Deborah Bodansky was interested in writing from a very young age (like Connor Roy with politics). When she was little, this manifested mostly in moralistic short stories about her brother getting his comeuppance for bullying her. In recent years, she has embraced her love for writing in all mediums, writing book reviews and a short play (which she also directed and produced) and keeping a travel blog. She is also a long-time fan of live performance of all kinds, and has been involved in theatre throughout her life, both onstage and off, discovering a love for improv a few years ago. It has been fun to learn about and hone her skills in sketch comedy for the past year, and she’s excited for everyone to enjoy the culmination of the work she and her friends have been doing!

Rj Cappuccio is a ‘professional’ writer if you define the word ‘professional’ as “an individual who sometimes pays his rent by writing thirty-thousand-word YouTube Videos for Australians.” His most successful video, “The Entire History of Human Civilization,” on the channel ‘Beginning to Now’ has over 3 million views on YouTube. He is happy to have completed the Second City Writing program to put it on his freelance writing resume (and for the friends he made). Most importantly, though, he would like to thank his mom, why? Because she’s the only person he’d know who would actually read this bio.

Marilyn Chapman is a Chicago-based Creative Director of the visual arts by day and improviser and writer by night. When she isn’t busy with those things, she’s a cat wrangler, caterpillar rancher, hobby gardener, and home renovator. She is a grad of the Second City improv program, currently learning long-form Improv at IO Theater, Sketch writing with Second City as well as in the Second City Conservatory program. Her favorite things to write are satire, the weird, friendships, and animals. When she’s not learning improv she performs improv with her ensemble, Friends. With. Cats.. 

Many dung beetles, known as rollers, roll dung into round balls, which are used as a food source or breeding chambers. Others, known as tunnelers, bury the dung wherever they find it. A third group, the dwellers, neither roll nor burrow: they simply live in dung. They are often attracted by the feces collected by burrowing owls. There are dung beetle species of various colors and sizes, and some functional traits such as body mass (or biomass) and leg length can have high levels of variability. 

Originally focused on a film career path that followed in the footsteps of 90s indie writer/directors like Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, and Kelly Reichardt, Nick left his home state of California to brush up on writing at Second City. Always a fan of comedy, but never 100% creatively comedic himself, he’s enjoyed the short form storytelling of sketch comedy and has enjoyed the collaborative and supportive process of his fellow writers and performers. Nick has had short films play at international film festivals and hopes to turn his sketches into short films. When Nick is not writing or watching three movies a day, he’s producing commercials and social media “content”.

A little scamp first and foremost, Mackenzie hails from Roxbury or Sauk City, Wisconsin (depending on who you ask). Her brain was warped from a young age, religiously watching shows like SNL, 30 Rock, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show while attending a Catholic elementary school. Before hitching her wagon and wallet to Second City last January, she had the lovely honor of overhauling and serving as the satire section editor for The Daily Cardinal, a historic independent student paper on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. As such, she is forever a Dirty Bird and Beet mother. Additionally, Mackenzie is a multi-award winning singer/songwriter (luckily not a joke) and thoroughly enjoys being a dingus on her wide-ranging satire website, The Slug Report. 

Mugsie is an artistic omnivore and fashion freak, who works to keep their cats in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. They're having a great time writing again, as well as doing improv, and just generally haunting Second City for the last year and a half. Not quite a Chicago native, they've been in Chicago for the last 18 years, if we count Evanston. (We don't.) They're excited to look back on this show as the first in a line of performances of their scripts. They send love to this incredible cast and cohort! (And, of course, their wife and cats.)

From Aurora,IL (Excellent!); David has spent the last 30 years cultivating comedy like a malfunctioning supercomputer. He aspires to make comedy a full-time career and has spent the last two years writing sketches, film scripts, and performing improv comedy. David has been sporadically doing stand up since 2014! Recently, He is currently in the Grad Revue program at Second City. Outside of comedy, he has traveled to 44/50 states, loves spicy foods, and enjoys a good reality tv binge. His favorite comedians are Monty Python, Dave Chappelle, Tina Fey, Mark Normand, Stephen Colbert, and Weird Al Yankovic. His favorite topics to write about are satirical parodies of pop culture trends.

As a child, Jimmy Ray’s dad loaded up his iPod Nano with recordings from Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks’ comedy albums and ripped mp3 files from SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy sketches, and Jimmy Ray would listen to the playlists on repeat while he slept. Aside from sketch-writing, Jimmy Ray also loves baking, cooking, writing poetry, playing/watching sports (#LFGM), playing board games, and rewatching the shows/movies he already likes. Jimmy Ray would like to thank his family for all of their unending love and support, his friends for putting up with him and his perpetual tardiness, and the wonderful teachers and staff at Second City for all that they’ve taught him. All that being said, Jimmy Ray is really just here for the zipline.

A long time listener, first time writer, Cooper hails from Cincinnati. Cooper first took interest in writing after taking an improv class that resulted in many sleepless nights of constantly dwelling on what bits could have been funnier if he had just been given a few more hours to slowly ruminate on each line. And thus, a writer was born. Cooper has taken inspiration from many comedy heavyweights like Community, What We Do in the Shadows, and the bloopers at the end of old Pixar movies. Aside from comedy writing, Cooper likes to write music and hopes to one day write a song worthy of a Weird Al cover. Finally, he would like to extend his thanks to the writers, cast, and Second City staff for making this a truly incredible experience!