women IMprovising together since 1998
"comedy for the NPR set: smart, sexy, engaging, and very, very funny" -Chicago Reader
About Us
History
Sirens began in 1998 in Chicago and is the longest running all-women improv group in the country. Reviewers hail these "fearless comedic temptresses," saying their scenes are "so perfect in their specificity and boast such well-realized characters that they sometimes resemble scenes from a well-written play." These veterans lure audiences with energy, abandon, inventiveness and intelligence in dynamic improv forms they've created like Clutch, Straight to Video, Kink, Chicken Scratch, and Token Male.
Joanna Buese
Joanna was born and raised in southwest Michigan. After earning her BA at Kalamazoo College, she traveled extensively through the South American Andes and the continental United States. Useless tidbit: Joanna taught Spanish I and II classes at her hometown high school for nearly a year after her travels. While in Chicago she has trained and performed at iO, the Annoyance, Second City, ComedySportz, and WNEP Theater. She performed and played bass with the rock/comedy outfit Los Shut Up and Let's Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop (LGOOTTSS) for nearly 8 years. Joanna earned her MA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Columbia College Chicago. You can hear her DJ on CHIRP Radio.
Lindsey Harrington
Lindsey is very honored to be an original member of Sirens. She is from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, yet started doing improv at the University of Illinois with Spicy Clamato. She trained at iO, The Playground, and The Annoyance. She performed with various teams at iO and co-wrote and performed with the Entertainment Focus Group. In addition to improvising with Sirens, she and Katie Watson occasionally research, write, and perform as The History Girls at the Paper Machete. She taught improv at Second City and teaches seventh and eighth grade English at Emerson Middle School. She enjoys bloopers, Shakespeare, and being home with Mike and Hugh. This picture is quite outdated.
Lori McClain
Lori McClain was born in Toledo, OH and received her BFA in Acting from Wright State University. Right out of college, she toured the country as a singer in a Top 40 cover band, and then moved to Chicago. In Chicago she joined Child's Play Touring Theatre, performing on and off-Broadway. She was a member of the National Touring Company of The Second City, and was honored to perform with them in Iraq and Kuwait as part of a USO tour in 2004. She was a founding member of The WNEP Theater Foundation, with whom she wrote and performed in many productions; most notably, a musical entitled "The Wicked and the Sexed" (New City's 1997 Best Original Musical Production). You may have seen her improvise at "ComedySportz," and in "Blind Date," "Whose Chorus Line Is It Anyway?" (co-creator and director) and "Trois'.” She plays Patti Blagojevich in the Second City musical, "Rod Blagojevich: Superstar!" and Lori can also be heard as the vocalist for the jazz group, the Lori McClain Trio.
Abby McEnany
Abby McEnany moved to Chicago to attend college a long time ago and liked it so much she stayed. After college, she started studying improvisation at The Second City, then continued at Improv Olympic and The Annoyance. She has performed with the sketch-comedy group Aha, and the Improv Olympic teams Laffateria Ladies and Vegas Magic Act. She is currently a member of Judo Intellectual at the Playground. She joined Sirens in 2000 and thinks these ladies are real neat.
Her show Work in Progress can be seen on Showtime.
Erin McEvoy Mason
Erin McEvoy began performing improv and sketch comedy after graduating from The American University in Washington, D.C. She is a founding member of Sirens and has performed with various groups, including iO, The Second City, ComedySportz Chicago, Musical! The Musical and Improv Acadia. She wrote and performed "A&E" (the Abby and Erin show) for Second City's Unhinged Series with Sirens' Abby McEnany. Most recently she has appeared in Louder Than A Mom, a monthly storytelling show. Erin is constantly trying to get her own cooking show. She creates most of her recipes for her wonderful husband Tim and children Dot, Finn, Helen, and Brigid.
Jacqueline Stone
Jacqueline helped co-found Sirens in 1998, and has been happily creating and performing in every show since! She is a company member and Executive Director of TUTA Theatre Chicago, and has also worked for Chicago Dramatists, Prop Thtr., New Leaf Theatre, BackStage Theatre Co., Brown Coach Theatre Co, Bailiwick Rep, WNEP Theatre, National Theatre of Perf. Arts, Improv Olympic, and Fuzzy Co. She's directed for The Second City, The Playground, European Rep (asst.), and Wud Up Yo Productions. Jacqueline was a faculty member at The Second City, Columbia College, and was the Education Director at Emerald City Theatre Company. She was recently named the Producing Artistic Director of the Breckenridge Backstage Theater in Colorado.
Katie Watson
Katie began improvising at iO in 1997, she became a proud member of Sirens in 2000, and she joined The Second City Training Center as an adjunct faculty member for both improv & sketch in 2008. As a writer, Katie is author or co-author of several critically-acclaimed sketch shows (Epic Prattle, Blind Side, Gynecology, Consumer Reports: Spring Break Edition!, War Is Bad: Sock Puppet Euripides), her full-length plays have had readings or workshops with theaters including Goodman, Stage Left, and Polarity, she’s written and performed essays for NPR, WBEZ, Second Story, The Dollar Store, Sunday Salon, and WNEP’s Skald, and she’s currently half of The History Girls (with Siren Lindsey Harrington), a duo that offers news commentary from the perspective of interesting dead people at the live magazine show Paper Machete at The Green Mill. Katie is also a graduate of the Second City Directing Program (2009), and she loves directing independent sketch groups like GayCo. Katie is honored to have been awarded four Artist’s Residencies at the Ragdale Foundation. In the other half of her life, Katie is a lawyer and bioethics professor. She wrote Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Policy of Ordinary Abortion.
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Sirens Improv
