ABOUT | Calli Ryals Director

Calli is from Grafton, Ohio, a rural village near Cleveland, known for their maximum security prisons (yay!). When she was 12 years old, she began training at the Elite Level in gymnastics. At her first National Training camp, she realized she would never again be allowed to eat a Big Mac, so decided the Olympic track wasn’t for her. She did however, continue to work rigorously at the sport, occasionally eating a cheeseburger, and by high school, had full scholarship offers from the top Universities. She graduated with an Economics degree (impressive) and as a NCAA All American at the University of Michigan (wow!).

As an actor, she used her bendable and whippy athleticism to write and perform character driven comedy (UCBLA, Groundlings) and also to insist on performing her own stunts (she once tackled the NFL great, Donovan McNabb…Ok, it was his stunt double).

Impatient and disgruntled by limited auditions opportunities, ( [GIRL IN THE CLOSET] blonde, 20’s, 1 LINE…..[CHAD’S GIRLFRIEND] must be comfortable in underwear, no lines.), Calli decided to take matters into her own hands.

She bought a camera and suddenly felt a throbbing sense of empowerment in her heart. Full creative control, even if only three people see it on Youtube? YES. Destined to become a multi-hyphen (wasn’t cool then, but is cool now), Calli began writing, directing, acting, and editing, comedic sketches (dang girl, cocky!).

Knowing her focus was comedy, she applied to Second City’s new film school in Chicago. Filmmaking in the Midwest was a formative experience for her directing. She was able to find her voice, and work with emerging actors and comedians from The Second City, Annoyance and Steppenwolf Theaters.

Calli writes and directs series and films that point out how the mundane thoughts and tasks in life aren’t mundane at all. She believes how we do anything is how we do everything. Her life changed completely during the pandemic (like all of ours) when she became a mom to her Herculean son Hans. She is currently training him to hold a boom mic, so she can continue to simultaneously make films and be a mom.