George Francois is the longtime pianist at Sunday Night Improv. I first met him at an audition we were holding for piano-players, and he was one of three who tried out for the jam. Although he had done jazz improvitsations, he had never done a comedy improv show but seemed unconcerned. When he played, KI saw why. It was magic. He brought a skill and passion to the playing that moved me, and which led my father – who attended almost every one of our weekly shows during the last decade of his life – to assert that "George is terrific! The best you ever had." He – and most audience members who heard him – were immediately blown away by the ten-minute mini-concert George would offer before the show. Mixing classical music with Broadway show tunes, he would play with an intensity rarely seen at a comedy show. He was a quick study, too: at his request, I gave him audio tapes of soundtrack music (he was unfamiliar with a lot of pop culture) and he effortlessly added them to his repdetoire. He was also eager to learn about improv, and – to the great delight of my students (and of me), he attended my Monday night improv classes, playing underscore for the scenes. We all benefitted from having him there, and he said that he learned a lot, too: "You can play too much," he said to me once. "Many times, you can do more  by playing less."

Choose one: Tom Soter (1) is seen every week as the host of the satirical Weak Previews movie review show, reviewing movies that were never made; (2) has been an improv teacher since 1987; (3) has been an editor at Habitat magazine, since 1982; (4) is the author of two books, Bond and Beyond: 007 and Other Special Agents and Investigating Couples: An Analysis of The Thin Man, The Avengers, and The X-Files ; (5) is six-foot-seven and built like Hulk Hogan.

If you chose No. 5, then you obviously have never seen Sunday Night Improv, the long-running comedy jam at the Soter/Lee Blackbox Theater of which Soter is the producer, emcee, and most regular performer. As for Choices 1-4, they're all true ? which means that Tom Soter leads a very busy life.

The five-foot-nine, spectacled comic was born on October 23, 1956 in New York City. He began improvising 12 years later when he and his friends and family made audio tape "radio shows" without scripts (the first was called The Lethal Camera; later programs included Planet of the Nuns and West that Wasn't.) He soon began appearing in improvised Super-8 action movies, created by pal ChristianDoherty (the most bizarre was You Made Me Hate Myself). By 1981, he was producing a cable TV access comedy show called Videosyncracies. 

WHERE WERE YOU BORN? I was born in Madison, Wisconsin on Easter Sunday in the mid 1970s.  I grew up in Madison until the age of 13 then moved to Phoenix, AZ.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED IN IMPROV? A friend was taking classes with Kim Schultz Improv, and it sounded like so much fun.  After being envious for several months, I realized I could take classes, too.

WHO WERE YOUR ACTING/IMPROV INFLUENCES, ROLE MODELS? When I go see Improv, I go see Baby Wants Candy, the Improvised Shakespeare Company, and TJ and Dave.

WHAT DO YOU GET OUT OF PERFORMING? Always a rush.  And a ton of satisfaction from those magical moments of building something with my scene partners.  And once I got a Tom Carrozza CD.

I was born in Tacoma, Washington in the 80s and grew up in Bremerton and Yelm (If these names mean nothing, just know they are within an hour or so of Seattle). I went to the University of Montana in Missoula (BA in Vocal Performance) and was the youngest graduate in over 40 years! I moved to NYC in 2004 to sing, act, dance, and most recently, improvise. 

In March of 2010, I was taking a commercial class and I asked the castingdirector, “What can I do to set myself apart? I feel like my type is a dime a dozen in this business!” She said, “Well, you’re kind of funny, take an improv class.” Wow, little did I know what I was getting myself into. I started studying at the PIT (People's Improv Theater) right away, got completely hooked, and just (as in, this month) finished my Level 4 class.  Our final class show is May 8 at 8pm, come check it out!

I have also studied at the Magnet Theater with Mark Grenier and Armando Diaz, and my teachers at the PIT were Tom Ridgely, Joe Schiappa, Nate Starkey, Scott Eckert, and Larry Rosen & Noel Katz (musical improv).  They have all been so awesome, giving me different points of view and a strong foundation for Long Form technique. I started playing with Tom Soter and Sunday Night Improv in March and have been having an absolute blast! I love that Tom provides the opportunity to play with real pros from all over town, stretching our short form and musical improv muscles.

When I turned forty, I realized I had spent the twenty years since college using my talents to make other people look good. Along the way folks kept telling me that I was funny and that I should be the one up onstage. So I thought, "Why not?" I tried stand-up and hated it. I ran into the same problem of remembering and repeating material. Improv proved to be the happiest place for an undisciplined ham like me. No blocking to remember and the only mistake you can make is to block or deny what is going on with your scene partner. Besides being great fun it's a great study in cooperation. You have to agree with what's offered and, as a result, can find yourself saying and doing (and being) things you'd otherwise never have imagined.

My hometown is Lynbrook, New York which is located on the south shore of Long Island. I was born on July 27th, 1956, the same year Rock & Roll burst on the scene. By all reports my arrival was much quieter. I'm the youngest of five kids. My Dad was a cop and my Mom had her hands full raising us. When her hands got emptier she became a real estate broker. We all grew up in a house on Lyon Place where my Mother still lives today. 

I was born in London and grew up in Hong Kong. It's where I got my charming accent!

I first got involved in improv when a couple of friends wanted to audition for Sunday Night Improv and  dragged me along! Once I was at the auditions, I couldn't believe how fun and freeing it was, and it reminded me of the acting training I'd gotten at school at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre. 

I get a massive adrenaline rush from performing and love the need to think quickly on my feet (because normally I am forced to think on my hands).

My improv resume starts and ends with Sunday Night Improv, mainly because it's the best improv group around and once I made it here, there was no need to bottom-feed. Acting wise, my resume is a little more extensive. I got started on the stages of Hong Kong being Anne of Green Gables, went to acting conservatory in New York City, did a couple of plays here (Alan Ball's Five Women Wearing the Same Dress and Joelle Arqueros' Sex, Relationships and Sometimes Love), as well as a couple of commercials and films, most recently Christian Doherty's The Place, to be released in 2011.

My improv teachers are Clive Anderson, from watching way too much Whose Line is it Anyway? and Tom Soter!

What I get from Sunday Night Improv is the feeling that I'm super awkward.  And I have a lot of fun! Those two things often work hand in hand.

My childhood was slightly abnormal but incredible. I was born and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida. I grew up in show business...not the usual show business but professional ice skating shows. My mom and step-dad decided to start their own company and produce professional ice skating shows. Thus, Rosstyn Ice Shows and Rink Designs was born.  My summers were spent performing in the shows at various state fairs, theme parks, and corporate events.   Along the way, I learned some pretty amazing things: skating choreography,  costume design, and all about the entertainment business from the ground up and in all sorts of  angles.  I would say this is how I decided that show biz is the ONLY way of life for me.   If my parents can do it so can I.  Their shows become bigger and better every year, which has been truly inspiring to me to start with a dream and follow it through.

A few years ago, Kelsey Grammer produced a television show called World Cup Comedy, and I was selected to represent New York. That was cool because it was a series of actual shows, and I was picked from around 250 improvisers in the city. It was exciting, but challenging, since all the auditions were in front of a live audience.

Performing improv feeds into other outlets of mine such as stand-up and acting. I've been able to meet and get to know amazing people. Improvisers are usually very cool, quick-minded, and fun to be around. They also usually more team-oriented than some performance artists so that's fun as well. Improv has helped me learn to be in the present more and learn to say yes to life and people more. I've also, I think, learned to be more accepting of others. You learn to embrace what's special and interesting about people when you improvise and I like to think that has had an influence with my regular life.

I was born in Memphis and grew up on a farm just outside the city. I worked in advertising and got into improv originally just because it looked fun and would help me at work. You have to think on your feet a lot in the advertising industry.  Then it evolved as I actively started acting and working as a stand-up.

Actingwise, I've always been a fan of Mickey Rourke, Russel Crowe, and the usuals (De Niro, Pacino, Nicholson).  From a pure comedic acting standpoint, I love to watch Paul Rudd, that guy can do it all in terms of playing a straight man or knocking it out of the park. 

"Money in the Bank." That's what improviser Matthew Ostrom of the Chainsaw Boys dubbed Rosemary Hyziak after she had, in his words, "saved my ass" in countless scenes. Others have had the same experience. "She's the most reliable improviser I know," says Tom Soter, the producer and emcee of Sunday Night Improv. "She takes her time helping to create a scene and builds on what you give her. "She is remarkable."

Who is Rosemary Hyziak? Here, in her own words, is her story:

I was born in Buffalo, NY. I remember one of my first creative performance impulses was to insist I be a Spanish Senorita for Halloween.  I wanted to do a flamenco dance in a flouncy dress.  I was enrolled in dancing school, but when I went to visit the dance studio with my grandmother, I saw the teacher correcting the student's posture with a long white stick.  The teacher would tap the student's legs.  For some reason I thought the teacher would beat me with the stick, so I refused to go to my first class.  A creative avenue closed.

NO JUDGMENTS

By BEN CARTWRIGHT

Christopher Hoyle seems measured and in control on stage – yet he can be remarkably impulsive. Like the time he got six people to jump off a metaphorical cliff with him. It was 1985 and the New York Improv Squad had just lost its performing gig. Standing on the street after hearing the news, Hoyle, a founding member of the troupe, said, “Why don’t we just perform right here?”

The rest of the group scoffed at the idea – it was dark, it was cold, it was dangerous – but Hoyle began anyway. Strumming on his guitar, he began taking suggestions from passersby. “We should back him up,” said Tom Soter, another squad member. They did – and to everyone’s great amazement, except, perhaps, Hoyle’s – a small crowd had formed. By evening’s end, the group had collected over $100 in contributions from passersby. “That’s what I love about improvisation,” says Hoyle, a regular performer at the Sunday Night Improv comedy jam at 236 West 78th Street. “You can do anything if you try.”

A PIECE OF
CAKE

By SINJIN SMYTHE

It was a dramatic moment. With only a few minutes left in the second night of the 1994 New York Improv Festival, the annual improv competition, out strode Larry Bell, captain of the second-place team improvisation group Bright Lights Big Witty. They had been neck-and-neck with two other troupes, and the question was, Could they win? A bold choice was needed. After taking a suggestion from the audience, Bell, announced with gusto, “Ladies and gentlemen, we now present, The Three-Minute Musical!” And then, in a flash, the four members of Bright Lights – Bell, Allison Castillo, Beth Littleford, and Denny Siegel - presented an entire musical, with a beginning, middle, and end, a romance, a couple of songs, and plot complications – in just three minutes. The crowd went wild.

FROM CHICAGO WITH LAUGHS
 By ED FLICKINGER

He’s the man with the big eyes and the slightly off-the-wall characters. He’s the co-host of the talk show (I'm Tom, I'm Tom, and it's) Tom for Movies, plays the doctor called Flickinger, and appeared as the sorcerer who rode a Macy’s escalator in the middle of what purported to be a Shakespeare play.

He is Tom Carrozza, an improv veteran well-known to audiences at the Sunday Night Improv Comedy Jam. “There are a million different ways to do improv,” he said recently. “Everyone has his own slant on it and I think mine is unique. I like to emphasize emotions and psychology over logic and predictability.”

Carrozza came to New York City in 1978 from the city where modern improv was created, Chicago. He had studied at the Second City improv company when he was 17, appearing in a children’s show, and then decided to come to the Big Apple when he failed to be accepted at the colleges of his choice.