Ben Burris

Founding Member and Performer

In college Ben was a part of Clemson University’s improv troupe, Mock Turtle Soup, from 2007 to 2011. He performed all four years, and for two of those years he was a player-director, leading workshops and directing monthly improv shows as well as an annual sketch show. College is also where Ben first tried stand-up and worked on the tragically short-lived Rapscallion humor quarterly. After graduating, Ben moved to Greenville and teamed up with Harrison, Jason U., and Meg to form Alchemy. In the first 3 years of Alchemy, Ben served as Assistant Aritistic Director, coach, and instructor off-stage while performing weekly with Local Legends and several house teams. Ben returned in the fall of 2015 from a one-year hiatus splitting his time between his wife in London and his job as an electrical engineer in Alaska.

With Mock Turtle Soup and Alchemy, Ben has taken workshops with instructors from around North America including the Annoyance, iO, Second City, Relapse, BATS, Impatient Theater Company, JaCKPie, Magnet, UCB, the Peoples Improv Theater, and DSI Comedy Theater, Hoopla Impro, and The Urban Yeti. He’s also taken workshops in sketch, improv, storytelling, and freestyle rap with Kevin McDonald from The Kids in the Hall, Jimmy Carrane from the Annoyance and Improv Nerd podcast, Kevin Allison from The State, and Douglas Widick and Kaila Mullady of North Coast (respectively). During his time in London, Ben was able to attend many workshops hosted by C3Something, The Maydays, The Nursery Theatre, Hoopla Impro, and visiting guest instructors like Christian Capozzoli, Teatribu (Milan, Italy), Dave Razowski, and others.

Ben can be seen every week in Local Legends and Improv All-Stars and monthly in the house teams Abraham and Stand-up Meets Improv. You can see him irregularly in teams like the Four Humors, Slimprov, Hardworking Men doing Hardworking Improv, Listeners Like You, Bens with Frenefits, Momprov, and other independent teams at the Mind if we Crash Here? Improv Jam. Ben can also be seen in his infrequent brushes with film and video projects.

Teams