Improv at Sonoma Laughfest, October 21, 2016
Episode Seven airs:
December 12 at 1:00am (dec. 13)
December 13 at midnight (dec. 14)
December 14 at 11:00pm
December 15 at 10:00pm
December 16 at 1:00am (dec. 17)
December 17 at midnight (dec. 17)
Hosted by Scott Tanner Jones
Scott Tanner Jones has specialized in the filmmaking over the years for projects of varying degrees including documentary and narrative, switching back and forth between comedy and drama. He made his acting debut as the lead in the short film cushion which premiered at the 2005 Slamdance Film Festival. Scott’s short drama Plainview went on to play 30 plus film festivals across the globe where it garnered a handful of awards and was mentioned in various publications such as MovieMaker magazine during its year-long run. His most recent projects include the film Take Care, a feature-length drama which premiered at the Twin Cities Film Festival in October ‘12, and a foray in stand-up comedy. Scott lives in Los Angeles, California, on the east side where they do L.A. right.
WHITE WOMEN – improv from Los Angeles
All-black, all-male comedy group, White Women, is the illest, flyest, most ballerific group of comedians that has EVER LIVED. If you sleep on us, we’ll backflip on your mattress.
Ronnie hails from the great state of South Carolina. He is an actor\writer\improviser\musician and stand-up comedian. He would never actually say any of that to you if you asked him. The most you would get out of him is a meek “I do (insert single basic word to describe something).” Ronnie has done a commercial or two. And he has appeared on shows such as Key and Peele and Who Let The Dogs Out? a show on the Hallmark Channel. He played a Drill Sergeant. You can see him doing improv on Harold Night\Matinees at Upright Citizens Brigade and also at Tuesday Night Thunder, the longest running indie improv show in L.A. – a show he co-host with other members of his improv team, Thunderstruck. Also you can catch him around town having a blast doing stuff with his all-black, all-male improv\sketch team, White Women – a team that has performed on the stages of UCB, Second City, i.O. West as well as many others, with sketches featured on the front page of Funny or Die. Ronnie doesn’t have a single career focus because he feels it’s limiting. But the one thing he wants for himself in life is to “Just be happy.” He spent a lot of his adult life not being happy and not doing the things he wanted to do. Hopefully that chapter of his life is over. Ronnie hopes one day he’ll be good enough to be an improv teacher (That seriously is as far as his career scope realistically goes). Shout out to Jill Donnelly for believing in me early on!
Majeed Nami is an actor/writer living in Los Angeles. You can find him performing at The Nerdist Theater with the house team, Saga, and Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) with his improv/sketch team, White Women. He has appeared in commercial campaigns for AT&T, Coke-Zero, Time Warner Cable, and Best Buy. He can be seen on a variety of networks such as, IFC’s Comedy Bang! Bang!, Amazon’s Hand of God, CBS’s Supergirl, Adult Swim, and numerous videos for Funny Or Die and BuzzFeed.
Zeke is a performer/writer from the hard streets of Rhinebeck, New York, an idyllic small town where he endured hardship every day as the son of a loving college professor and one of 3.5 black kids at his high school. He attended Williams College in Massachusetts, where he was a decathlete and captain of the varsity track team. After making fun of theater kids for a couple of years, he decided to become one and join the improv team, which is essentially the plot of “High School Musical.” After graduating college in 2011, Zeke moved to LA and started taking classes at Upright Citizens Brigade in an effort to become the next Will Smith. It’s going well. You can catch him around town performing with his indie teams, as well as breaking barriers (reinforcing stereotypes) with his all-black, all-male comedy group, White Women, whose sketches have been featured on the Huffington Post and Worldstar Hip Hop. You can catch them doing Zeke is also very pumped to be a part of Harold Night and the illustrious Cardinal Redbird. Time to go sit on his throne, as the prince of LA.
Ify is a California native, born and raised in Los Angeles. Growing up, Ify had always had a love for comedy, and as with all comedians in SoCal, he joined the Comedy Sportz High School league and learned the art of short form improv. After he graduated, he joined Cherry Spitz Comedy, one of the longest running improv groups in the OC, for seven years. Ify eventually started taking classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles in 2012 and took his comedy to a higher level. You can catch him performing at the theatre in Seinfeld the Purge or with White Women (All Black, none wack). He’s been on TV shows like Key and Peele and Comedy Bang! Bang!, while also doing dramatic work like in the short film Spinners. Oh, he also does stand up, too.
Carl was born in the great state of Mississippi and raised in the mean streets of West L.A. He has been performing improv and sketch comedy for 5 years and has loved every minute of it. He was a cast member of the 2013 CBS Diversity Sketch Showcase and performed in Amsterdam with Boom Chicago. Some TV credits include Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Comedy Bang! Bang!, TV Land’s The Soul Man, and Disney’s Girl Meets World. You can currently catch him performing with his improv/sketch group White Women or crashing somebody’s improv set at the various theatres around town. GEAUX SAINTS!
Lamar Woods is a comedic writer/performer hailing from Atlanta, GA. Lamar made a name for himself writing for his Youtube channel, Northside Comedy, accumulating over 1.4 million views online. Lamar has also been hired to write and produce online videos for content creators such as Funny or Die, Comedy Central, and All Def Digital. You also can see Lamar performing around town with his all black, all male, improv/sketch team called White Women. When Lamar is not making people laugh, you can find him freestyling raps in his car by himself for long periods of time.
Ishmel Sahid
F*CKABLE – improv from Los Angeles
F*ckable is a 3 person team of performers from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. In their shoes, they use recurring themes and emotional discoveries to craft a web of comedic heights. But also the call themselves F*ckable, so you can’t take them too seriously.
Mel Cowan began performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in 2006, and has studied under Ian Roberts, Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, John Ross Bowie, Seth Morris, Sean Conroy and Owen Burke. He performs regularly with the long-running team Sentimental Lady and has performed in a whole mess of other shows, including thirty:30, Smug Rock Nation, Sketch Cram, The Twitter Show, Rough Cut: The Improvised Movie and The Faculty. He has been a teacher at UCB since 2012. He has appeared in Reno 911!, Parks and Recreation, Key and Peele, NTSF:SD:SUV, and a bunch of really silly commercials. Through the magic of editing, he is the one person who dies in the beloved children’s film Meet Dave, starring Eddie Murphy. He is a Texas native and a graduate from the University of Texas’ film program.
Will Hines is an actor and writer who has performed at UCBT since November 2000. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he performers with The Smokes. He’s been on the TV shows Broad City, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Inside Amy Schumer and he also proudly played the character “Fat Professor” on CollegeHumor’s hit web series Very Mary-Kate. He’s written and starred in many sketch shows at the UCB in his day, including “Small Men” (co-written and co-starring Neil Casey) which won Time Out NY’s Best in Sketch.
Jonny Svarzbein is a writer and performer who was born in El Paso, TX. After graduating from the University of Arizona with a degree in Music Education and as a member of the improv/sketch group Comedy Corner, Jonny began studying at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in NYC and LA where he has studied under Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts, Matt Besser and pretty much every teacher at UCBT-LA. UCB credits include the Harold teams 8 Babies, Landlord and Mister Town City, the House Sketch team Bonafide, the 3 person team Fuckable, Tournament of Nerds (9-time champ), Rough Cut: The Improvised Movie and hosting The Cagematch every Wednesday night. Jonny is also a member of the sketch group The Guys from The Internet, whose sketches have been featured on VH1, College Humor, San Francisco Sketchfest, Break.com, and Funny or Die. He also co-hosts Tuesday Night Thunder, the longest running indie improv show in LA.
episode one
episode two
episode three
episode four
episode five
episode six
episode eight
episode nine
episode 10
episode 11
episode 12
episode 13
episode 14