Board of Directors

Spencer Howard	Samuel Hunter	Claire Kaplan	Nathan Turner

Spencer Howard

Spencer writes, performs, directs, edits, and designs web for Interrobang. He began his career in comedy by watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus and George Carlin’s HBO specials when he was far too young to do so. He was home schooled and thus had a lot of time on his hands to produce a long-running webseries called The Spencer Howard Show and a number of short films. Working backstage at The Colony Theatre in Burbank, he wrote and directed over two dozen one-act plays, one of which had a song-and-dance number between FDR and Hitler.

The only non-comedic thing he’s written was a play about Oscar Wilde in prison, which was performed at the Company of Angels in Los Angeles and a new play festival at Los Angeles Valley College. It was really depressing.

He went to UC San Diego on a full football scholarship due to an administrative error. There, he wrote a bunch of one-act plays, one of which had Dov Charney as the main character, and another ended with everyone finding a razorblade in a chocolate bar. He also acted in several full-length plays, served as artistic director and director of play development for the undergraduate new play festival, and lived in a professor’s office for three months. Spencer was also an ensemble member of Moving Parts Theatre’s production of Pagan Play at the 2010 Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Samuel Hunter

Sam Hunter attends UCSD where he is earning a BA in theatre, with a focus in directing, and a BS in psychology, with a focus in humor. UCSD directing credits include: Much Ado About Nothing; What Where; Go and Stop (ONPS ’10); This Thing: 3 Solo Performances; Come, Moon!; Olympia (ONPS ’09); The Death of John Keats (ONPS ’08); assistant director for The Hot l Baltimore; Woyzeck; As You Like It; Vaudveaux Nouvelle; A Cure for Pain (BNPF ’08). Other asst. credits: Herringbone (La Jolla Playhouse). Sam has assisted Tom Dugdale, Gabor Tompa, Kim Rubinstein, Roger Rees, and DesMcAnuff, and studied acting and directing with Kim Rubinstein, Alexandra Billings, Eric Hunicutt, Dave Razowsky, and Jeff Perry.

Sam’s major comedic influences growing up were The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Freakazoid, Cartoon Planet (and other shows involving Brak), The Kids in the Hall, The Marx Brothers, and Steve Martin. In fact, he likes Steve Martin so much he also learned to play the banjo and sport white hair. Sam got his start in comedy running joke campaigns for student body presidencies and sticking things up his nose at lunch. The campaigns may have changed, but the nose remains the same.

Claire Kaplan

Claire Kaplan was cast as the wolf in her older sister’s production of Little Red Riding Hood at the age of two. This instilled in her a love of character roles, and she went on to play all of them in the neighborhood theatre company Furry Tails in Reverse. She received rave reviews from her parents for her impressions of the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Animaniacs, Earthworm Jim, and any actor from the forties.

Guessing that her parents’ love would only continue as long as she entertained them, she got into Improv in high school, joining a team heavily influenced by Will Ferrell and Co., Arrested Development, and gross boys. At the same time, Claire joined the Long Beach Shakespeare Company, where she perfected the role of Page Boy. Eventually she was cast in larger, more female roles, and she went off to UCSD determined to hone her classical acting skills and become Katharine Hepburn.

Claire looks forward to joining another repertory theatre company when she graduates in June, and fears she is really more of a Liza Minnelli. This is the riddle Claire made up when she was four: What is an old man’s favorite treat? Why, a candy cane, of course!

Nathan Turner

Nathan Turner is a graduate of UCSD, having swindled them out of two degrees: Theater and Philosophy. Nathan first graced the stage in his “picture perfect” portrayal of the immortal Babe Ruth. Well, Babe Ruth if he were a chubby five-year-old at the height of his success. Since then, Nathan has (much to everyone’s surprise) raised his standards of excellence and gone on to perform in such showstoppers as: The Miser, Harpagon; The Misanthrope, Clitandre; The Merchant of Venice, Lorenzo; Romeo & Juliet, Benvolio; King Lear, Edgar; Macbeth, Macduff. All non-classical credits have been lost due to a clerical error – except this one: The Prince, in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, in which he sang some songs. He has written two one-act plays for the UCSD undergraduate new play festival. Sadly, these plays will not be understood for another 223 years as they are written in a future dialect. He has performed in operas, theme parks, short films, fringe festivals, and the ever popular ‘skits and sketches’. During the summer he teaches Movement and Stage Combat for La Jolla Playhouse’s YPW. In the future he would like to own and wear Tycho Brahe’s metal nose.

His comedic influences include Derridean deconstruction, Žižekian cinema-critique, and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. His most salient features are a non-discriminating taste palate and a below average sense of fashion.

Expect a personalized Isabel Bloom painted concrete statuette in the mail from him for Christmas.

Interrobang at work and at play