Members

Summar Elguindy was born in Missassauga, Canada on a hobby farm. After a fox ate her dearly beloved pet chick, her family moved to Melbourne, Florida where she learned how to swim like a fish. Summar holds a BA in both Psychology and Theatre from Eckerd College where she learned how to dress people in spandex and pass it off for theatre. After losing herself, finding herself, and losing herself again, Summar moved to Connecticut to work for Hartford Stage as an education apprentice. She is currently a freelance teaching artist in and around Hartford, CT. Her most recent work includes stage managing Beauty and the Beast for Hartford Children’s Theatre. Summar can usually be found working out of Jojo’s café in Downtown Hartford or taking over the world with her puppy, Penny.

Joe Leonardo was born in 2227, attended the University of Mississippi, and is a divorcé. In 2266, Joe was posted as chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise under Captain James T. Kirk. Leonardo and Kirk are good friends, even “brotherly”. The passionate, sometimes cantankerous Leonardo frequently argues with Kirk’s other confidante, science officer Spock, and occasionally is bigoted toward Spock’s Vulcan heritage. Leonardo often plays the role of Kirk’s conscience, offering a counterpoint to Spock’s logic. Leonardo is suspicious of technology, especially the transporter. As a physician, he prefers less intrusive treatment and believes in the body’s innate recuperative powers. Joe met all of the members of Sea Tea in the Hartford Stage long form Harold class and the rest is history…

Greg Ludovici operates on several levels of genius. He excels at crazy computer stuff, chess, guessing games, driving Vespas, rattling off Connecticut facts, and microwaving vegetarian meat substitutes. All of this makes him sound like a geek but he’s actually quite awesome. He is also an actor and has worked with the Hartford Children’s Theatre, Downtown Cabaret Theatre, and many other stages. He most recently played Gaston in Beauty in the Beast, but he’s not that scary. If you need to know anything else about Greg just buy Julia a beer and she’ll tell you everything.

Vladimir John Perez a.k.a. Vlad the Improv-er, is an actor born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Vacillating between New York, Connecticut, and Los Angeles, Vlad has worked as a Location Scout, Location Assistant, and Production Assistant on a variety of movies and television shows, including Flight of the Conchords, Fringe, Fighting, Duplicity, and Bored to Death on HBO.   The other members of Sea Tea are very impressed that he has an IMDB page and that he is 17% more popular this week than last week.  His Improv training started at Play On Acting Studio, then Hartford Stage, and currently the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, with many workshops and classes between them all over Connecticut and New York City.  In his free time he is a member of the Hip Hop duo Loop Stranglers, is working on his reel, and is attempting to use improv to cure cancer.

Julia Pistell is a writer and worker bee living in downtown Hartford, CT. She holds a Masters Degree in Nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars, as well as a Bachelors in English from Skidmore College, where she sang, studied, met Greg, and was president of the AIDS Benefit. She has had lots of jobs all over the world, including but not limited to: a hairdresser’s in Atonsu, Ghana; a preschool and university in Dongying, China; a mobile bookstore in Manhattan; a dogwalking collective in Harlem; a library in the South Bronx; a brewery, a publishing house, a florist, The Mark Twain Museum… the list is endless. In every setting, her focus has been learning from and supporting the community. All of these things enrich and inspire her writing, and hopefully her improv, and she hopes to do many more weird things in the future.

Dan Russell is an East Hartford native and lifelong Nutmegger with a BA in Political Science from UConn. He’s currently working on an MS in Management from Rensselaer at Hartford, one course at a time. Past job descriptions include, but are not limited to: corn picker, Chinese fast food scooper, doughnutmonger, Shoot-Out-The-Star operator on the midway, academic journal alphabetizer and grocery cashier. After taking an introductory improv class at Play On Acting Studio, Dan went on to take improv workshops around CT and Hartford Stage Education’s “Flying Blind” II, III and “Harold Who?” courses. Currently, Dan lives with his girlfriend in Farmington, does internet marketing for a state college in New Britain and plays wooden bat baseball in Vernon.

Kate Sidley is a native of Cleveland, OH and holds a BA in Theatre from Baldwin-Wallace College which led to her work at such theatres as The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, New Harmony Theatre, Great Lakes Theater Festival and The Cleveland Play House which necessitated that she also waitress at such establishments as Aladdin’s Eatery and Texas Roadhouse (she was also once fired from the Dollar Tree), the realities of which led her to pursue her childhood dream of serving in the Peace Corps, so, for two years, Kate lived in Targoviste, Romania where she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching English and Drama at Liceul de Musica si Arte Balasa Doamna– after which Kate came to Hartford to work as an Education Apprentice at Hartford Stage and started taking the Flying Blind improv classes; therefore, one year later she is proud to say she is a a full-time Education Assistant at Hartford Stage, a member of Sea Tea Improv, and an avid proponent of run-on sentences.

Hall of Fame

Matt Neufeld is the Managing Director of Metro Theater Company, a theater for young people and families in St. Louis, MO. He is also a founding member and sometimes improv guru of Sea Tea Improv, founder of Hartford-based arts education and professional development company [IMPROV your life!], a current member of WTE (Wasted Theatre Education) Theatre, and a founding member of the former Drawing Board Arts Project. He trained at New York University ’s Tisch School of the Arts (NYC), NYU Dublin Performance workshop (IRE); NYU Clowning Studio (NYC); The Atlantic Theater Company (NYC), and Stonestreet Studios (NYC). Matt’s Improv experience spans City Improv Comedy Club (MO), Improv-Abilities (KS), NYU (NYC), Atlantic Theater Company (NYC), and locally at Hartford Stage and Hartford Children’s Theatre (Hartford), and Play On Acting Studio (Farmington).