AND Retreat Faculty & Staff


Meet the expert award-winning instructors of the AND Summer Retreat. Each instructor holds small size classes for the week-long intensive retreat.

AND Summer Retreat Faculty

“I knew I'd get a lot from Jeffrey but had no idea the quality of the other teachers. Wenndy made physiology FUN, Gary's focus was awesome, Gellman's imagination, or I should say his ability to bring out our imaginations and combine them, was symphonic, and Kenny's comfort in being in his body made me more comfortable in mine. Jeffrey's knowledge and ability to teach is brilliant.”

- P. Straub, Alexandria, VA

Read more student testimonials

Gary Austin

Gary Austin is the founder and original director of The Groundlings, Los Angeles’ premier character-based improv company, and was a performing member of San Francisco’s famed Committee, where he worked for many years with Del Close. Continuing to perform and direct, Gary now conducts in-demand workshops in Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC and Seattle, as well as guest-instruction at The Second City in Chicago and NY. Students include Helen Hunt, Lisa Kudrow, Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman), Laraine Newman, Steve Guttenberg, Julia Sweeney, Jennifer Grey, Helen Slater, Keith David, Lindsay Crouse, Lillias White, Maureen McGovern, Jack Soo, Donna Summer, Loretta DeVine, the late Phil Hartman, and the late Pat Morita.

Ali Farahnakian studied extensively with Charna Halpern and Del Close in the 1990s at ImprovOlympic and was a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade, with whom he helped create the critically acclaimed show, “Virtual Reality.” At The Second City, he was part of the Jeff-nominated show The Revelation Will Not Be Televised (directed by Jeff Richmond) for which he also received a Jeff nomination for Best Actor in a Revue. His one-man show Word of Mouth was an official selection of the US Comedy Arts Festival 2001 in Aspen. He was a writer on Saturday Night Live during its 25th anniversary season and received a Writers Guild Award. In 2002 along with Armando Diaz he co-founded The Peoples Improv Theater (aka The PIT) in New York City.

Michael Gellman began his career as a member of Dudley Riggs's influential comedy theatre. From there he began his longtime association with Second City. As a member of the resident company, under the direction of Del Close, he helped create and performed in several editions of the mainstage show. In 1980, he began directing for Second City's various stages. As an artistic associate for the Organic Theatre, he developed and staged A Few Simple Truths and The Seed Shows, both developed improvisationally. Michael was founder and artistic director of the Windy City Workshop and Theatre-Works, as well as co-artistic director for Wavelength. He is currently a senior faculty member at the Second City and Victory Gardens Training Centers in Chicago.

Wenndy MacKenzie appeared on Broadway in Rock n' Roll (The First 5000 Years), Platinum, and Oliver! She was the cast vocal coach for Disney Channel's Adventures in Wonderland, the TV series Fame and Kids Incorporated, and the Broadway production of Dreamgirls. Wenndy is vocal coach to many notable performers including Melissa Manchester, Lillias White, James Taylor, Irene Cara, Diahann Carroll and Lindsay Crouse. She does over 100 vocal impressions, from pop artists to movie stars. She created cartoon and character voices for Hallmark's Crayola Bunny Series as well as cartoon voices for The Archies, Uncle Croc's Block, and the Groovy Ghoulies. Her characters, impressions and parodies can be heard nationally on the Premier Radio Network.

Carol Fox Prescott has worked in the theater for more than thirty years. As a student, she was tutored by such masters as Robert Lewis, Morris Carnovsky, Charles Nelson Reilly and Michael Moriarty. She has played featured and leading roles in New York, on national tours and in regional theaters throughout the country. Roles include Tzeitel in Fiddler On The Roof, Catherine in Pippin, Kate in The Taming Of The Shrew, and the title role in Hedda Gabler. Carol stood by for Ellen Burstyn in the Broadway play Sacrilege. She has directed award-winning productions of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in L.A. and Mamet's A Life in the Theater in Boulder and Denver, Colorado, as well as a critically acclaimed production of Ibsen's A Doll's House in New York.

David Razowsky is the Artistic Director of the Second City Training Center in Los Angeles. He was a cast member of ten Second City revues where he created material with Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris and Jeff Garlin, among countless other performers. He is an adjunct faculty member for the California State University and directed their mainstage production, Beeswax, a performance of original monologues created through improvisation by CSU students. He is a co-founder of Chicago's Annoyance Theatre.

Larry Rosen is the director of Drop Six, voted Second City’s Best of the Fest at the 2006 Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. He has been teaching improv and sketch comedy in New York and Los Angeles since 1994, most recently through the Second City Training Center, Artistic New Directions and his own ImproDynamics workshop. Larry has performed with numerous improv groups at such L.A. venues as The Comedy Store and The Improvisation, and was a founding member of L.A.’s first touring all-song improv troupe, Impromptune. He has produced, performed in and directed regional, cabaret, and children’s theater productions throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico since 1978, and recently completed a term as Artistic New Directions’ Artistic Director.

Jeffrey Sweet, realized while writing Something Wonderful Right Away, his oral history of Second City, that the same improv techniques used to develop Second City’s classic scenes could be adapted into techniques for writing. Applying these principles to his own work, he has won many awards and citations (Writers Guild of America, Outer Critics Circle, Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, American Theatre Critics Association, Joseph Jefferson, Best Plays) and nominations (Emmy, John Gassner). His book on technique, The Dramatist's Toolkit, is in wide use in colleges and professional schools, and he is one of the co-directors of the Actors Studio's Writers-Directors Lab. Developed with improv techniques, his play With and Without played in Chicago (at the Victory Gardens Theatre), Houston and New York.

Guest Faculty

Noel Katz spends most of his time writing musical comedies. Twelve have been produced, most recently Our Wedding: The Musical, which was actually his wedding to Joy Dewing (and got full page coverage in The New York Times). He’s also had four productions in Great Britain. Evenings of his songs have been presented at Don’t Tell Mama, The Triad and The Donnell Library. Noel spends much of his time improvising, having done the scores for several Second City revues. He accompanies the long-running Sunday Night Improv Jam and Chicago City Limits. Over the years he’s played for improv groups such as The Chainsaw Boys, Centralia, Burn Manhattan, Upright Citizens Brigade and with the then-undiscovered Robin Williams at Off the Wall in Los Angeles.

Hilary Chaplain has been seen at the Festival International de Pallasses in Andorra, Carcajada 2005 in Buenos Aires, the Filo Festival in Londrina, Brazil and the Hong Kong International Faust Festival. A founding member of the New York Goofs, she has appeared with them at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and at the Wolf Trap with Bob of Sesame Street. She’s been an adjunct professor of clowning at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts since 1994, and has been entertaining children in NYC hospitals as "Nurse Nice" of the Big Apple Circus Hospital Clown Program since 1987. Hilary was an original cast member in Bill Irwin's Largely/New York, and appeared on Broadway in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Tempest, directed by George C. Wolfe. She played a featured role named Hilary in the film Forrest Gump.

Kenny Raskin was the original “Lefou” in Disney's Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. Before coming to Broadway, Kenny starred as the lead clown Everyman in Cirque du Soleil's universally acclaimed Nouvelle Experience. Before joining Cirque du Soleil, Kenny performed his one man show The Audition in theatres, universities and festivals throughout the United States, and on television and in variety theatres in Europe. Kenny has also served as an adjunct faculty member in the theatre departments of NYU, Boston University, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and Emory University, where he also acted and directed. He has taught numerous workshops in clowning and physical comedy with residencies and acting retreats all across the United States.

AND Retreat Staff

Kristine Niven (Director) is the Co-Artistic Director of Artistic New Directions. She founded the Summer Improv Retreat in 1995. Kristine recently completed a term as the administrative director of the Second City Training Center in New York, for which she continues to serve as a consultant.

Charles R. Niven (Administrator) attended the American Musical & Dramatic Academy in New York and has performed as an actor off-Broadway, and regionally in Rochester & Ithaca, New York. He attended the 2nd Summer Improv Retreat and has served as Retreat Administrator for the past seven years.