Austin Improv

"Indigo Shift" is a nod to Jordan's oft overlooked visual deficiencies. Personally I wanted "Corset Shift" but Kacey nixed that.

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

I believe that Oh, Science! was Kristin's idea. I think it's just exactly what it sounds like, invoking science. I still think we should be called The Masons.

The original cast of The Glamping Trip included Teresa Kubos (not yet York) and Delaney Liming (not yet Hernandez). In one scene in rehearsal Delaney was talking about going glamping and we all broke because we thought she had made it up. Afterward she assured us it was real. We assumed that it would never become popular enough to create a problem and we were right.

Hess and I were doing Meisner exercises in rehearsal (all wrong, as it turns out) and invited Jon Bolden to join us. When we played a show I suggested calling ourselves the Randy Meisner. I assumed that almost nobody would realize that was also the name of the first bassist for the Eagles and I was right.

Kareem and I were rehearsing for a two-person show and I used the phrase "gay blades" in a scene. Afterward he asked me about it because he'd never heard it. To get a suggestion for our next scene, he opened a book I was reading to a page I hadn't gotten to yet and the first words his eyes fell on were "gay blades." We decided to call ourselves Straight Blades because we're straight men in both senses of the term. We assumed that Gay Blades would be too distracting and we were right.

Your Dad's Friends were named at Barfly's on Airport Blvd. The name cones from a Bobcat Goldthwait stand-up bit in which he told about how creepy your dad's friends were growing up. We started the troupe to get a bunch of folks who played with Monk's Night Out and RP4GC back on stage. Matt Sadler recommended the name because we are older than dirt.

Galactic started life as Battlestar Gillacktucka. The original concept for the troupe was that each show would have a sci fi element. I believe I was watching BG at the time, but we respelled Galactica to include parts of both Lisa's and my own last name. Gill [J]ack, and the tucka which was an inside joke about a gnome from a different show. The gnome was named Tucka. Well, the name just confused everybody and most of our audience was expecting BG improv, so we took it down to just Galactic.

I'm pretty sure You're Not My Real Dad was named before Your Dad's Friends. We assumed that nobody else would pick a name that sounded almost exactly like that name and we were wrong.

ratliff wrote:I'm pretty sure You're Not My Real Dad was named before Your Dad's Friends. We assumed that nobody else would pick a name that sounded almost exactly like that name and we were wrong.

Meow.

I'm pretty sure ALL of the original members Your Dad's Friends were doing improv and running festivals long before anyone from Your Not My Real Dad. We hadn't heard of you because we had all stopped doing improv here. Except for Lampe. He has no excuse...

CORRECTION: Your Dad's Friends members had been doing improv in AUSTIN before anyone in You're Not My Real Dad... (always proofread before sending!!!)

Chuy! wrote:CORRECTION: Your Dad's Friends members had been doing improv in AUSTIN before anyone in You're Not My Real Dad... (always proofread before sending!!!)

Do you mean that they were doing improv as Your Dad's Friends before You're Not My Real Dad formed? Not that it really matters who got to what name first, I just couldn't tell from your post.

No. We were doing improv as other troupes. We named Your Dad's Friends without knowing that there was a troupe called You're Not My Real Dad in Austin... Sorry if I came off as snarky, but I answer snark with snark. The night that both troupes played at The Hideout was pretty awesome as I remember...

Very interesting thread. Really loved the story about how The Hideout got its name. Also funny how troupe titles and improvisor personalities flow together a lot more then I would have thought.

The duo Two Guys From Yonkers: Paul Normandin and I started playing these two guys with New York accents around level three at The Hideout. The whole thing started when I walked out and called Paul "Paulie" with the accent, which violated the whole "dont call someone by their name" non-rule rule to which Paul responded in kind with "Bobby", also in accent. We both sat down on some chairs and started to yammer, noticing that our peers seemed to enjoy the banter. These same two guys kept reappearing in later levels so when we got done with Level 6, the idea of "these two guys" evolved into Two Guys From Yonkers. The Yonkers piece, we debate how that name actually happened, really became a way to identify ourselves with a specific community, this in spite of the fact neither one of us had ever been to Yonkers. Our new format has us from Yonkers, England- which does not exist. It appears that "Yonkers" is becoming a fictional place that we can place anywhere, which is fun to play with.

Two Gents From Yonkershire

My newest troupe, You're Not Your Real Dad's Friends, got its name from this thread.

In Our Prime came from a place holder name when we started (pre-Jessica) - Tripod - Everyone hated it. Later we used Late Bloomers - a reference to the idea that we were all coming late to the Improv scene relatively speaking. Satisfied that Later Bloomers was a false start, we changed it to, "It'll Come to Us." Turns out it did and not much longer. We all liked the play on words and it still had the air of late bloomingness. I am not sure who said "In Our Prime" first, but we all agreed on the spot.

"The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my troupemates. Any vague memories of reality not completely agreed to by others in the troupe supersedes all potential accuracies in the language above and is subject to edits, rejection, deletion, public humiliation, and emotional realities."