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Kelly Leonard (born 1966) is an author, public speaker and theater producer. He is the son of radio personality Roy Leonard.
LeRoy Stewart Leonard was an American radio personality, best known for hosting WGN's midday radio show from Chicago for 31 years and for his appearances on WGN-TV's news and Christmas specials. He also hosted Family Classics after Frazier Thomas died.
In 1988, Leonard started working in the kitchen of The Second City, a Chicago comedy theater. [1] He later became the executive vice president and president of theatricals and oversaw and lead the expansion of the comedy troupe in the 1990s and 2000s. [1] Leonard was also responsible for hiring Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler, and Steve Carell to perform there. [1] [2]
The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise and historically first on-going improvisational theater troupe, continually based in Chicago. It also has training programs and live theatres in Toronto and Los Angeles. The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959, and has since become one of the most influential and prolific comedy theatres in the world.
Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey is an American actress, comedian, writer, producer, and playwright. She is best known for her work on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (1997–2006) and for creating the acclaimed comedy series 30 Rock (2006–2013) and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2019). Fey is also known for her work in film, with starring roles in Baby Mama (2008), Date Night (2010), Megamind (2010), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), Sisters (2015), Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016), and Wine Country (2019).
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. He is best known for hosting the satirical Comedy Central program The Colbert Report from 2005 to 2014 and the CBS talk program The Late Show with Stephen Colbert beginning in September 2015.
In 2015, he stepped down from the day-to-day management of The Second City. [1]
In 2017, Leonard became the "executive director of insights and applied improvisation", overseeing a partnership with the Booth School of Business (University of Chicago) to study behavioral science through the lens of improvisation.
Applied improvisation is the application of improvisational methods in various fields like consulting, facilitating, teaching, coaching, researching, generating or evolving ideas and designs, theatrical training and playing, medical and therapeutic settings or in social work.
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1890, the school is located on a 217-acre campus in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, near Lake Michigan. The University of Chicago holds top-ten positions in various national and international rankings.
In 2015, Leonard's first book "Yes And", co-written with Tom Yorton, was published by Harper Collins.
HarperCollins Publishers L.L.C. is one of the world's largest publishing companies and is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987, together with UK publishing company William Collins, Sons, acquired in 1990.
He also hosts the podcast, "Getting to Yes, And" for Second City Works, The Second City's business-to-business subsidiary, and WGN Radio.
Business-to-business is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another. This typically occurs when:
WGN, 720 kHz, is a commercial AM radio station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group. The station's studios are located on the 18th floor of 303 East Wacker Drive in the Chicago Loop, while its transmitter is located in Elk Grove Village. Since around 1990, WGN has maintained a news/talk format. WGN does not broadcast in HD.
He is a noted authority in the creative application of improvisation and comedy to business and has spoken at The Aspen Ideas Festival, TEDxBroadway and Chicago Ideas Week as well as for companies like Microsoft, Coca-Cola and DDB Worldwide.
Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, action, story, and characters are created collaboratively by the players as the improvisation unfolds in present time, without use of an already prepared, written script.
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation, in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties, across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation.
Harold Allen Ramis was an American actor, director, writer, and comedian. His best-known film acting roles were as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989) and Russell Ziskey in Stripes (1981); he also co-wrote those films. As a director, his films include the comedies Caddyshack (1980), National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), Groundhog Day (1993), and Analyze This (1999). Ramis was the original head writer of the television series SCTV, on which he also performed, as well as a co-writer of Groundhog Day and National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). The final film that he wrote, produced, directed, and acted in was Year One (2009).
Pat Sajak is an American television personality, former weatherman, and talk show host, best known as the host of the American television game show Wheel of Fortune.
Viola Spolin was a theatre academic, educator and acting coach. She is considered an important innovator in 20th century American theater for creating directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life. These acting exercises she later called Theater Games and formed the first body of work that enabled other directors and actors to create improvisational theater. Her book Improvisation for the Theater, which published these techniques, includes her philosophy and her teaching and coaching methods, and is considered the "bible of improvisational theater". Spolin's contributions were seminal to the improvisational theater movement in the U.S. She is considered to be the mother of Improvisational theater. Her work has influenced American theater, television and film by providing new tools and techniques that are now used by actors, directors and writers.
Wendy A. MacLeod is an American playwright.
Jeffrey Todd Garlin is an American comedian, actor, producer, director, and writer. He is widely known for playing Jeff Greene on the HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mort Meyers on Arrested Development for Fox and Netflix and Murray Goldberg, the patriarch of the titular family in the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs.
David Patrick Kelly is an American actor and musician who has appeared in numerous films and television series. He is best known for his role as Luther, the main antagonist in the cult film The Warriors (1979). Kelly is also known for his collaborations with Spike Lee, in the films Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), and Chi-Raq (2015), and with David Lynch, appearing in Wild at Heart (1990) as well as Twin Peaks (1990–91) and its 2017 revival.
Cipha Sounds is an American radio and television personality of Puerto Rican descent. He is mostly known for his work as a DJ, a VJ for MTV and as a comedian.
iO, or iO Chicago, is an improv theater and training center in central Chicago, with a former branch in Los Angeles called iO West and in Raleigh, North Carolina called iO South. The theater teaches and hosts performances of improvisational comedy. It was founded in 1981 by Del Close and Charna Halpern. The theater has many notable alumni, including Amy Poehler and Stephen Colbert.
ImprovBoston is a nonprofit improvisational theater, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers shows five nights per week at its theater in Central Square and training programs in improvisation, stand-up comedy and sketchwriting.
Mick Napier is an American director and improvisational theater teacher. He is the founder and artistic director of the Annoyance Theatre and a director at The Second City. He has directed Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Horatio Sanz, Nia Vardalos, Andy Richter, Jeff Garlin, and David Sedaris.
Paul Silverberg, better known as Paul Sills, was an American director and improvisation teacher, and the original director of Chicago's The Second City.
Aidan Mackenzy Bryant is an American actress and comedian. She is best known as a cast member on the late-night variety series Saturday Night Live, beginning in season 38. For her work on the series, she has been nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards, including for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Other work includes a starring role on the sitcom Shrill and a voice role on Danger & Eggs.
"Yes, and...", also referred to as "Yes, and..." thinking is a rule-of-thumb in improvisational comedy that suggests that a participant should accept what another participant has stated ("yes") and then expand on that line of thinking ("and"). It is also used in business and other organizations as a principle that improves the effectiveness of the brainstorming process, fosters effective communication, and encourages the free sharing of ideas.
Under the Gun Theater is a theater company located in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by Angie McMahon and Kevin Mullaney, Under the Gun is a sketch and improvisational comedy theater which opened in Chicago's Lake View community in 2014. The theater was known for its interactive show Comedy Against Humanity, which ended due to legal concerns, based on the game Cards Against Humanity. In September 2017 Under the Gun Theater announced it would partner with the Chicago stand-up comedy institution Lincoln Lodge to focus on producing stand-up comedy shows.
Dennis Banks better known by his stage name Felonious Munk is an Ethiopian-American comedian, writer, actor, playwright, and social commentator. He has worked as a frequent contributor on the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and is the creator of a YouTube series Stop It B.
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