Tom Booker
Tom Booker has studied improvisation and sketch at The Second City Training Center and with legendary improv guru Del Close at Chicago’s ImprovOlympic. He is a founding member of Chicago’s Annoyance Theatre and has been a director and instructor at The Second City Training Center in Los Angeles.
Tom co-wrote and co-directed (with producing partner Jon Kean) the feature film Kill The Man starring Luke Wilson, which premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. Through Theatre-A-Go-Go!, the L.A. theater company he founded, Tom wrote and directed “Patty, Patty, BANG! BANG! – The Patty Hearst Musical!” and “Up With Puberty!” (co-written with Whose Line Is It Anyway?’s musical director, Laura Hall), and a stage production of Valley Of The Dolls (which starred Kate Flannery of The Office) at New York’s Circle In The Square Theater.
Tom performed in The Annoyance Theatre’s Off-Broadway production of “The Real Live Brady Bunch” at the world famous Village Gate Theatre and at the Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles.
He has appeared in several television shows, a few movies and nearly a hundred commercials.
He’s a really nice guy. You should meet him.
Asaf Ronen
ASAF RONEN is the creator and Editor-in-Chief of YESand.com, a website devoted to improvisation, and is the author of Directing Improv: Show the Way By Getting Out of the Way. He has been involved in improv since 1990, starting in college and working with Theatresports, ComedySportz and directing his own longform improv troupe, Hiatus, where he helped create original formats.
Currently, he resides in Austin, TX where he is the Marketing Director of the Austin Improv Collective. He is a producer on Trust Us, This Is All Made Up, a documentary on legendary improvisers TJ & Dave that had its world premiere this year at Austin’s South by Southwest Festival.
Asaf has taught improvisation in Canada, Great Britain, Norway and in twenty-two of The United States. His directing credits include the all-girl group goga, the improvised comic book adventure show Ka-Baam!!, and Death in the City, a dramatic longform improv piece, at the NY Fringe Festival.
Asaf has taught throughout NYC’s public school system as a resident artist through LEAP and New Horizons and as part of Weist-Barron’s ACTeen. In 2000, Asaf worked with Cirque du Soleil as a scout for improvisational talent.