Sommer returned to Cleveland in 2008 to teach a master class at the
Case Western Reserve University / Cleveland Play House graduate
program. He earned an MFA in the program in 2004.
Sommer planned his future in improv comedy during his Play House days.
He has performed with the Upright Citizens Brigade improv troupe, but
the bulk of his career has been in television and film.
Sommer's career is a fulfillment of a childhood dream. He was born in
Toledo, and lived in Rocky River and Cuyahoga Falls (Ohio). When he was
eight his family moved to Stillwater, Minnesota and graduated from
Stillwater Area High School in 1996 and went on to study theater at
Concordia College in Moorhead.
He did odd jobs and improv after graduating from college, but wanted to
act full time. He saw an ad in a theater magazine about the Cleveland
Play House graduate program and applied.
He and his wife, Virginia Donohoe Sommer, met as graduate students. The
couple moved to New York in 2004, married the following year and moved
to Los Angeles in 2007. Virginia Sommer is a full-time mom to the
couple's two children (Beatrice c. 2007 and Patrick Ryan, August 31,
2010).
At the start of his career, he wished for one legacy job -- something
to tell the grandchildren about. With 'Mad Men' he has that.
