Alumni
Luke Arthur
Luke was born on Tatooine a long time ago. During his teenage years, he and his brother Bo were notorious bootleggers who flattened hills and straightened curves for the Georgia Department of Transportation. He then wrote a short biography of Jesus that remains popular to this day.
Colleen Berg
Colleen’s thighs are muscular, but her soul is gentle. It is the fusion of these two parts of herself that have led her to her passions in life: teaching social skills to middle schoolers, running through the wilderness with her dog, eating too many raw carrots and/or radishes on a daily basis, and improvising silliness with friends (since 2011).
Sean Bossinger
Sean Bossinger is a Monkey Business Institute DJ. The killer combination of a strong, smooth voice, good sense of comic timing, real-life work as a tech savvy computer boss, improv class training and experience performing with a King of the House team make for mad DJ skills. Sean is a conscientious team player with a heart of gold.
Benson Gardner
Benson Gardner is just the sort of person you’d expect to be a video/film creator, government communicator, one-time public radio journalist, Splu Urtaf co-founder, aspiring historian, happy father, husband and meditator. Except for the cutlass.
Kathy Groat
Kathy directs our musical improv shows. Since she’s joined MBI, she’s been responsible for bringing the Broadway vibes to soaring new heights in our Music Department shows. Anytime she gets on a stage, it’s crystal clear that she’s enjoying herself––and that means her audience members do, too. Kathy loves the connection and joy that music plus improv brings. She sings in a choir, plays the trombone, and can dance an Irish jig––and if you ask nicely, she’ll do all three at once.
Linda Hedenblad
Linda is a graduate of the first Monkey Business class. In fact, for a while, taking classes from Brad Knight and Jason Stephens was her part-time career. When Linda isn’t performing, she is using comedy to keep people awake while teaching professional ethics.
Jennifer Javornik
Having been raised on formulaic 70s sitcoms, our resident Canadian lives by two mantras: “Always have your next party and your next vacation planned.”
Claire Kannapell
As our “Jill of All Trades,” Claire both performs on stage and provides piano accompaniment for our musical shows––and only on rare occasion does both at the same time. She plays bass in the indie rock band “Woodrow,” a classic jazz quartet, and the neo-soul group called “Bad Mustard.” She loves being surprised by scene partners, and is both introverted and capable of instituting a fierce side tackle.
Joe Molloy
Joe is a true connoisseur of the art of comedy. You’ll see him not only in our improv shows, but also as a comedic actor, on the stand-up stage, and in sketch comedy shows. He displays the art of full commitment. He makes smart, deliberate choices on stage, and fearlessly embodies his character choices and rides them as far as they will go. He also has some pretty great hair.
Scott Montague
Scott Montague is a Monkey Business Institute DJ. A genuine, sweet guy who truly cares about people's feelings, does good without needing to take credit for it, serves as a volunteer fire-fighter, and loves to watch his kids play sports, he is a valued member of our team. You can catch him outside of the DJ booth when he improvises with his team at our Tuesday night King of the House shows.
Sean Moore
Sean Moore is an accomplished improviser and stand-up comic, for which he won Madison’s Funniest Comic competition in 2010. He is well known for his physical comedy and firm handshake.
David Rodriguez
David dabbles in the arts, which means cooking, photography and ― since 2007 ― making you laugh. In his free time, David likes to cook gourmet four-course meals for his friends or anyone who will pay him. Then he takes pictures of the food (see “arts” above).
Ari Salinger
After being kicked out of the Shaolin Temple, Ari decided he had no choice but to cut his teeth on stage. He once played under the direction of Irving R. Feldman (deceased). If Ari was a dog, he’d be a small one. He enjoys sweets and coffee and his family and coffee and science and coffee.
Matt Sloan
Matt is the co-creator of Chad Vader and the voice of Darth Vader for various video games and commercials. He can be seen on the web in “Beer & Board Games” and “Welcome to the Basement” and on stage with the Are We Delicious? ensemble. He collects old records and has cats.
John Steeno
John Steeno cannot be contained by any walls, especially the fourth one. John is one of our most respected teachers and a skilled actor and writer with a passion for sketch writing which he has shared with many Monkey Business students. His improv style is at turns bitingly sarcastic and disarmingly sincere, emotionally resonant and ridiculous, often electrifying and always truthful. He knows a lot about superheroes, football, Pokemon, and hugs, and loves the long form style of our Monkey Business Improv Lab shows. He is also a traitor who can't be trusted not to move to a different state.
Aaron Yonda
Along with co-creating the Chad Vader series (120+ million views), Aaron created a gaming channel on YouTube called GameSocietyFilms with 5 million views in 6 months. Watch Aaron and his friends get drunk and play board games online at Blame Society Films or see everything he gets up to at aaronyonda.com