Why's your troupe called that?

[B. Tribe]

'Best Friends Club of Austin' started as 'Best Friends Club'. The name probably came to me while I was in the car or something. I walked up to Joshua Phillips one afternoon outside of Coldtowne and said "I want to be in a 2 person troupe with you and call it 'Best Friends Club'." Later I added 'of Austin' because it seems funny to me that there's a worldwide network of best friend clubs which would only have 2 people in them for each city.

And for "Faster, Robot!"...

Brett Tribe posted to Lisa Michelle Jackson
June 20, 2011
When are we going to get to play together? Two person troupe? "Faster Robot Kill Kill"?

Lisa Michelle Jackson
Heck yeah! DOES compute. I would love to play with you. You're the bees knees.

I came up with the name as I was typing. From the film 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!'

MORAL: I'LL COME UP WITH THE NAMES SHUT UP

[Katie T.]

I think Snackers rehearsed in the auditorium right after Bad Boys was christened that night!

[kaci_beeler]

Adventure Squad!: Valerie and I developed this duo group specifically to submit to the Ladies Are Funny Festival in...2008? The whole premise originally was that these two 11-year-old girls were denied entry into the Girl Scouts, so they bought a manual for a scout league called "Adventure Squads" on the internet. When the manual came it was just a couple of sheets of paper stapled together with strange Merit Badges scrawled on it. Ever brave and fearless, the two girls decided to earn all of the merit badges, by interpreting what they might mean in each episode.
We did this for our first show, and it was awesome, but later we took out the merit badge stuff and just had fun with the idea of going on new pre-teen "adventures" together, like a Jesus Camp, a Christian Rock Concert, etc.
Also, we thought it was fun that "squad" was in our name and there is only ever 2 of us.

The Amazon and the Milksop: This is my duo with Curtis Luciani. We first started improving together in the Hideout show "This Week Tonight" that happened on Fridays at 8pm at the Hideout from 2008-2009 or so? We had a couple of scenes together through the course of the run where Curtis played a more effeminate character and I played a more masculine character. In these scenes we worked with some interesting status stuff, and it was a ton of fun. We decided to try this idea of playing with gender roles in a longer show. Thus, our duo was born. An "amazon" is a somewhat derogatory name for an aggressive or imposing woman and a "milksop" is a derogatory name for a feeble or ineffectual man, the word derived from the dish of bread soaked in milk, which was fed to infants and invalids.
We thought more people would recognize these two words, but many seemed to not have heard of them. No matter! In the years since we started working together we've moved on from just looking at gender in our improv, but I still feel like it forms the basis of how we work. I like it!

[happywaffle]

What about Pgraph? I've always wondered.

[trabka]

I think Snackers rehearsed in the auditorium right after Bad Boys was christened that night!

Probably, we never erased anything we ever wrote on the boards when we rehearsed at RLM. Some high level mischief.

I'm sure there've been a number of math classes confused by things like "Ratliff's Spectrum of Yes" and "Ratliff's History of Arguing about Johnstone vs. Chicago Style Improv."

[Brad Hawkins]

What about Pgraph? I've always wondered.

That's short for "Parallelogramophonograph."

[happywaffle]

What about Pgraph? I've always wondered.

That's short for "Parallelogramophonograph."

Ohhhhh.

[kbadr]

What about Pgraph? I've always wondered.

The short short version: booze + an aggressive acceptance and heightening of bad ideas.

[kaci_beeler]

From our Austin Chronicle article circa Dec 2011:
"After a long, tedious search for a group name in which hundreds of options were considered and discarded, a somewhat alcohol-lubricated Janik offered "Parallelogramophone." Immediately, Badr built on it with "Parallelogramophonograph." They tried it out on some friends, and since it made them laugh, it stuck."

[jkg79]

Oh, Science was born out of a Google spreadsheet of well over 200 possible names. We all got together in a room with some pizza, and basically narrowed it down, then went through a voting/vetoing process until we narrowed it down to Oh, Science! (with the proper punctuation. I still think we should have been called The Masons.

[happywaffle]

Any idea where the name "Oh, Science!" actually came from?

[Jon Bolden]

Roy and I started Squirrel Buddies because we wanted to do really positive improv (at least to start). I don't even remember who said it first, but it sounded so ridiculous and it stuck. Since then people have told us we should consider changing our name if want to be taken more seriously. I say "poo poo" to that. The Beatles is one of the dumbest names of all time.

[Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell]

Roy and I started Squirrel Buddies because we wanted to do really positive improv (at least to start). I don't even remember who said it first, but it sounded so ridiculous and it stuck. Since then people have told us we should consider changing our name if want to be taken more seriously. I say "poo poo" to that. The Beatles is one of the dumbest names of all time.

WHAT? but it's the name of a bug slightly altered in its spelling to include an element of music! THAT'S BRILLIANT!

[Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell]

The Awkwards were thusly dubbed by Aaron Saenz around our third rehearsal or so. we'd had discussions about troupe names up to that point but hadn't happened upon anything we liked (except for, potentially, Sexball. which I still want to use someday. :p ). then, after several scenes involving characters nervously discussing their feelings or blurting out highly (and often sexually) inappropriate comments, Aaron just casually said with a chuckle and a grin, "can we just call ourselves The Awkwards?" and everyone knew at once that, yes, we could.

[poltergasm]

Mandinka is named Mandinka because the song "Mandinka" popped up on my Pandora "Simply Red" station while sitting around thinking up potential troupe names. It's a pretty kick-ass representation of early-90s Eurotrash pop music by Ms. Sinead O'Connor. And it kind of contains the names of its two members: "Mia" and "Andy."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QFPfSfLi-Q[/youtube]

http://facebook.com/mandinkaimprov