I already did the amazing bio in our first interview. She's back! Our first interview was so great, and I felt like I had so many more questions, we had to do more. The follow up is at least as good. I tried to be more excited in this one. Chicago's most enthusiastic cheerleader, Tara DeFrancisco.

Despite having a hard to pronounce name with way too many consonants, Jessie Shternshus is a thoroughly charming go-getter who has created an improv dynamo in Jacksonville, Florida.  As the founder and owner of The IMPROV EFFECT, Jessie weds her lifelong passion for and expertise in applied improvisation with the fast paced demands of the corporate world. In her classes and workshops she helps people become better listeners, team players, leaders, and communicators. Her physically engaging and playful workshops are relevant to all fields of life; participants of her workshops vary from college professors to engineers and from web developers to lawyers. Jessie gained her formal education at USF and NYU. Throughout her career she has worked with Fortune 500 companies and companies such as CBS, Paramount Pictures, MTV and Sesame Workshop. She also facilitates communication skills workshops and speaks at conferences worldwide.

Frank Caeti is an alumnus of The Second City Chicago. One half of the acclaimed duo FrankenMatt. Performs consistently at Second City Hollywood, iO West, and Upright Citizens Brigade LA. Series Regular on MADtv. Face and/or voice have appeared in over 40 commercials. Guest star roles on NCIS, Key and Peele, and Reno 911

This is as close as I've gotten to interviewing someone who "needs no introduction..." but if you aren't THAT into improv... the list of people's she's trained and worked with is a who's who of the funniest actors on TV and in movies right now. But if you're not part of the improv world, you need to know that Charna worked with Del Close, who trained many of the Saturday Night Live folks everyone knows, and together they created long form improv... before which improv was mainly exercises for actors (a la Viola Spolin) and short form games like you see on Who's Line Is It Anyway. Charna also founded iO in Chicago, which is one of the major improv theatres in the world, and which has expanded with another branch in Los Angeles, CA. When Lorne Michaels is looking for new SNL cast members, one place he turns is to Charna... and there's a great story in this podcast about her and Chris Farley.

Jet Eveleth- the woman, the myth, the legend. Just kidding. Not really. Jet Eveleth is a member of the Harold team The Reckoning at the iO Theater and performs in the show Adsit and Eveleth and Jet and Paul. She has appeared in The Barb Lameter Show and The Armando Diaz Experience, and has understudied at The Second City. She toured in the two-woman sketch show I Live Next Door To Horses, winner of the 2008 Del Award for Best Scripted Show. She has performed at the Andy Kaufman Awards and was listed as New City magazine’s "Top 50 Players" in 2010 and 2012. She studied clown and physical theater with Paola Coletto and Philippe Gaulier. She has taught at the Comedy Studies Program at Columbia College, the Second City Conservatory, the iO Theater, and is the former artistic director of the Chicago Improv Festival. She currently resides in Los Angeles.

Is it possible for great improv to spring up independently of Chicago, New York and L.A.? Yes. This Greg Tavares, one of the founders ofTheatre 99 in Charleston SC, author of Improv For Everyone, and proof along with Brandy Sullivan, Timmy Finch, and others, that there are many ways to approach improv and still make it awesome to do and watch.

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The Free Press called Tara DeFrancisco “The Funniest Person In Chicago”. She won Top 25 Funniest Women in Curve Magazine.  Tara started in stand up but switched to improv! Tara teaches improv and sketch-writing classes at iO, Second City, and ComedySportz, and coaches a Harold team at the iO theatre as well. She performs for the Second City as an understudy for the resident stages, and at CSz several times a week. Her iO team Chaos Theory performs Saturday nights. She is now in four LasVegasDotCom commercials airing nationally (one of them is embedded below). And Tara is the only person so far that I absolutely had to interview twice right away. I don’t know why. Maybe cuz we’re both from Ohio.

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