Austin Improv

jaybyrd wrote:Oh, and why aren't there more gay improvisers and improvisers of color in Austin?

I feel like gay imps are pretty well-represented; could always be more, but still.

As to color, Jay might be delicately asking why there aren't more black imps. I don't know, but I want more of 'em! I love the ones we've got, and I love diversity onstage (of skin color, but more importantly, of life experience).

happywaffle wrote: As to color, Jay might be delicately asking why there aren't more black imps. I don't know, but I want more of 'em! I love the ones we've got, and I love diversity onstage (of skin color, but more importantly, of life experience).

Everyone would agree there's a disproportionate number of white guys in almost any kind of setting like this. Improv. Theater. Film. Congress.

Austin is actually doing pretty good compared to say... Los Angeles.

I've talked to folks about this over the past two years. Most recently Andrew Wesley cornered me about it and it forced me to flesh out & solidify my theory. I call the theory the Ten White Guys and the One Hot Chick theory.

It boils down to In-Groups and Social Dynamics.

Social dynamics. Nobody is actively turning gays and minorities away. But it just happens that it's harder to make them feel included when a certain in-crowd already exists. Fair?

Example. You might play Dungeons and Dragons on the weekends. You might have a pool party. While you are not actively excluding ANY type of person you are probably more prone to invite a classmate who is similar to you. Has similar tastes.

Hence Ten White Guys happens naturally.


Why the Hot Chick?

Because the Hot Chick can adapt the easiest to this in-group. She will be invited back, not just once- but over and over again. She is able to "stick" with the in-group. Whereas other types of folks are constantly bouncing in and out of the in-group due to the risk of feeling excluded.


Ten White Guys and One Hot Chick. I don't mean the "Chick" part to be derogatory, I built the idea off an already existing trope.


If you can build a smaller in-group that is more culturally represented you will speak to those people who normally wouldn't dive into the perceived risks of fitting in with 300 white guys. A hispanic person would feel a little more inspired to take an improv class after seeing a "Shades of Brown" or "Delta Burka" show compared to a Ten White Guys show. In fact I've seen this happen. They might sign up because the idea of playing with that in-group has tremendously lowered their psychological risk of feeling isolated or excluded.

"I don't get it. He was taking classes and one day he just stopped showing up."

It happens. The best idea is not to be PC about it. Or act like it's even a thing by putting the "token" minority guy on display. Doing so adds a dis-genuine layer to it and even more pressure.

About eight months ago there was a group of four black guys who kept coming back over and over again for the Level Zero Class. Literally every week they would be there playing the same games and pretending to learn the same basics. They would help newcomers along through the games. This went on for eight weeks. They were practically teaching others improv and were totally in love with the form. I wanted so badly for those guys to sign up for classes but I also didn't want to be the politically correct white guy encouraging them for the wrong reasons. "Hey guys I want you to sign up so we have less white guys scaring people away." See I never said that.

Instead I asked them what their situation was and encouraged them to take the class. But ultimately I think they had time management & financial issues.

If only I had invited them to come play Dungeons and Dragons.

I'll add that's another reason I'm not insanely head-over-heels about the forums.

I have a love-hate relationship with it.

An online forum may be an exciting prospect to myself. I'm a fairly introverted guy who excels at online communication. People who share that trait with me will take full advantage of the forums for new opportunities. But we are culling ourselves to be a group of improvisers who also happen to love online forums.


That's becoming another in-group. Just so you know I did broadcast an announcement for "Every Imp on the Forums Day" for Andy as a sign of good faith regardless.


But try some sign-ups through email some day. If someone associates perceived risk with online forums they will be at a significant disadvantage for sticking around next year. Experiment with different sign up methods: email, sign up sheet in the theater, direct phone calls, answering machine. Decentralize your methods and see which populations of society present themselves.

Introverts? Extroverts? Young? Old? Tall? Short?



Hell, I'm even in an improv yacht club on facebook now that I think about it.

Spots wrote:But try some sign-ups through email some day. If someone associates perceived risk with online forums they will be at a significant disadvantage for sticking around next year. Experiment with different sign up methods: email, sign up sheet in the theater, direct phone calls, answering machine. Decentralize your methods and see which populations of society present themselves.

For audition announcements via email to work, the person holding auditions would need to know the email address of everyone who might want to audition; obviously, that's impossible.

The forum serves two purposes; there's the discussion aspect, which is what you and I like and feel comfortable with but others might not, and there's the public bulletin board function, where notices are posted that in days gone by would have been put up on an actual physical bulletin board or in a newsletter. I don't see the latter function as at all exclusionary, except to people who lack access to computers.

Well whatever kind of signups. I wasn't referring to Austin-wide auditions per se.


Block Party for instance is an Open Mike. For that format it works best to distribute Rob's phone number so artists can hit him up throughout the week. On a weekly basis.


A theater might have a signup for an individual group of people "Level 3's and above." It's obvious how that type of situation is handled. As I imagine emails are already going out in the thousands.

So people are already experimenting.


This is jaybyrd's what? Third? Fifth time to the forum within the year?


And nobody would make the claim he's not part of the community. Just highlighting that while we are drawn to the forums, others are not.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Jaybird seems to have found plenty of opportunities despite only visiting the forum a few times. Every time I see him he's in a show. How do you do it, you magical man?

On the subject of improvisors of color: When we say "group mind" we really mean "prevailing thought." It's hard to be the one alternate voice, all eyes are on you. So you need to somehow start with A LOT of improvisors of color, so that people can go have babies or move to other cities without leaving someone to be "the black guy."

I feel like we've got some lost generations, which is why I try to get teens involved in improv so we have some future improvisors of color.

Magical man? OK, well there's a fresh hint of sarcasm.


All I'm saying is that this forum is limited to symbolizing a particular In-Group of people. I've tried to get folks in the community to join and for varying reasons they either are or are not interested. This isn't limited to Jaybird. Jill, on the race subject I will back you up in saying starting with alot of people of color is the easiest way. Not the only way. But you need an existing in-group to help encourage new individuals. The more folks you identify with, the less risk you perceive.



Says a man in California to a woman in Minnesota.

Actually, Jesse, a lot of the ways you feel about the forum is how I feel about Facebook. I'm somewhat addicted to it, to be sure, and I don't feel that it's healthy. I foresee a day when I want to be rid of it, but the ubiquity of it for the improv groups I'm a part of would make that just shy of impossible. I really hate it.

The forum, at the very least, is run by one of us, not for profit, and I can find what someone wrote a year ago without a problem. These things put it way above Facebook in my book.

hmm...i actually knew considerably more black improvisors in LA than here in Austin. i suppose proportionate to the overall number of improvisors in the two cities it might wash out to about equal, but then we'd need to do breakdowns of overall city populations and demographics, urban versus suburban, etc. and that just makes my head hurt.

but more diversity, yes please. i've often wondered if it's more a reflection of socioeconomic status and how that relates to race in this country. but then i see something shiny and get distracted. alas...

Jordan, I haven't seen enough shows to judge diversity among LA comedians. You are most likely right.


I phrased that incorrectly. Aside from cultural diversity In-Groups here skew toward looks more than elsewhere in the country. I'm referring rather broadly to everything-- not improv specifically. So you might have a theater company where every man on stage is a model.

That could be the draw of Hollywood crosscutting the population ... or just bias among particular In-Groups. I don't know. It's LA.


This city is too damn big to get your head around.

LA improv amazed me in its disconnectedness. No one seemed to even know what anyone was doing outside of their own theater. I had to be the one to introduce James Bailey and Todd Stashwick, which is stupid, they're both titans of LA improv in their own circles.

By contrast, Austin fights hard to all work together despite it all. It's worth being proud of.

You're right of course!! It's great to find other modes of communication to reach out. Recently I founded the Twin Cities' first African American improv troupe by just introducing people to each other by email, Facebook and in person.

That's cool Jillbee! Keep it going!

I see alot of cool things about LA improv. But disconnectedness IS the name of the game from what I'm detecting.

From talks with students here, mostly UCB folks, you really have to fight for a sense of community. The few shows I've seen there are students in the audience waving at each other from across the room but it's really not about that sense of bearhugging the theater and going to barbeques together.

In order to get that tight knit sense of community you got to bearhug the folks you are taking classes with. Which could be hard if folks see classes as a stepping stone to Saturday Night Live or something. (which is a very real thing considering how many industry peeps dip into all the theaters here. The hotshot screenwriting book everyone suggests personally recommends classes at UCB to aspiring writers. )

The other hopeful community vibe I've picked up on, and this is the huge one, is the independent improv scene.

People graduate from UCB or iO and create their own weeknight improv jams. I went to one called Crash Bar and the feeling of community was pretty awesome. It felt like a majority of UCB students. Because they had that fast-paced cerebral game style.

People meet and play with each other and create "indie troupes" outside of the five big theaters. So that's very good to know about LA. Alot of folks don't even seem that hung up on making the AssssCat crew which is what I would expect.

They're just happy doing their thing in the indie scene. And there's nobody out here who doesn't know what improv is so it's very marketable. I saw Matt Donnelly perform with Neutrino at the LA Improv, which is SOOO confusing. The LA Improv is not an improv club, it is standup club. So I showed up and asked about the improv show and the ticket guy was all like "You're in the wrong place bro." But I was like "No no no, I know there's confusion about this club and improvisation but there actually IS improv tonight. Sell me my ticket dude."

So the sense of community is there. The theaters can be more like institutions where you have to bearhug your In-Group and set up shop doing your own thang. That just comes with high demand.

Can be disconnected for sure.

My understanding is that there are jams every night of the week all over town and I'll need to hit those up immediately and report back. Also still haven't seen a show at iO so if anyone has a recommendation please send it my way. Is Crackowski still lurking here? :)

the L.A. scene actually got marginally better while i was out there about community and connectedness, but only so you'd notice if you'd been there for a few years. mostly it seemed to be among improvisors who had been around for a while and had decided to study at multiple theatres, and thus would perform/know people who were performing at multiple theatres. oddly, some of the people i knew out there who wanted more of a community cited coming to Austin for OOB and such and seeing how THIS community works as one of their inspirations. so...y'know...go us. :p i have no idea if it's improved even more or backslid since i left. but i hope for the former.

Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell wrote:i have no idea if it's improved even more or backslid since i left. but i hope for the former.

This must become impossible to maintain the more competition there is in the marketplace. As a performer it's not that difficult juggling all the different stages. But you reach a conundrum when you try to promote / market more than one brand at a time.

It's beyond an audience's attention span.

You can do the obvious and Brand those 5 brands under one name. But now you've created a sixth brand to juggle. You better have a good pitch for audiences just so they can follow you.


I can see how insularity would be a huge, huge uphill battle in Los Angeles. But as I've stated there's some promising stuff.