William Hall is an American actor, director, trainer and mask maker in San Francisco, California. He is the editor of The Playbook, Improv Games for Performers.[1]
Hall first became involved in acting when he took a drama class while attending Maggie L. Walker High School in Richmond, Virginia. He went on to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from Boston University, where he was classmates with Geena Davis. After graduation, Hall came to San Francisco to pursue theater.
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.
Gregory Everett Proops is an American actor, stand-up comedian, voice artist and television host. He is widely known for his work as an improvisational comedian on the U.K. and U.S. versions of Whose Line Is It Anyway? He also performed on Drew Carey's Green Screen Show and voiced the title character on the animated children's show Bob the Builder from 2005 to 2009.
Harold is a structure used in longform improvisational theatre that is performed by improv troupes and teams across the world. In the Harold structure, characters and themes are introduced and then recur in a series of connected scenes.
Spontaneous Broadway is an advanced long-form improvised performance, based on audience suggestions. The audience typically submits titles of songs that have never been written, and the performers choose suggestions to create songs, the audience votes through acclamation on their favorite song, which is then used as the core of a brand new Broadway musical.
Friday Nite Improvs, or Friday Night Improvs (FNI), was a long-running weekly improvisational comedy show staged on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The show functioned as an improv jam, performed by improv actors who don't normally work together. FNI was unique in that, in addition to the audience's providing improv suggestions, the performers are all pulled from volunteers in the audience. FNI ended in 2014. A student improv group, Ruckus, has succeeded FNI as a resident improve group on the University of Pittsburgh's campus.
The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a major nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, that offers the public both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school.
Jeffrey Bryan Davis is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his work as a recurring performer on the improv comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway? Since July 2016, he has starred as the Goblin Hero Boneweevil on the (formerly) Seeso and VRV Direct original production HarmonQuest.
BATS Improv is a non-profit improvisational theatre company in San Francisco. Founded in 1986, their unique style of acting-based improvisational theatre is well known in improv circles around the world. BATS is the largest improvisational theatre company and school in Northern California.
Jeffrey Weissman is an American actor. He has appeared in dozens of motion pictures and TV shows, most notably as George McFly in Back to the Future Part II and III and as Teddy Conway in Pale Rider. He has guest starred spots on Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Max Headroom, Dallas, The Man Show, and with Dick Van Dyke on Diagnosis: Murder and as Screech's Guru on Saved by the Bell.
Nelson Ascencio is a Cuban-American actor and comedian. Ascencio is most notable for his membership in the recurring cast of comedians on sketch comedy series MADtv and for playing Flavius in The Hunger Games film series.
Erik Marcisak, is an American writer, sketch comedy producer, actor and VIP customer of David Gagnon taxi, based in Charlottetown, PEI. Erik Marcisak was named one of Backstage's Top Ten "Comedy Best Bets" in 2005 for producing the controversial sketch comedy show Saturday Night Rewritten, which used the previous night's Saturday Night Live as a creative jumping-off point for an entirely new sketch show that was written, rehearsed, and performed within 8 hours the next day. Saturday Night Rewritten ran in New York City from 2003-2006.
Milton "Mel" Stewart was an American character actor, television director, and musician who appeared in numerous films and television shows from the 1960s to the 1990s. He is best known for playing Henry Jefferson on All in the Family and for playing section chief Billy Melrose on the television series Scarecrow and Mrs. King. Stewart is sometimes credited as Melvin Stewart or Mel Stuart.
Jerry Shigekazu Tondo is a Japanese American voice actor known for providing the voice of the character "Chien-Po" in the animated film Mulan. Other titles Tondo has contributed to include Gung Ho, The Secret Saturdays and Mulan II.
Un-Scripted Theater Company® is an improvisational theater company in San Francisco, California. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs many kinds of improv formats, such as comedy, mystery, drama, adventure, and musicals, each presented in 4 to 6 week runs each season, each with its own Director, format, and vision. Un-Scripted specializes in narrative and genre-based "single-story" improvised theater.
Fratelli Bologna is a business theater company based in San Francisco.
The Lobby is an improvisational comedy group based in Southern California. Unlike many improv groups, which are composed of many members who perform on a rotating basis, The Lobby is a small, close-knit group. The audience gets to know each of the players and feel they are part of the group. The Lobby also irregularly puts up a podcast, which further allows their audience to connect with the players.
Denny Delk is an American actor and voice actor. He is best known for providing the voice of Murray in the Monkey Island series as well as a range of voices in LucasArts games.
Whose Line Is It Anyway? is an improvisational comedy television show in the United States, an adaptation of the British show of the same name. It aired on ABC and ABC Family from August 5, 1998, to December 15, 2007, hosted by Drew Carey. A revival of the show, hosted by Aisha Tyler, began airing on The CW on July 16, 2013.
Cole Stratton is an American actor, comedian, podcaster, writer and producer, best known as one of the Co-Founders of SF Sketchfest, the San Francisco Comedy Festival and the co-host of the Pop My Culture Podcast.
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