MIF 2025 - Musical Improv Clinic (Tara DeFrancisco and Rance Rizzutto)

Musical Improv Clinic

Instructors: Tara DeFrancisco and Rance Rizzutto

Improvising music is a freeing, empowering, and joyful space - and you can start right here! Tara & Rance will teach you all proper warmups, short musical theory, committing to the moment, and leaning into emotions so you can earn the song right in front of you. We'll do vocal work, scenes into songs first playing in pairs, and possibly play with beginning side-support of your clinic ensemble.

Instructor Bios:

Tara DeFrancisco

Tara DeFrancisco is a headlining performer at iO Chicago (on the Deltones, Chaos Theory, Armando, defrancisCo), ComedySportz (Mainstage), and a three year vet of the Second City Touring Company. She’s taught for those theatres and independently, both at home and internationally. Media-wise, you might see her in aLas Vegascommercial campaign, on Delusions of Grandeur (ABC Family/Blip TV), soon in the new feature film The Life & Death of an Unhappily Married Man (2015), or in several projects filmed for the satirical newspaper, The Onion.

She is also the founder and president of The Improv Retreat(http://theimprovretreat.com), the acclaimed and beloved summer camp for adult improvisers in the midwest. In March of 2015, weekly residency of Here (a two person longform improvised musical, performed with Rance Rizzutto) is scheduled for Thursdays at iO around their worldwide tour dates. Tara has won numerous awards, including Top Performer in Chicago from New City, Funniest Person in Chicago by the Free Press, Top 25 Of Comedy in the US by Curve Magazine, as well as Chicago Tribune Show of the Season for the long running renegade feat, defrancisCo.

Rance Rizzutto

Hi, I’m Rance Rizzutto. I started doing improv with ComedySportz inPortlandas well as joiningPortland’s longest running sketch comedy troupe, The Third Floor. I performed with both until making the decision to head toChicago!

Since moving toChicagoin 2003 I have performed with ComedySportz,Chicago, DSI (The Beatbox), Silent Treatment (award winning two-person silent improv), seven8nine, and various other improv teams and venues.

Second City also hired me to perform improv and sketch with their theatrical division aboard Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL). I’ve performed sketch and improv all over the seas. Caribbean, Mediterranean, Atlantic Ocean, and in late 2009, the Pacific Ocean…Hawaii. All in all, I’ve spent 17 months traveling and performing aboard cruise ships. That’s aLOTof buffet food.

Traveling withSecondCityalso made possible one of my favorite improv opportunities: sitting in with theIstanbul,Turkeyimprov group Istanbulimpro and singing about swearing with cultural awareness (SFW).

After years of performing, I started teaching as well. I currently teach for iO, and have taught for ComedySportz andSecondCityin the past. People come from all over the world to study improvisation inChicago, and I’ve been thrilled to help people grow.

Best yet, in 2014 iO sent Tara and I toEuropeto teach their 3-day intensives. In that time we also got to perform Here inEstonia,Germany,Copenhagen, andLatvia.

Currently, I can be seen at iO Chicago performing with The Deltones and Chaos Theory on Saturday nights, and of course Here with Tara DeFrancisco.

Host or Publisher Miami Improv Festival