Improv Comedians

Meet the River City Improv comedians and learn more about Grand Rapids' best improv group.

Bob Dekker

Crew

Jeff VanHaitsma

Player

Kris Dekker

Crew

Marty Wondergem

Player

Michele Dykstra

Player

Mike Ryskamp

Player

Rick Treur

Player

Todd Herring

Player

Tracey Kooy

Player

Wendy Nance

Player

Back to Members

Bob Dekker

Crew

Bob's longtime love of improvising really took root when he joined RCI in 1995. After performing with the Team for 5 years, he began regularly supporting their shows as Stage Manager, House Manager, and Tech as necessary. In addition to continuing that work, he has performed with improv troupes Road Potatoes as well as Text Thread at The Comedy Project. Almost 30 years in and he's still in awe of the stories that can be created from one singular suggestion.

Back to Members

Jeff VanHaitsma

Player

Jeff is passionate about fun, people and fun people. He aims to be all three, claims to be 2 and hopes he's at least one.

Back to Members

Kris Dekker

Crew

Kris is our go to woman for house stuff, and happens to be an RCI alumnus spouse (Bob).

Back to Members

Marty Wondergem

Player

Marty likes to improvise with friends in front of an audience, but dislikes when the audience has friends who improvise loudly during our show. He likes coffee in the morning, and dislikes coffee in the afternoon if it means staring at the ceiling at midnight. He likes to sing in the car with his kids, and harmonize in a group, dance the occasional jig, run the occasional mile, watch the occasional show, and program the occasional app. He's grateful for his family, his friends and Google Maps.

Back to Members

Michele Dykstra

Player

Fun facts about Michele, in no particular order of importance:

She's fluent in Dutch. The first sentence she learned in Dutch was "She has hairy legs like an ape." She often is mistaken for Wendy (like all the time). Her dog Cricket is pretty much the cutest dog ever, and she has over 1000 pictures on her phone to prove it. She recently traveled to Spain and now is interested in Flamenco dancing. Currently, she is enjoying going through "the change." She wants others to know it's really not as bad as it seems, especially if you don't mind gaining 10-15 lbs overnight, experiencing your own tropical vacations, forgetting the names of familiar people or why you walked into a room, feeling rather spacey, and experiencing pain whenever you sit or stand...or try to move. It's fine. It's fine. Everything is fine.

Back to Members

Mike Ryskamp

Player

What is there to say about Mike that isn't already available in local and county public records? A tall man of Dutch heritage whose brain has been described by top doctors as. . . "interestingly constructed." Mike has a large hound dog named Bourbon, who is frustratingly intelligent, and remarkably conversational. Mike is a lover of most things motorsport-related and is heavily involved in sim-racing. Be warned, as he can talk for hours about racing and his "rig" setup.

Back to Members

Rick Treur

Player

Rick used to work for the federal government and used to serve on the Grand Rapids Planning Commission. It was all way too structured. Someone who does improv should not be planning. But you know, he learned some things. Since leaving those duties, he decided to get a puppy. His name is Franklin and he's a Havanese. He's great at improvising as Rick never knows what he's going to do. You should meet Franklin. He's a lot cuter than Rick.

Back to Members

Todd Herring

Player

Todd Herring Bio Born and raised in Chicago, Todd spent many of his highschool evenings going to the Second City and Improv Olympic, developing a love for improv comedy and theater. When he first hit the stage at his high school variety show in a sketch riffing on SNL’s Bill Swerski’s SuperFans, Todd was hooked. That first time he heard the laughter of an audience, he immediately felt at home.

Todd stayed in Grand Rapids after college and began performing with River City Improv soon after. Almost 25 years later, Todd still loves the stage, but he truly loves the audience more. In that time, Todd has performed professionally as a musician in the band Craic Wisely, earned multiple EMMY nominations for his production of the ArtPrize Awards broadcast where he also served as the program’s host and ArtPrize Creative Director for 6 years.

Todd’s work as a UX designer connects him back to his love of storytelling and improvisation to develop workable solutions for difficult problems. Todd truly lives in the moment, so it’s most likely he has forgotten your birthday, which he tries to make up for with workable solutions for your difficult problems.

Have a difficult problem? Shout it out. Todd might just using your bad day as fodder for 2 minutes of hilarity. ((3 minutes if Bob doesn’t cut the lights) (actually, still just 2 minutes of hilarity with one additional minute of awkward lingering thanks to Bob not cutting the lights after 2 minutes))

Back to Members

Tracey Kooy

Player

Tracey is a 32-year veteran of the improv stage, hailing from Vancouver, British Columbia. She discovered her love for theatre during high school, moving away from a career in ballet. Tracey has served as production manager for 30 productions in theatres across Grand Rapids and Chicago.

Tracey settled into living in Grand Rapids and then settled into teaching at East Kentwood High School. Not one to settle, she became a Spartan and earned her Master of Arts in Teaching and Curriculum Planning from Michigan State University. Not settled with that, she took a dare and applied to Harvard Graduate School of Education and as a Crimson, earned a certificate in Advanced Education Leadership. She finds daily joy working with high school seniors in Creative Writing and Advanced Placement English.

Outside of the theatre and classroom, Tracey cherishes her roles as the wife of Grand Haven attorney Jim and the mother of Brett and Addison, both of whom bring her immense pride.

Back to Members

Wendy Nance

Player

Wendy has been performing with River City Improv since the beginning. She has also been a redhead the entire time, which means she likely requires more anesthesia than the rest of you. Wendy can often be seen in the audience for all local performing arts with her husband and/or teenage kids. In a recent production of Six, Catherine of Aragon stopped singing to exchanged pleasantries with Wendy and her daughter, who were seated in the front row.

Her favorite improv shows are for celebrating and thanking church volunteers. If your church is having a special occasion to celebrate you as a volunteer - please book RCI!