Volunteers Needed for the Moontower Comedy Festival!

[troy]

Improv is about playfulness, letting go of control, affirming each other's ideas and working together to build something delightful. Threads like this and others I see on the forums at times only serve to fly in the face of what the art form is all about.

I say hurray for comedy, hurray for Moontower, hurray for improv!

[kbadr]

Thanks Ratliff. Sorry for being an over-reactive dick.

Honestly, if it had been a more personal message or even included a personal hello before the generic post, I would have not have reacted at all.

[Mark Snacker]

This is what I know:

Moontower isn't the New Movement's festival, Hell Yes Fest is TNM's festival. TNM totally lucked out and was asked to integrate its own Hell Yes Fest into Moontower. Hell Yes Fest is being run the same as it was last year, TNM picks the troupes for Hell Yes Fest. I'm in a TNM troupe and I wasn't asked to submit or selected for shows. Yeah, it sucks, but that's how it goes.

This wasn't a diabolical scheme by the New Movement to alienate anybody, it's just TNM's good fortune that Moontower asked them to handle their improv portion and they already had the logistics in place to host a festival they were going to run anyway.

I can understand people being upset about how this went down, but I really hope that the majority of the resentment can be directed toward the management of Moontower and not TNM.

[Dave]

oh, ai forums, how i've missed you.

[shando]

oh, ai forums, how i've missed you.

!!

[happywaffle]

oh, ai forums, how i've missed you.

It's quite nice and happy and funny most of the time. But then sometimes…

[shando]

I think what's going unsaid here in the animus over the festival is not that it's curated, it's that it's being curated by Chris Trew. Let's just get that out there.

Had Moontower gone to OoB or any of the other theaters in town and said, "Hey you, give us an improv component to this comedy festival, but it has to be curated. No applications, just pick," I doubt people would be up in arms. Why not? Because OoB and the other theaters in town have through repeated instances shown their willingness to be inclusive of the rest of the community, even those people who have a different idea of what improv should be. A high-profile fest curated by any of these other entities would still be small and by it's nature exclusive. Individuals would invariably have their feathers ruffled, but I have faith that overall people would see the process as fair.

Alas, I don't see that same faith among the rest of the non-TNM community for a festival curated by Chris Trew. And I'm not talking about TNM in general or people who perform there, who are all as pleasant and as talented as any other member of the Austin improv community in my experience. I'm talking solely about him. Through repeated belligerent and exclusionary actions, he's managed to alienate himself from a substantial portion of the rest of the community.

This is not coming from a place of sour grapes, either. I do narrative shows, so curated or no I would not expect to be involved with a festival put together by Chris Trew, as what I do doesn't jibe with his philosophies of improv. That's fine. I've had plenty of excellent festival opportunities and will continue have them, so not being in Moontower is no skin off my nose.

But there are plenty of people in town who do excellent shows that are perfectly in line with the TNM outlook but who will never be seriously considered for Hell Yes not because of what they do, but because of who they are and where they regularly perform. Perhaps that is not the impression he has tried to make, but that is the impression out there among the rest of the community. If it is the impression he has tried to make, then people should get used to hearing some backlash. If it's all just a big misunderstanding, I would imagine there are some affirmative steps that could be taken, like say include a ColdTowne troupe like Bad Boys in future years, or stop exiling former TNM people for having the audacity of enjoying a ColdTowne Tourco show.

As with Cody, I'd love to hear from the man himself, but I'm not holding my breath.

[TexasImprovMassacre]

If we aren't willing to discuss the areas of tension then what hope is there for resolving them? I'm all for the love and support of one another, but I think we would be fooling ourselves to believe that there are no areas of misunderstanding or disagreement...I'm glad that we have these forums to at least attempt to discuss some of these things. Even if it doesn't always work, there does seem to usually be some working towards a better understanding of one another. I do not think that should be discouraged.

This thread was enlightening for me, and I appreciate the responses.


I look forward to reading the post that shannon just made while i was deleting this post and rewriting it 100x's.

[happywaffle]

Agreed. I think the argument has gotten heated but almost (almost!) never irate or irrational. Obviously I respect people who emphasize the positivity—it's fucking improv, after all—but I'm all about airing grievances. I don't want there to be a gulf in the improv community. I want to work to make it better. And even argument can act as a form of outreach.

[ratliff]

As someone who has contributed way more than my share of negativity and vitriol to these forums, I respectfully suggest that online argument is a very poor substitute for face-to-face discussions. It seems to bring out the worst in a lot of us, which is why I have for the most part banned myself from the boards. (Josh Krilov to me: "You're really different on email than you are in person.")

Discussion is great as far as it goes, and I appreciate Shannon stepping up and saying what everyone is thinking. It at least clarifies the issue somewhat.

But in my experience, the idea that sufficient argument will result in more clarity or agreement is misguided. I'm pretty sure the people involved here don't agree on what happened, but even if we did, we wouldn't agree on its meaning.

I don't know if time heals all wounds, but only time heals some wounds. Just a thought.

[Katherine]

As someone who has contributed way more than my share of negativity and vitriol to these forums, I respectfully suggest that online argument is a very poor substitute for face-to-face discussions. It seems to bring out the worst in a lot of us, which is why I have for the most part banned myself from the boards. (Josh Krilov to me: "You're really different on email than you are in person.")

Discussion is great as far as it goes, and I appreciate Shannon stepping up and saying what everyone is thinking. It at least clarifies the issue somewhat.

But in my experience, the idea that sufficient argument will result in more clarity or agreement is misguided. I'm pretty sure the people involved here don't agree on what happened, but even if we did, we wouldn't agree on its meaning.

I don't know if time heals all wounds, but only time heals some wounds. Just a thought.

Sage!!

[TexasImprovMassacre]

I'm with you, Ratliff. I am not advocating more arguing, and I don't want to promote negativity. I also agree that face to face would be the way to go...face to face isn't always easy or possible though. So, I believe that the forum is aptly named for being a good place to come together to discuss things.

Discussion is great as far as it goes, and I appreciate Shannon stepping up and saying what everyone is thinking. It at least clarifies the issue somewhat.

It seems that we agree that the discussion can bring clarity on an issue?

But in my experience, the idea that sufficient argument will result in more clarity or agreement is misguided.

Sure, so lets discuss instead if that is what brings clarity, and try to be aware of when our discussions degrade into arguments?


I think we agree that conversations here can sometimes be enlightening and constructive, so I don't reallllly want to see them discouraged. Still, I myself have taken to posting less because I also agree that these threads can very quickly become regrettably negative.

So, I'm with you Ratliff. I just can't say that I wish we didn't have these conversations...i'm not always happy with how i reacted or what I wrote, but I'm usually glad that we were at least talking about it.

It seems to be a somewhat common reaction when things heat up for someone to comment on how they wish we weren't even having this conversation at all, or to dismiss it as the same old silly thing...I guess I still saw this conversation as constructive.

I agree with Troy. I'm sorry if I contributed to any negativity. I really want for everyone in the community to get along, and to work together. I want there to be less negative speculation. I want all of the theaters to celebrate one another and for their performers and to intermingle more. So, I suppose I'm also sick of this issue coming up because I just want to do good work with good people and not worry about politics or drama between theaters.

We all have the same goal of promoting Austin comedy, and a good show at one theater means someone is more likely to go see another show in this city. I think if we keep that in mind we will be alright.

[Asaf]

I think this is the big elephant in the room that people have been wanting to talk about for a while. So I, for one, am glad it's being talked about because, as Cody said, that's how we come to a resolution.

I'll put this out there, and bear with me as it requires a little bit of set up:

I had recently been talking with the various theaters of the five families about their ticketing systems, because The Institution was shopping for one. In speaking with SVT, ColdTowne and Hideout, I discovered that none of them are really satisfied with their ticketing system.

So I arranged a meeting with reps of those theaters and a programming guy who would be able to set up a new ticketing system that all of us could opt into and would be designed for our specific needs. With all of us in, it would be relatively cheap.

I didn't invite anyone from TNM because I imagined they would say no and possibly worse (I was once scolded for including Trew and Jastroch in the same email that I sent out.)

There are some benefits to this system such as it would allow for us to do an Austin Improv calendar since all the ticketing information could feed easily into one place.

On the way back from the meeting though, I felt it would be wrong to have an Austin Improv calendar that didn't include TNM. So, on a lark, I stopped by their new space to talk to them about it. After a nice tour of the space, I sat with Alex, the new Artistic Director about this and whether to include them.

Her answer was that it would be something to consider. Right now, she is up to her neck in all sorts of things to oversee that this was the most she could guarantee. But an inroad was made.

I hope that we all understand that there is Chris and Tami who have a very estranged relationship with the rest of the community and the rest of TNM including the people who have been recently put in charge, who don't have that same history.

I'm very happy that there was a New Movement group that performed as part of The Institution's grand opening and I hope to continue finding those inroads regardless of what decisions are on the other end. Because that is the community I want to see. I hope that will lead to TNM reaching out more in the other direction.

[beardedlamb]

Out of Bounds will be playing the community card in an attempt to be more inclusive this year in surprising ways that are exciting for me personally and that's not just marketing shlock.

more to come soon and in another thread.

[jkg79]

I, for one, would like to take a stand and promote more argument and vitriol. I mean, is this the internet, or what?