Essential Electives are an ongoing class series on a different topic each week with one of Austin's crazy-talented performer/instructors. $15 for two hours of direct feedback on an essential improv skill.
Tuesday, September 14, 7-9pm
Follow Your Feet with Roy Janik
You can create perfectly crafted scenes or tell perfect stories, and they can still fall flat if there’s no joy in them. In this workshop Roy Janik (Hideout owner, Artistic Director, and director of Austin Secrets) will get you to play with idea of being playful… helping you to trust your instincts and follow your bliss. Often, the main thing getting in your way is yourself and your fear. You’ll learn specific techniques for being bold, confident, mischievous and playful.
Tuesday, September 21, 7-9pm
Inspiration Is In The Details with Kareem Badr
If improv is the constant search for inspiration, the most powerful tool you can give yourself and your partner is detail and specificity. Kareem Badr of Parallelogramophonograph (director of the Austin Theatresports Tournament and general manager of the Hideout Theatre) gives you the tips and tricks to turn your YesAnd into a powerhouse of definition that will inspire your partner, fuel your scene and elevate your play to a new level of effortlessness.
Tuesday, September 28, 7-9pm
Bettering Your Stage Presence with Kaci Beeler
Everything you do on stage should be done with purpose. In this workshop, Kaci Beeler of Parallelogramophonograph (director of Improvised Dickens and Who is T. Henry Baudecliffe?) will show you how to better present yourself onstage and in your improvised scene work. Are you talking too loudly or too softly? are you cheating out? do you place your chairs in a calm, friendly manner? Kaci offers a whole host of technical tips and beefs that will get you looking and feeling more confident on stage. You’ll learn how to create compelling stage pictures. You’ll get personal feedback. You’ll learn some unspoken rules of theater and improv etiquette. You’ll leave with some very practical skills that you can apply immediately to your work. BAM.
Tuesday, October 12, 7-9pm
Move Your Body with Jessica Arjet
Improv needs to engage the body just as much as the mind. In this class Jessica Arjet (Hideout owner, director Flying Theater Machine) will explore movement and space to bring life and excitement to your improv scenes. Let your characters inhabit your body, telegraph your moves to your partner and audience, and learn how to make dynamic use of the entire space.
Tuesday, October 19, 7-9pm
Dangerous Improv with Valerie Ward
If you want to improve as a performer, you need to do things that aren’t safe and easy. In this class, Valerie Ward of Parallelogramophonograph (Hideout instructor) will push you off a cliff, throw you under the bus, and toss you into the water without a life jacket. You will survive and flourish. You will feel exhilarated. You will return to your comfort zone to find it much enlarged. Please come prepared to have all your defenses shattered.
Tuesday, October 26, 7-9pm
Acting for Improvisers with Audrey Sansom
Improv is usually comedy, but the best improvisers aren’t just telling jokes — they’re acting. From blocking to Meisner, classically trained actress Audrey Sansom of Junk (director of Gnap!’s One More Night) will show you the tricks of the trade and help you beef up your actor’s tool belt. Come get your toes wet and learn to feel the moment.
Tuesday, November 9, 7-9pm
ATTACK OF THE GENRE! with Troy Miller
Playing genre on stage is great fun, and helps you make strong choices, characters and stories. Troy Miller of Junk (director of Start Trekkin’ and Hitchcocked!) will show you how to play in almost any genre (whether you know it well or not) by latching on to one or two key ideas, then fleshing out that improvised world using body language, establishing setting and mood, and utilizing conventions like narration, sound effects and playing multiple characters.
Tuesday, November 16, 7-9pm
Improv Tool Belt with Sean Hill
Ever been in an improv scene that you knew was coming apart at the seems but weren’t sure how to fix it? Sean Hill of Junk (Founding Owner and Artistic Director of the Hideout Theatre) will help you equip your improv tool belt and learn when and how to use the right tool fix your broken scenes. WARNING – This workshop may include laughter and fun.
Tuesday, November 9, 7-9pm
Building Sustainable Characters with Ted Rutherford
Ted loves big, physical characters as much as the next improviser. They get a lot a mileage in short form shows. However those characters are often "one note" and don't usually have the legs to carry you through a narrative long form. Ted Rutherford of Junk will help unpack those larger than life characters into ones with depth and dimension without losing their fun or energy. Participants will walk away with the tools and techniques needed to create big characters that are built to last.
Tuesday, January 25, 7-9pm
Improv, Hypnosis and Trance with Andy Crouch and Eric Walden
The best improv often happens in a trance state. Andy Crouch (Hideout Director of Education) will facilitate an experimental session with Eric Walden (hypnotherapist and Vegas-trained stage hypnotist). Eric will do a hypnotic induction after which we’ll do scenes, games and character interactions with anyone who goes under. Don’t worry, everyone knows you won’t do anything you don’t want to do while hypnotized — but I bet we’ll be able to make some funny, fascinating stuff happen.
Tuesday, February 8, 7-9pm
Romance and Intimacy on Stage with Kaci Beeler
Want to go deeper with your characters and relationships in improv? Want to get comfortable touching and being touched by your fellow actors onstage? Well, this cozy little two hour workshop by Kaci Beeler (Hideout Theatre performer and director) can help get you there. Whether you’re playing a husband and wife, brother and sister, or doctor and patient, you’re portraying an intimate relationship, with its own secret set of customs and traditions. While we can’t create an entire backstory for every relationship we portray onstage, we can convey greater emotional weight and depth by allowing true humanity to shine through in our scene work. Close those distances on stage and get closer, you’ll feel more deeply connected to your scene partners and, surprisingly enough, yourself. Please wear closed toed shoes to this workshop. Breath mints will be provided.
Tuesday, February 22, 7-9pm
This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared with John Ratliff
The useful skills we learn in class — agreement, game, “rules” of scenework — are only a means to an end. The real improv starts once we let go of what we’ve learned and start playing completely in the moment … but it’s easy, and tempting, to play it safe and keep clinging to the guardrail of technique. In this workshop with John Ratliff (Coldtowne instructor and Hideout performer) you’ll explore ways to ground your improv in the immediate reality of here and now, no matter what’s going on in your scene. Participants in this class should be comfortable playing characters much like themselves in emotionally realistic scenes.
Tuesday, March 8, 7-9pm
Attack From the Side: Support and Editing with Roy Janik
Even if you’re not in the scene, you’re in the scene. Even when you’re standing in the wings, the whole show is your show…which means that you should always be ready to jump into the fray at a moment’s notice. But when, why and how should you support a scene? When do you edit or end a scene? What are the different types of edits, and when is it appropriate to use each kind? Roy Janik (Hideout Artistic Director and member of Parallelogramophonograph) will help you explore all these questions in this class.
Tuesday, March 22, 7-9pm
Group Scenes with Valerie Ward
Most improv instruction focuses on the building block of improv — the two-person scene. But often you’ll find yourself onstage with 2, 3, or up to ten other people. How can you apply all the subtle skills of a two person scene to a huge clusterf*ck like that? In this workshop, Valerie Ward, (Hideout instructor and member of Parallelogramophonograph) will give the tools to be a vital and supportive part of every group scene, not just another body on stage. We’ll explore techniques for grounded and patient ensemble work, high-energy scene painting, and the joys of joining, among others. Come prepared to be selfless and giving. And invite all your friends — the more the merrier!
Tuesday, March 29, 7-9pm
Crossing the Streams with Cody Dearing
If Ghostbusters taught us anything (but what didn’t it teach us?) it is that four individual lasers aren’t as powerful as four lasers focused together to make one GIANT SUPER LASER. In this workshop Cody Dearing (Instructor with ColdTowne and Dallas Comedy House) will work on the practical skills that help improvisers build their scenes together: Simple listening and reacting. Working line by line. “Burning the leaves” on one idea at a time.
Tuesday, April 12, 7-9pm
The Emotional Body with Jessica Arjet
If you trust your body, listen to it and follow its impulses, it will lead you to powerfully funny and emotional scene work. In this workshop with Jessica Arjet (Hideout owner, director of Flying Theater Machine) you’ll approach bodily expression from the inside out and the outside in. Wear comfortable clothes and be prepared to work those emotions. Get ready to use your entire body to express your inner soul!
Tuesday, April 26, 7-9pm
Honing Your Instincts with Kristin Firth
Learning to trust yourself on stage is crucial. If you get into your actor/improv head too much, you can lose not just being in the moment, but your own unique energy that makes you a one-of-a-kind improviser. We all have slightly different perspectives, and that can be extremely interesting to an audience and your fellow performers, if you can strip away the censors and be open to sharing. In this workshop with Kristin Firth (Hideout performer and Institution instructor) we will work on reacting in a way that is raw and unfiltered. We’ll play with following impulses and tapping into your animal brain and basic instincts.
Tuesday, May 10, 7-9pm
Mastering Maestro with Andy Crouch
Maestro can either be a harrowing attack on your self worth OR an amazing exercise in letting go and the most fun you’ll have all week. In this workshop with Andy Crouch (Hideout education director) you’ll learn to throw your hands in the air like you just don’t care, attack every game and scene with mischief and generosity, and turn that two into a five. You’ll even pick up a few secret tricks for the Maestro games that come up again and again. This is Austin’s most popular improv show, and if you let it, Maestro will give you everything you’ll ever need for the rest of your improv life.
Tuesday, May 17, 7-9pm
See It To Be It with Lisa Jackson
Are you in danger of turning into a talking head on stage? Seeing only a stage with two chairs, living in your verbal brain and making all your contributions with words? Lisa Jackson (ColdTowne instructor and Austin Secrets cast member) will show you how to stop struggling with words to set up your scenes, let your visual imagination inform your improv, and find the relationship, character and environment by mentally painting them.
Tuesday, May 24, 7-9pm
NO FLINCHING!!! with Jason Vines
We’ve all been in those cringe-worthy scenes, just praying we’ll get edited or that someone will pull the lights and end our misery. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes you have to sit out there and cook while the audience glares in disapproving silence. Jason Vines (Improv for Evil, Simply D-VINE, Karaoke God) aims to show you that it ain’t so bad and that a little bit of “stage balls” goes a long way. He’ll show you tips and tricks for making it through the rough spots and turning bad scenes better. Sometimes the only way out is through and there is only one rule…NO FLINCHING!!!
Tuesday, May 31, 7-9pm
Improvising Shakespeare with Andy Crouch
Improv is awesome. Shakespeare is the bomb. If only there were some way to do both of them at the same time. Andy Crouch (Hideout education director, director of Improvised Shakespeare) will give you a crash course on improvising in the style of William Shakespeare. You’ll learn to speak the speech, cut a caper, tear a passion to tatters, devise impossible slanders, and spin a metaphor apt and pretty. Whether you’re just trying to get through a scene in Maestro or if you have grander designs of playing in our next run of Improvised Shakespeare. No experience necessary!
Tuesday, June 21, 7-9pm
Fear is the Mindkiller with Marc Majcher
Fear is something that every improviser struggles with on a regular basis. Fear that you’re not funny enough, not clever enough, not smart enough, or simply not interesting enough to be on stage at all. That very fear is enough to bring all of your worst nightmares of failure true, so Marc Majcher (Improv for Evil, Hideout instructor) will help you recognize and demolish those fears, smashing the walls that hold you back from what you’re truly capable of doing. Meet your monsters head on, and see that they’re not all that scary, after all.
Tuesday, June 28, 7-10pm
Intro to Musical Improv with Kacey Samiee
Sometimes improv needs a little razzle dazzle. Kacey Samiee (Girls Girls Girls, Hideout performer) will lead you through the basics of musical improv in both short form shows and long form narrative. Learn to seamlessly weave in and out of song, communicate with the musical improviser, work as an ensemble or solo singer, apply song structure, and take a first crack at this amazing (and totally freakin’ scary) form of improv.
Tuesday, July 19, 7-9pm
Andy is Mean To You with Andy Crouch
Andy is probably wasting his time even trying to tell you what this workshop is about. You’ve spent how many hours in improv classes, and Andy Crouch (Hideout education director and honestly just tired) still has to watch you flail around the stage sucking air like a fish? Jesus Christ. Well the molly coddling is over and if you want Andy’s unvarnished and possibly drunk instruction, then show up. Because in your heart of hearts you are dirty and broken and you crave this.
Tuesday, July 26, 7-10pm
Physicality in Improv with Asaf Ronen
Learn what blocks you from throwing yourself more into your body and your environment when you improvise. By freeing up the body, students will discover new characters, different approaches to creating a relationship onstage, and tools to add variety to their scene work. Asaf Ronen (education director of the Institution Theater and Hideout director/performer) will push you to minimize the reliance on dialogue and communicate solely through physical nuance using techniques that incorporate elements of clowning, mime, and environmental work into your improvisation.
Tuesday, August 16, 7-9pm
Download From The Annoyance with Kristin Firth
There’s more than one way to improvise skinning a cat. Kristin Firth (Hideout performer and Institution instructor) just attended a week-long intensive at the Annoyance Theater in Chicago. In this workshop she’ll distill 30 hours of instruction by some of the legends there — Mick Napier, Mark Sutton, Susan Messing, Rebecca Sohn and Rich Sohn — into a two-hour sample platter of her favorite exercises and bits of wisdom from the Chicagoans.
Tuesday, August 23, 7-9pm
Jump Into the Fire with Chris Allen
Improv has never killed anyone, so why do you hesitate at the top of scenes? Why do you flap and flounder as if drowning? How do you start a scene?! A GOOD scene?! And then continue it?! C.J. Allen (Confidence Men, Two Man Polanski and Hideout performer) has picked up some cool improv tips and tools over the years and he wants to share them with you so that you play with more confidence and commitment. Follow him out of the improv escape hatch to more scintillating scene work!
Tuesday, September 13, 7-9pm
The Real World of Absurd-Absurd Scenes with Josh Gill and Lisa Jackson
How often have you had to drop your drunken ogre because your scene partner initiated a filthy-minded wizard? Josh Gill and Lisa Jackson (Coldtowne instructors and Hideout performers) will help you plant your feet in a scene where there is no “straight” man. You will learn the essential tricks of making your absurd-absurd scene workable and sustainable. We’ll teach you how to BECOME that drunken ogre and how to react when the filthy wizard makes a pass at you.
Wednesday, September 28, 7-9pm
Emphasis on the AND! with Josh Gill
Does it look like your scene partner is bored? Do they leave every scene with you sweating and huffing? That’s what happens when you have to build a house all by yourself. So give them a hAnd. Joshua Gill (Coldtowne instructor and Hideout performer) will help you bring your focus back around to the most essential half of this most essential of improv “rules”.
Wednesday, October 5, 7-9pm
Telling the Story with Troy Miller
At the heart of all comedy is drama. And drama is the story. Whether you’re playing a single short scene or a longer improvised narrative, Troy Miller (Hideout instructor and director of Start Trekkin’) will explore easy, powerful techniques for creating vibrant stories. If you’re a writer or other creative artist, it will super charge your work by giving you tools for brainstorming, developing a story world, heightening the drama and powering through road blocks.
