in Theater at Columbia College Chicago. He has been performing and teaching for 15 years. Ben has created, directed and produced numerous comedic and dramatic shows at Second City, Laugh Out Loud, Theatre Momentum, First Coast Comedy and Third Space Improv. He currently resides in Jacksonville, Florida and enjoys traveling and playing basketball with other old people.

Roni Alperin, LMFT, RDT/BCT is a psychotherapist and drama therapist in private practice in the Bay Area, CA. He is an Adjunct Professor at the CIIS Drama Therapy program. He is the founder and director of the San Francisco Playback Theater Company and a Therapeutic Spiral psychodrama practitioner. Roni leads Playback Theater training, performances and therapy groups with a focus on treating PTSD and personal and collective trauma.

David Christopher, with over 30 years of improv and sketch comedy experience, is an improv performer, instructor, director, and producer. An acclaimed international touring artist and teacher, David has performed and taught improvisation and unscripted theatre at leading theaters and festivals, and brings his unique approach to improv, blending emotionally-driven, authentic character exploration with artist and audience-challenging interactive formats. David is a founding member and former owner of Miami's home for improv and sketch comedy, and 7-time Best of Miami winner, Just The Funny. While at JTF, David was responsible for creating the improvisation and sketch writing curriculum and education program, where he taught and coached all six levels of improv acting classes, along with both the Harold workshop, narrative improv, hip hop improv, musical improv, and sketch writing classes. He is also the co-creator of The South Florida Improv Jam and serves as the executive producer of the Miami Improv Festival since its inception in 2003.

Debra Schifrin began improvising in the mid-1990s as a founding member of Washington Improv Theater in D.C. She currently performs in multiple improv troupes in San Francisco. She co-founded Phasers on Stun (Improvised Star Trek) 2014, and Flash Mob Musical (musical improv) in 2015. She also performs with Ragtag, which brings different genres to stage each show, including Sci-fi, Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, Twilight Zone, fantasy, and epic sagas, to name just a few. She is in a duo, Snafu, with Michael Astrauskas, and a trio, 3’s Company. She teaches improv at Stanford, and in 2017 she created an Applied Improv leadership course she teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business and for corporate clients. Since 2007 she has performed in San Francisco improv theaters BATS, Leela, Endgames, All our Comedy, and Made up Theater, and performed in many improv festivals, including SF Improv Festival, LA improv festival, West Coast Musical Improv Festival, New York Musical Improv Festival (virtual), Orange County Improv Festival, Wasatch, Countdown, and Dramatic Improv Festival.

Megan Sherrod is an improviser and coach based in New York, where she performs with Armory house team True Facts. Before moving to New York City, Megan was an active performer, teacher, and director in Austin's improv scene, particularly at the Hideout Theatre. She was also a founding member of the award-winning musical improv team Rook, which performed at festivals such as Out of Bounds, the West Coast Musical Improv Festival, and the Dallas Comedy Festival. Megan has taught workshops across the U.S. and internationally, from Oklahoma to New Zealand. Whether she’s leaning into the silly or diving into grounded genre work, Megan brings heart, humor, and a deep love of collaborative storytelling to every project.

Michalis Panagiotakis is an improviser, actor, performer, director, and improv trainer based in Crete, Greece. He is the founder and artistic director of Heraklion Improv Theater (HIT), the first school of improvisational theater in Crete, and co-founder of OFF BOOK CULTURE, a non-profit organization dedicated to improvisation and contemporary performing arts. His practice combines performance, directing, teaching, scenography, and lighting design, with a strong focus on creating immersive stage environments and dynamic ensemble experiences. He has extensive international experience as a performer, facilitator, and director, with work presented in Greece, Romania, the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the USA, and Austria. His teaching centers on presence, spontaneity, connection, listening, group awareness, storytelling, and fearless creation-guiding performers to develop confidence, connection, and responsiveness both on stage and in collaborative settings. He works with ensembles, small groups, and solo performers, adapting workshops for artistic, educational, and professional contexts.

Eric Nepom is an educator, producer, performer, and all around nerd. From community performances to educational classes and even large corporate training workshops and science communication programs, Eric has spent over 30 years touring the planet. Loving that improvisational theatre allows a person to express emotions, characters and feelings without the confines of a script or set pieces; Eric brings the skills he has acquired and created to the world to help anybody in every situation. He regularly acts and directs in professional stage, television and film productions. Catch him in shows like “BABE Presents: I Love Musicals,” and the extremely nerdy “USS IMPROVISE, A Parody Star Trek Musical,” or the newly premiered & award winning feature film “Somewhere Confidential.

Michael J. Astrauskas is an improvisor based in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States, and has been improvising since 2013 and teaching since 2016. He has studied especially at Endgames Improv and Camp Improv Utopia, as well as at dozens of festivals and with many teachers around the world. He loves to take photos, and can be seen capturing moments at Bay Area festivals and shows, as well as officially for Leela Improv in San Francisco. Michael loves to share his joy of improv, and that has led to production of shows and the San Francisco Improv Festival, as well as teaching. His philosophy is that improv can be for fun, a tool for life, or any combination, focusing on connecting with the audience, your scene partner, and yourself.

Collin Miller has taught, directed, and facilitated improv for over 15 years, training at UCB, iO, the Annoyance, and Second City. A working producer, director, and classroom educator, he draws on sociology and dramaturgy to push scenes toward genuine human behavior.

Maria Kolovou is an improviser, theatre-maker, and educator whose work explores how story emerges through presence, embodiment, and relational dynamics. She began her artistic career in Greece, training in theatre and dramaturgy and creating devised performances that combined physical storytelling with thematic depth. Her play Someone Light Up the Moon received First Prize in Greece’s National Emerging Playwrights Competition in 2007, and her work includes multiple devised productions and EU-funded artistic projects focused on youth and participatory theatre.

Drawing from devised theatre, Action Theater, and Viewpoints, Maria develops approaches that prioritize physical impulse, subtext, and emergent dramaturgy. Her work explores how meaning reveals itself gradually through attention, repetition, and embodied presence.

Now based in Miami, she performs and teaches internationally, while also working as a Senior Instructional Designer at the University of Miami, where she bridges artistic practice with learning design and pedagogy.

Chara Kanta is a multifaceted performer with expertise in acting, improvisational theater, and stagecraft. She also has experience in directing, editing, dance, painting, and SFX makeup, transformations so striking that even her own mother wouldn’t recognize her. Since 2008, she has been actively engaged in theater, participating in a wide range of workshops and performances in both classical and contemporary productions. Her artistic focus revolves around Improv Theater, immersive theater and psychodrama. Her training and performance experience include collaborations with the Municipal Theater of Rhodes, the National Theater of Rhodes, the Drama School of the Rhodes Scholarship Foundation (Emmanouil and Mary Stamatiou), the theater workshops of the advanced drama school NOTOS, and the Heraklion Improv Theater, where she remains as co-owner and teacher. Beyond her work on stage, Chara has also made an impact as an educator. She has traveled to Romania, England, the Netherlands, Greece, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Nigeria and beyond to teach workshops at festivals and within independent theater ensembles, sharing her expertise in improvisation and performance techniques.

Estevan J. (Chuy) Zarate is an actor/director/coach from San Antonio TX that has been improvising for audiences for 36 years. He has lived most of his life in Improv Mecca Austin TX, USA. Chuy was one of the driving forces of improv in the early 2000s in Austin. He helped make it the viable improv comedy scene that it is today. Current and previous improv troupes include The Hideout Theatre's house troupe: The Big Bash, Merlinworks faculty troupe: The Known Wizards, An Evening With...With Tyler and Chuy feat. Tosin, duos: Pizarati w/ Ellen Pizarek, ChuTopp w/ Topping Haggerty, RD: We Go For It! w/Rachel Austin, Dorsey/Zárate w/ Neil Dorsey and The Project with his 22 year old son Antonio. Past mainstay Austin and San Antonio troupes include: The Oxymorons, Your Dad's Friends, Ray Prewitt's 4th Grade Class, ¡Zarzamora! and Monk's Night Out. He also directed and performed with sketch troupes The Latino Comedy Project and The Mexcentrics. He has a very eclectic tool belt to reach into that allows him to teach all styles and formats. If there is a scenario to be performed in, he has probably performed it. With specialties in improv singing, grounded/character-driven scenework and team building, Chuy has coached hundreds of kids, teens, students and adults for years to multiple successes. 

Ben is a teacher and performer from Chicago, now based out of New Zealand, where he founded and runs Improv Connection theatre, which as trained hundreds of students in his unique hybrid method. He started his training at The Second City in 1994, trained and performed at Improv Olympic (now iO) and The Playground in the early 2000s, and at UCB in NYC shortly thereafter. He now performs with long form improv duo Doom & Bloom which was a finalist in the World Wide Comedy awards, short form group The Improvisors, and online duo show Gen V. He's hosted workshops throughout Australia and New Zealand. Ben's passion lies in discovering the hidden genius of each player, and watching their magic journeys unfold, for both players and audiences alike.

Matt Elwell has spent the last 25 years gallivanting across the Chicago and U.S. improv scenes. He has spent most of his artistic career with ComedySportz where he played, taught, directed, and did all sorts of leaderly things. He taught at Second City and performed with Second City Theatricals and GayCo. He also performed at places like iO, the Playground, WNEP, and in Theatre Momentum’s own Porch Play.

Jill is the Co‑founder and Artistic Director of Leela Improv Theatre, now on two coasts (San Francisco and Raleigh). For over 20 years, she has been an arts leader, entrepreneur, trainer, and community builder across corporate training, mental health, family services, education, and the performing arts. She designed Leela’s holistic 7‑level improv curriculum and oversees all elements of the corporate training program, including client communication, curriculum design, casting and hiring teaching artists, and faculty training. A licensed psychotherapist, drama therapist, and play therapist, Jill brings deep clinical and group‑facilitation expertise to her work. She has facilitated groups for individuals struggling with social anxiety and shyness, taught foster parenting classes, and designed corporate programs that use improvised role play as “rehearsal for life.” Her corporate clients include Adobe, Fidelity, Clorox, IBM, Meta/Facebook, Google, Levi Strauss & Co., LinkedIn, McKinsey & Company, Coinbase, Walmart, Netflix, and YouTube (among others). As an artistic director, Jill has produced, directed, and performed in hundreds of improv shows and original formats, pushing the boundaries of long‑form improvisation, therapeutic performance, and the intersection of improv, consent, and embodiment. She has served on boards and produced for festivals such as The San Francisco Improv Festival and Femprovisor Fest, SF’s feminist improv festival. Jill holds a BFA in Theatre/Acting from the University of Florida and an MA in Counseling Psychology, Drama Therapy from CIIS, and has trained with leading teachers from UCB, Second City, iO, Annoyance, Magnet Theater, and more.

Francis Jasson Z. Villanueva is a Senior High School teacher and College Instructor from Manila, Philippines, teaching Physics, Earth Science, Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction, College Ethics, Science, Technology, and Society, Purposive Communication, and Professional Education Subjects. As an improv practitioner, he began improvising in 1995, when he fell in love with the art form, and later joined the Bibliotheque Improvisation Group at the Philippine Normal University. He put art on hold, but later came back to it after a life-changing accident. He joined One and a Half Men in 2016, later graduated with the pioneering batch of Third World Improv, Is It Wednesday Yet?, and was part of the five-man group Improvijason, composed of all members named Jason. He later founded Crammers Collective (the first youth improv group in Manila), Schrodinger's Act (The First High School Improv Club in the Philippines), The La Ronde Project, Graze Box, and Dumagli. During the pandemic, he has attended training with Theatre Momentum, Queen City Comedy, Theatre 99, and Hoopla. As a way of giving back and keeping it together during the pandemic, he has put together safe online play spaces at the Virtual Improv Jam because there is always space in a hug.