Members
Summar Elguindy
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 and hang ten with surfers. 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 CT to work for Hartford Stage as an education apprentice. She then became a freelance teaching artist, stage manager and director at Hartford Children’s Theatre. Summar is currently pursuing her Masters in Theatre Education at Emerson College in Boston. She loves her puppy, Penny.
Joe Leonardo
Joe Leonardo is a native East Hartfordian with a wildly absurd amount of natural talents that include writing ambidextrously, creating children’s southern folk music, and inventing his own breakfast sandwiches (one’s called the “Cardiac Arrest!”). In his spare time, when he’s not reciting an unhealthy amount of Beatles trivia or giving truthiness facts about wildlife, he spends his time honing his craft of improvisational comedy. Joe has logged many hours of training at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City, as well as Hartford Stage and the “streets”, homie! What would the world be like without him, you say?? …Six billion minus one. Follow him on twitter at @ImJoeLeonardo.
Greg Ludovici
Greg Ludovici, disguised as a mild-mannered computer engineer for a great metropolitan company, fights the never ending battle for fun, laughter, and more affordable event parking in downtown Hartford. Greg is a professional actor who has studied and performed in New York, London, and throughout Connecticut. His most recent local performances outside of Sea Tea Improv have been with Hartford Stage and Hartford Children’s Theatre. Greg holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration from UConn, and his undergraduate focuses at Skidmore College were Music, Theater, and Computer Science. In the field of improv, Greg is a coach, instructor, and an eternal student in the Advanced Study Program at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City, where he completed their long-form improv training program. Greg also studies improvised musical theater at the Magnet Theater in New York. Locally Greg completed Hartford Stage’s Flying Blind Improv and Complete Actor programs.
Laura Manasewich
Laura Manasewich is from East Hartford, CT. She has a BA in Communications from Western New England College, where she completely ignored the up-and-coming improv club that was developing during her senior year. Since graduation she’s held a number of fascinating jobs such as call center peon, IT business analyst, a short stint as an obituary/tag sale typist (inbound sales rep) and finally annuity saleswoman extraordinaire. Her improv history includes classes at Hartford Stage, Playhouse on Park, UCB, numerous workshops and mixers, and a 3-night performance as a cast member of the Improvised 80′s Teen Movie. When she’s not busy improvising, Laura is usually either dancing, trying to reason with her attitude-y dog Killian, Googling many unknown facts, or getting hurt doing everyday tasks that should not result in injury.
Vladimir John Perez
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
Julia Pistell lives in downtown Hartford, Connecticut, where she is a writer, improviser, teacher, and public relations guru. She has worked in many places around 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 textbook publishing house, a florist, The Mark Twain Museum. Julia created the Syllable Reading Series to showcase local writers and readers, and she is 33 and 1/3 percent of Literary Disco, a podcast about books and reading. She once wrote a feature article for Cat Fancy, and she once wrote an essay for NPR. That pretty much sums her up.
Stephanie "Sproffee" Rice
Stephanie "Sproffee" Rice has been a proud East Hartfordian since she was four years old. She graduated from Drew University with a degree in Asian Studies and a love for Improv. She also left with the alter-ego "Sproffee" after an undisclosed incident involving copious amounts of Sprite and coffee. Afterward she swam off to Shanghai to teach English at an international high school and perform with a number of improv groups. After re-patriotizing, Stephanie got a mysterious day job involving self-lubricated bearings, while Sproffee infiltrated the ranks of Sea Tea. She is a serial hobbyist and enjoys such varied activities as knitting, playing guitar, bike riding, cooking, making jewelry, yoga and solving problems with sword fighting.
Dan Russell
Dan Russell is an East Hartford native and lifelong Nutmegger with a BA in Political Science from UConn & an MS in Management from Rensselaer at Hartford. 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, and has completed UCB’s core improv courses. Currently, Dan lives with his fiancée in Farmington, does internet marketing for a state college in New Britain and plays wooden bat baseball in Vernon.
Kate Sidley
Kate Sidley is a native of Cleveland, OH and therefore enjoys baseball, beer, and gray skies. She has a PT Cruiser named Tess, speaks Romanian, enjoys baking, and strongly dislikes ferris wheels. Kate has trained in improv comedy at Hartford Stage, The Upright Citizens Brigade and the PIT and holds a BA in Theatre from Baldwin-Wallace University (though it was a College when she went there). This May, Kate will complete her MA in Theatre History and Criticism at Brooklyn College in NY and is excited to start work on her Ph.D. in Theatre at CUNY Graduate Center this fall. Kate’s blog “Improvology” on the history of improvised comedy was nominated for a 2012 INNY Award for Best Blog. For more bite-sized tidbits of improv history, you can follow Kate on twitter @ImprovHistorian.
Graham Snow
Graham Snow was born in London, England where, as a child, enjoyed partaking in very British activities like reading Stanley Bagshaw and eating Yorkshire pudding. At the age of 3, his family moved to Danbury, CT and he sadly began to lose his brilliant British accent. That, however, did not stop him from graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in architecture. Throughout high school and college he was on the track team and once ran a mile in 4 minutes and 15 seconds. Graham currently works at a small architecture firm in western Connecticut helping to design residences, banks, and churches. Graham’s incredibly useless yet entertaining talents include creating a kazoo sound with his mouth, reciting endless Monty Python quotes, and knowing the capital of every country in the world.
Hall of Fame / Past Cast
Matt Neufeld
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).
Rob Keder grew up in the foothills of Connecticut in a little town called Seymour. He obtained his BS in Biology and Psychology from Fairfield University where he generally held such nerdy pursuits as studying why birds fly and why children ask, “Why?” He then spent four years in Chicago studying how to be JD from the television show Scrubs. He now prescribes laughter on a daily basis. His improv history includes classes at Comedy Sportz Chicago, Hartford Stage, Playhouse on Park, UCB, and numerous workshops and mixers. When bored he always finds something new to do. Recently he has been seen playing soccer poorly, dancing the foxtrot, and cooking an absurdly large Moroccan feast.
