The Love Notes formed in early 2009 with the goal of creating engaging stories and characters for its audience. We pride ourselves on our open, honest collaboration and being friends more than being troupe members, and we believe that comes through in each of our performances.

By the summer of 2009, The Love Notes had performed across town at The Hideout, Salvage Vanguard, and Coldtowne.

With founding member Steph Bates leaving to pursue awesomeness in Greece, The Love Notes decided to shuffle their pack with the addition of Chelsea Gilman, Meghan Wolff, and Kristin Firth.

With regular shows at SVT and the Hideout, including a monthlong headlining show upcoming in November, The Love Notes are excited to continue growing in the coming year.

Avimaan Bio Pic

Avimaan Syam was born in the heart of Houston to an Indian accountant and a German-American teacher. Avimaan has wanted to be a writer and a storyteller all his life, and pursued those studies at the University of Texas at Austin where he majored in Humanites and English. Avimaan came to improv through the Shakespeare at Winedale Program and has taken intermittent classes from The Hideout Theatre and Merlin Works. He has played with the Polite Society and A Bunch of Liars in the past, and is part of the upcoming Twilight-themed improv, Dusk, with Gnap Theater. Avimaan currently works as a software developer for UT as well as being a theatre critic for the Austin Chronicle. In the past he's taught English in Prague, served as Assistant Director for Camp Shakespeare, and worked as a teaching artist for the Theatre Action Project.

Paul Bio Pic

Paul Wainright is a part time improviser, musician, job coach, waiter and easy lover. His improvisation days began in 2000 during high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he learned his chops from the founder of ComedySportz, Dick Chudnow, and his talented underlings. From these auspicious beginnings, he played with the celebrated Ritalin Test Squad, the Grinnell College short-to-long-form improv troupe. During his three and a half year tenure, he greatly contributed to regular short form exhibitions, and was elemental in orchestrating other experimental improvisational events including the fictitious Retirement Party of Dodd Winkerbein, Group Therapy Circle 2005, The First Annual 24 Hour Grinnell Improv Marathon, two Mobile Halloween Improv Extravaganzas, and House on the Rock, an entirely improvised feature length film set at the House on the Rock in Spring Green, WI. After a brief hiatus, Paul jubilantly resumed playing in Austin with The Polite Society, Elephants Gerald, and A Bunch of Liars. Most recently, Paul can barely contain his excitement about working with Avimaan Syam and Steph Bates in The Love Notes, a long form, storytelling based improv troupe as well as his ongoing training with critically acclaimed teacher and improviser Shana Merlin.

Chelsea Bio Pic

Chelsea Gilman is glad to be back in Austin, after a long hiatus in New Zealand, Connecticut, and Dallas. In her previous Austin life, she was a member of improv troupes We Could Be Heroes and Power Rock Star Girls Galactica 3000 at the Hideout Theatre, and performed in the first Out of Bounds Comedy Festival in 2002. When not improvising, she is learning to play the drums or trying to earn enough money to travel somewhere exotic. Feel free to take her to dinner...if you're into that kind of thing.

Kristin Bio Pic

Kristin Firth has been improvising for over four years. She spent a year and a half of that time in New York city, studying and performing improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, the Magnet Theater, and the Peoples Improv Theater. She also studied acting, voice, and mask at the William Esper Studio. Since returning to Austin she's been involved with numerous projects and troupes including Vinyl Destination, Improv For Evil, Skipfield, Haunted, Hyperlinks, and Improvised Shakespeare. She currently performs as part of the rotating casts of Maestro (Sat, 10pm, Hideout), This Week Tonight (Fri, 8pm, Hideout), Austin's Next Top Improviser (2nd and 4th Fridays, 10pm, SVT), and Flying Theater Machine (for kids, Sundays, 1pm, Hideout). She also performs regularly with her two girl troupe Firth&Arjet. When not improvising or doing her day job Kristin loves playing games and has just started designing her own.

Meghan Bio Pic

Meghan Wolff is a big-city girl with a small-town heart. A student at the University of Texas, she is majoring in Plan II Honors, which, trust her, is a major, and Art History. She got started in improv with UTs short-form troupe Gigglepants in late 2006, and was pretty darn happy there for a number of years. In 2009 she took her first improv class, and, as they say, it has all been downhill from there. She has since been a member of several shows, including Improvised Shakespeare and an as-yet unnamed Gnap! Theatre troupe. She is thrilled, ecstatic, and plain ole downright excited to join The Love Notes. When she's not studying or improvising, Meghan likes to bake tasty desserts, eat tasty desserts, bicycle, and beat people with swords on behalf of the UT Fencing Team.