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Christopher Meister
Christopher Meister is a Chicago-based actor, working with some of the city’s finest theatres, including the Goodman, Victory Gardens, Lookingglass, and the world-famous Second City. Chris’s film/TV credits include Slice, The Life of David Gale, Chicago Fire, Empire, The Chi, and currently as ASA Tom Lake on NBC’s Chicago P.D. He also plays Jerry in the upcoming feature Alex/October. Chris is also an award-winning filmmaker with films playing at Telluride, Sundance, Slamdance, Hamptons, Austin, and SXSW. Chris has been a proud CHIRP DJ since 2012 and loves you very much.
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Jenn Gibbons
Jenn Gibbons - Jenn Gibbons is a rower, cyclist and coach who likes starboard side, handstands, running marathons, eating hot wings (not at the same time)
and kicking cancer’s butt–one rower at a time. She is also the founder of Recovery on Water (ROW) a rowing team for patients and survivors of breast cancer. In the summer of 2012, Jenn rowed the 1,500 mile perimeter of Lake Michigan raising over $150,000 to buy boats and equipment for ROW.
She’s been featured Fitness Magazine, Marie Claire Magazine, Make It Better Magazine, Gapers Block, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, CNN, WGN,WCIU, Chicago Public Radio, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun Times and covered in media outlets across the country via the Associated Press. -
avery r. young
Interdisciplinary artist and educator avery r. young is a 3Arts Awardee and one of four executives for The Floating Museum. His poetry and prose are featured in several anthologies and periodicals including; Berkeley Poetry Review 49, Poetry Magazine and photographer Cecil McDonald Jr’s In The Company of Black. He is the featured vocalist on flouist Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening (FPE Records) and is currently touring with her Black Earth Ensemble and his funk/soul band de deacon board. Young’s latest full length recording tubman. (FPE Records) is the soundtrack to his first collection of poems, neckbone: visual verses (Northwestern University Press).
WEBSITE: www.averyryoung.com
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/AveryRYoung
INSTAGRAM: @avery_r_young
TWITTER: @beblk
TUMBLR: @beblk
PERFORMANCE LINK: https://vimeo.com/155610644 -
Tamale Sepp
Tamale is a stand up comedian and interdisciplinary performer who travels internationally with her fierce eyebrows. Voted runner-up for Chicago’s Best Stand Up Comedian for The Reader, Tamale is a regular at The Laugh Factory, Zanies Comedy Clubs, and countless local and national showcases. She’s been featured in national Comedy festivals, such as the Chicago Women’s Funny Festival and international Festivals like the Dublin Lesbian Arts Festival, where she was the International Guest of Honor. A cast member of the groundbreaking R.E.A.C.H. (Risky Eclectic Artist Comedy Hour) at Second City, Tamale is an alumni of the Second City Conservatory Program. She’s also a graduate of I.O. Chicago and Annoyance Theater and created a unique improvised show incorporating the creation, presentation, and performer interpretation of tiny hats called Tiny Hat Time. She's well known in Chicago for producing the interdisciplinary comedic show, BrassChucklesComedy.
She travels the world far and wide as a comedian and gender performer, co-producing the internationally touring gender performance group, the Windy City Blenders.
She loves performing burlesque and drag, fire dancing and belly dancing, and often incorporates them into her comedy. A regular in the storytelling scene, she is currently working on another one woman show, based on her experience of finding a two-way mirror in a bathroom, documenting it in a video that went viral, and the subsequent change in the law around privacy violation that followed.
Check her out at www.TamaleRocks.com and around town as she rides (often in costumes) with her pals in Bikes and Mics!
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Rosamund Lannin
The product of nine years in San Francisco and eight years in St. Paul, Rosamund Lannin is pleasantly surprised to have lived in Chicago for over a decade. During that time, she has edited Gapers Block (rest in peace), performed stories around the city, and consumed many carne asada burritos. These days she co-hosts lady live lit show Miss Spoken, edits Story Club Magazine, and tries to write essays that make you feel things, or at the very least laugh.
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Arish Singh
The comedy of Arish Singh, with it’s unique fusion of absurdist humor and political commentary, has
been praised by many, and described by many more, as “totally not my thing.”Singh has performed with Hasan Minhaj (The Daily Show), Kamau W. Bell (Totally Biased), Barry Rothbart and Chris Thayer. He is the comedy coordinator for the Witching Hour arts festival in Iowa City, and co-produces Chicago’s Solid (Hil)arity, a storytelling and comedy show that fundraises for activist groups and labor unions.
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David Franklin
David is a law professor at DePaul and former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He makes regular appearances on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight. While studying at Yale, he was invited to perform with its improv group, the Purple Crayon. He once shook the late Vaclav Havel by one hand while the late Strom Thurmond shook him by the other. They were not late at the time. Sometimes he runs into short celebrities (Jackie Mason, Julianne Moore, Jon Stewart) or very tall ones (entire professional basketball teams), but has very little experience running into medium-sized celebrities. He has been known to stare into the middle distance.