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Seattle, WA — After more than four decades of shaping Seattle’s improv community, Unexpected Productions has named Tony Beeman as its new Artistic Director, marking a generational transition for one of the city’s most influential theater institutions.
Beeman steps into the role after serving as Assistant Artistic Director and as a longtime company member. For audiences, his appointment represents the deepening of a familiar voice rather than a sudden shift of direction.
“I am incredibly honored to serve as the fifth Artistic Director of Unexpected Productions, forty-three years after the company first began improvising theater in Seattle,” Beeman said. “I’ve seen our mission to ‘illuminate humor and truth’ reveal itself as each generation of performers brings their authentic, sincere selves to the Market Theater stage, here in Pike Place Market.”
Beeman’s influence stretches far beyond a single title. Over the past 25 years, he has performed, directed, and taught improvisational theater locally and internationally, and is known for work that emphasizes ensemble storytelling, poetic language, and genre-driven theatricality. Seattle audiences may recognize him from his long-running portrayal of the Three Ghosts of Christmas in A(n Improvised) Christmas Carol, a role he has performed for more than fifteen years, or from his annual turn as Edgar Allan Poe in Poe Unexpected.
Behind the scenes, Beeman has created, directed, or co-directed more than thirty full-length productions for Unexpected Productions, including Love Vs. Everything (2025), Four Hearts (2023, 2018), and Scarecrow For Hire (2010). His work has been staged in Colombia, Japan, and across North America.
“Improvisation is about discovering the show alongside the audience,” Beeman said. “We don’t arrive with an agenda, except to connect, to explore, and to play. We must bring this philosophy, developed by so many performers over our decades, to this challenging moment for Seattle’s arts ecosystem.”
For Beeman, these conditions are exactly what improvisation is meant to address. “We are at a crossroads for theater in Seattle,” he said. “But this is exactly where improvisation flourishes. We offer a collaborative art form in a time of division; a place where the consequences of failure are just as entertaining as the consequences of success, so long as we bring the authenticity of our shared human experiences to the stage.”
In addition to leading the artistic vision, Beeman will also serve as Education Director, overseeing one of the largest improv schools in the world. His history with the school is personal: he first signed up for Improv 100 in 2006 while feeling “stuck” in his personal life.
“What I discovered wasn’t a parlor trick,” Beeman recalled. “It was an art form that allowed strangers to connect, bond, and laugh together. There is so little reason to fear in an art form where failure is as joyful as success.”
As Artistic Director, Beeman aims to build on the foundation laid by his predecessors while expanding whose stories are centered on stage. “My goal is to expand on retiring Artistic Director Jill Farris’s mission to platform artists who reflect the diverse lives of our audience in unexpected ways,” he said. “We must invite new voices into the theater and adapt, as improvisers do, to a city that never stops changing, while remaining rooted in our core values: sincerity, authenticity, discovery, and theatricality.”
With ten shows a week at the Market Theater in Pike Place Market and a growing presence in Georgetown and Issaquah, Unexpected Productions enters this new chapter with a recommitment to the simple, radical act of discovering something together—live and in the moment. |
