Meet The Team

Kat is the owner of Provocation Theatre which operates classes for Berkeley Improv. She was the former director of the Training Center of Finest City Improv for over 5 years. With over 10 years of experience in education and the arts, her dream is to help merge her love of postmodern, experimental, Artaud-inspired theatre with improvisation.

​

Kat completed graduate studies in theatre at UC Santa Cruz with a focus on education and teaching performance in schools. She has studied at Second City LA, Second City Chicago, Finest City Improv, + Dosage.

Arastoo has been an active composer, producer, teacher and performer in the Bay Area for over 15 years and has a degree in Applied Science with an emphasis on Sound Arts.

​

An alum of Berkeley Improv, Arastoo performs improv with The Berkeley Players and Synergy Theater. He has acted for the Discovery Channel ID Network, Lexus, and the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. 

​​

​​

Eisa Al-Shamma (they/he) is a queer and trans mixed Mexican, white, Arabic person with several years of experience in the performing arts. They have training in improv, clown arts, live storytelling, and film-making, working frequently with Queer and BIPOC communities. Eisa also draws on 5 years of experience as a special education teacher, educating groups of students with various learning styles and access needs. They believe that anyone can make poignant theater, no matter their ability or disability, and they carry this foundational belief with them in every class they teach.

Griffen has been an active member of Berkeley Improv since 2018.  He directed the University Humor Outreach Program at the University of Redlands, where he lead improv workshops for children. Griffen has studied under ComedySportz LA and the Upright Citizens Brigade, and currently performs with Synergy Theater.

​

Off stage, Griffen recently completed his MFA in screenwriting at Academy of Art University. His creative writing background inspires him to use improv as a method to weave compelling and hilarious stories that resonate with audiences on an emotional level.

​​

Marcia is a bilingual performer, registered drama therapist, and recent recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission grant. For Marcia, improvisation has been a means of connection, self expression and community. Improv allows you to be authentic even when expressing yourself through a character.

Her love of theater and healing led to pursue her Masters in Drama Therapy at California Institute of Integral Studies. She is also a graduate of iWest Institute in Developmental Transformations, an embodied therapeutic form of improvisation. Currently, she is the assistant teacher with Joya Cory’s Full Spectrum Improvisation and performs with Lucky Dog Theater.

Karen Twelves has over 10 years of experience performing improv in and around the Bay Area. She is one of the founding members of the all-women troupe Chick Flick and a main stage cast member and instructor at All Out Comedy Theater. She also teaches for the GoogleArts Theater program and private clients, and teaches her own workshop series Improv for Gamers locally and at conventions from coast to coast.

Her book Improv for Gamers was published in 2018 with a second edition coming in late 2022. Check it out at improvforgamers.com.

​

Ahran Lee is a 1.5 Korean American multidisciplinary artist, improv actor, and event designer and facilitator based in Berkeley, California. Cultivating interconnectedness and kinship is central to her work as an artist, facilitator, and community organizer.

Ahran loves designing community spaces where she can facilitate collective creativity and vulnerable sharing to alchemize trauma into collective healing. Themes found in Ahran’s creative work range from AAPI women empowerment, raising mental health awareness, to exploring decolonization of oppressive systems.

Ahran wants to be the first generation in her lineage who boldly breaks away from oppressive patterns by creating and occupying space loudly and proudly. Ahran is an energy mover and an ancestral pattern shifter.​

Kasey is a Bay Area native who began his improvisation journey in 2011. He has studied across various theaters, including The Second City Hollywood, The Groundlings, and iO West. His performance style focuses on energy, support, patience, and playfulness.

​

Throughout his experience, he has performed in, directed, hosted, produced, and stage-managed countless shows. He is especially proud of previous jam format shows he helped to create, in which he had a front-row seat to witness so many performers experiment and grow in safe and supportive spaces. He is excited to contribute to the development of improvisers in the Bay Area.

​

Outside of improv, he is a visual artist who earned his degree from UC Berkeley. Additionally, he has a special interest in California’s forests and wildfires.​

Tiffany (she/her) has been in love with the art of improvisational comedy since 2012. She is driven by the spontaneous magic that performers create collaboratively. Tiffany has a masters in education and she brings a psychological perspective to the art of improv.

 

Tiffany has been performing for over ten years through organizations such as ComedySportz, Improv Cincinnati, and All Out Comedy

Bio

​

​