What is a Rammel?

Rammel Chan is an actor, comedian, game developer, science fiction writer and playwright proud to call Chicago his home.  The eldest of Filipino immigrants, Rammel grew up on military bases in Germany before moving to Michigan.

In 2007, Rammel moved to Chicago to finish his schooling at Columbia College where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Theater.  He found a home with the improv and sketch comedy community performing at iO and Second City with various independent comedy troupes including Robot vs. Dinosaur and Stir Friday Night. In 2015 he received a Bob Curry Fellowship from Second City and NBCUniversal and in 2016 he was added as a replacement to the Second City e.t.c. stage.

Rammel wandered his way onto other Chicago stages performing in such plays as Oblivion (Steppenwolf Theatre Company), the world premiere of King of the Yees (Goodman Theatre), Cambodian Rock Band (Victory Gardens) Vietgone, Tiger Style! (Writers Theater) & Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon (Lookingglass Theater Company), as well as toiling in readings and workshop productions for playwrights like Bess Wohl, Lauren Yee, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Charlie Oh, Karissa Murrell Myers in the Goodman Theater’s New Stages Festival.

Onscreen, Rammel has appeared in such shows as The Red Line (CBS), Crisis, Chicago Justice, Chicago Med (NBC) Somebody Somewhere (HBO), The Big Leap, APB (FOX) Patriot, Utopia and The Jamz (Amazon).  He recently appeared opposite Gillian Jacobs in the Kris Rey directed indie comedy I Used To Go Here, a role for which Richard Roeper described him as “fantastically funny”.

As a writer, Rammel’s plays have been performed at the Gift Theatre as part of TEN and the In The Works reading series. Through APIDA Arts, his family dramedy Tomato Tattoo received a development grant from Chicago DCASE as part of their inaugural Studio Residency at the Chicago Cultural Center.  In 2023-2024 he was a playwright in the cohort for the New Stages Residency at Goodman Theatre writing The Leftover Men, a dystopian dark comedic musical with Matthew C. Yee.  His Corporate-Faustian play Rona Fortunae was the winner of the Bramble Theater Festival of Unfinished Work in 2025. He is a recipient of a Kundiman Fellowship for Fiction, his science fiction short stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Riksha, Empyrean Literary Magazine and The Tiger Moth Review. 

Rammel’s comedic sensibilities also serve the world of game development.  He was a staff writer for Cards Against Humanity before moving to Chicago’s own Jackbox Games.  His original game concepts, Hypnotorious and Let Me Finish, are featured in the Jackbox Party Pack 10 and the Jackbox Naughty Pack, respectively.

He is a proud union member of SAG-AFTRA and Actors Equity.