Founder
Merlin Works
Closing & General Session #3: Session Title To be Announced
The year was 1995 and the Braves were in the World Series. At the time, Shana Merlin was a drama nerd in high school in suburban Atlanta and had no idea that the Braves were in the World Series. So when Shana and her girlfriends went downtown to catch an improv comedy show at Dad’s Garage Theater, she had no idea that the show would be cancelled—and her life changed forever. But when the volunteer at the ticket booth handed her a fat stack of free tickets as an apology, Shana’s social calendar for the year was sealed. Shana kept watching improv shows and seeing that the people on stage were having the most fun she’d ever seen—and she wanted to have that much fun too. So she signed up for an improv class there, and sucked! In class, they would go around the circle playing an improv game and have to stop when it was Shana’s turn. But Shana stuck with it, started performing in student shows, and was bitten by the improv bug—hard. She found improv used every part of her being: her brain, her body, her heart, her experiences, her writing, her directing, her singing, her dancing, her storytelling. It was all there. And for over the next twenty years Shana Merlin has become a nationally recognized performer, trainer and teacher from the world of improvisational theater. Awarded “The Best Improv Teacher” and “Best Female Improviser” by the Austin Improv Collective.Shana founded her company, Merlin Works, in 2003, providing custom training, interactive presentations, and comedy shows to businesses and organizations using improvisation. She has been serving clients such as HomeAway, Dell, T-Mobile, and Deloitte as well as schools and non-profits. Some of her most requested programs are on the topics of team building, communication, sales, persuasion, leadership, medical communications, and creativity. In 2008, She founded The Merlin Works Institute for Improvisation, offering classes in improv comedy to adults in Central Texas. In 2013, Merlin Works moved to the prestigious ZACH Theatre campus on the shores of Lady Bird Lake in Austin. After training at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, she became a lecturer in the College of Medicine Texas A&M University and an associate at the Center for Health Communication at the University of Texas Dell Medical School and Moody College of Communication. Shana performs in the improv troupes B Iden Payne Award Winning Girls Girls Girls Improvised Musicals, the Austin Critics Table Award winning duo Get Up and directed and performed in Dusk, a Twilight parody on national tour in 2010. Shana can also do scripted work and performed in the national touring company of The Intergalactic Nemesis. Shana lives, plays and works in Austin, Texas with her two children.
