Magnet Theater

Instructor: Armando Diaz

Armando is widely regarded as one of the best improv teachers in New York City and beyond. His list of teaching credits is a long one: the ImprovOlympic Theater, Victory Gardens Theater, The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, NYU and Michael Howard Studios. He has trained dozens of actors who have performed or written for Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Mad TV, and The Daily Show.

A Chicago native, Armando studied improv under Del Close at the ImprovOlympic, Mick Napier at the Annoyance, and graduated from the Second City Conservatory. He performed in and helped create one of the most popular improvised longforms in Chicago, "The Armando Diaz Experience...." For the last decade, "the Armando" has been performed weekly in Chicago, and is now taught and performed in many other cities including Los Angeles and New York.

In addition to writing and producing short films, Armando wrote sketches for the show Upright Citizens Brigade on Comedy Central, and has performed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Instructor: David Razowsky

David Razowsky is the respected teacher and former artistic director of the Second City Los Angeles, and, as an actor, has written and performed in ten Second City Chicago revues. During his tenure as a performer at Second City he worked with Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Jeff Garlin, and Amy Sedaris, among others. David directed Second City Chicago Mainstage’s No, Seriously, We’re All Gonna Die, Second City LA’s, Encino Evil, The Second City Untitled Project, The Second City Detroit's acclaimed 19th Nervous Breakdown, and The Second City National Touring Company. He directed two of Amsterdam’s Boom Chicago theatre’s productions-- RockStars, and their critically acclaimed Live at the Leidseplein - Your Privacy is Our Business. David is credited with creating Boom’s signature live on-stage video production. He is a member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and performed in their sold-out run The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He is a co-founder of The Annoyance Theatre, and has written for The Simpsons Comic and The Simpsons nationally syndicated Sunday comic strip. David has appeared on Spin City, Roseanne, The Young and the Restless and Late Night with David Letterman as the voice of Albert Brook’s parrot. David and his improv partner, Carrie Clifford, perform Razowsky and Clifford in improv fests around the globe.

Instructor: Ed Herbstman

Ed has been teaching performance improvisation and sketch comedy writing for over 15 years. He grew up in Chicago and after graduating from Northwestern University, he began working at The Second City as a member of their National Touring Company. Also while in Chicago, Ed studied under Del Close at the ImprovOlympic Theater (now iO Chicago) where he was also a performer and instructor.

After performing the improvised movie at the Aspen Comedy Festival with his Chicago group, Bitter Noah, he moved to LA where he helped start the ImprovOlympic West. In LA, Ed performed in a handful of really great stage shows, and starred in a bunch of really crappy pilots, both of which he enjoyed very much.

Ed was a contributing writer on season two of HBOs Da Ali G Show. For the past six years he has been creating award-winning online content sponsored by brands such as P&G, Lincoln, Ford, Cadbury, LOreal, and Sun Life Financial. You can see some of his work at Dandelion.com.

Ed was also a Police Officer for 3 years, assigned to the 70th Precinct in Flatbush Brooklyn where he once arrested a gun-toting drug dealer for kidnapping a prostitute.

In 2005 he became a co-founder of Magnet Theater where he currently performs and teaches improvisation and comedy writing.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and kids (and dog).

Instructor: Melanie Hoopes

Melanie Hoopes has toured the country with four different solo shows that examined the Holocaust, immigration, evangelism and most recently, eating disorders. Her solo show, Weight, based on over fifty interviews with women weighing 70 to 1000 pounds, was featured at the New York International Fringe Festival. She holds a B.S. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and a Master's degree at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU focusing on performance, education and food studies. While at NYU, she worked with the Creative Arts Team as an Actor/Teacher devising and facilitating theater-based workshops on violence prevention and HIV awareness to public high school students in NYC. Melanie's most recent project is Laurie Stanton's Sound Diet, a radio show taped live at the Magnet. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Instructor: Rachel Hamilton

Rachel is an actor, improviser, teacher, writer and director living in New York City. Rachel has a degree in Theater from Northwestern University, where she began her love affair with Improv. Having been cast in the company of Second City, Chicago, Rachel took the suggestion of one of her mentors, Mr. Martin deMaat and gave teaching a try. Fifteen years later she is still at it, and loving it more and more with each passing year. Rachel considers it is an honor to introduce people to this magical art form and believes strongly that the basic tenets of Improv also make for a rich and wonderful approach to life. Come to Magnet and play with us!

Teaching Credits: Second City, Chicago, Second City LA, Syracuse University, Michael Howard Studios, Magnet Theater as well as numerous corporate training gigs.

Some Recent Performance Credits Include: Magnet Theater: Tiny Spectacular, Sleep Over, UCB; Assscat, Hamiltonia (Rachel’s one-woman show), NBC: 30 Rock, The Conan O’Brien Show, Film; Spring Breakdown, I Hate Valentines Day, Internet; Onion Video, and the upcoming, Chaos Theory.