Austin Improv

comedysportz was on 6th street? a-WHAAAA? never knew that.

Dad's Garage Theater in Atlanta. Probably an original Theater Sports show with the original cast of guys who all went to Florida State or FSU together. So loose. So funny. So cute. I was probably 15 at the time. So I don't know if I had a crush on the guys or loved the art form. I just knew I wanted to be up on stage with those guys having fun.

And that's still one way I judge shows today--do I want to hop up on stage and play with those people? Does my heart flitter at the thought of being invited to the bar with them after the show?

Talking with Kacey last night, she said that the first ever improv show she saw was The Free Falling Mouth Actors (I think), at Westwood High, which I think was just The Well Hung Jury in disguise, because they couldn't perform at a highschool with their dick joke of a name.

Lamb, is that right? Free Falling Mouth Actors?

Free-Falling Malefactors
It was a troupe Jon Benner created after 3 of the jurors left to go to college, but we were all still in the gruop. I eventually worked out a way to just combine them because it was unnecesary. two names. one cast. it seemed odd.
sometimes we would just go as Hung Jury at westwood. sometimes we would put a picture of a well before hung jury on fiers and what not, but yeah there were like two shows where we were the free-falling malefactors.

i think jon got it from Hamlet. "until presently they have proclaimed their malefactions." their wrongdoings.

I've been lurking on this thread for a while, but haven't posted anything as I know this is going to be long. But heck, you've all made me think about these experiences, so I thought I'd share. I'm sure I had seen some episodes of the British Whose line at the time, but the first live improv I ever saw was probably some lame college town barprov in Iowa City in the early 90s. Totally forgot the troupe name. My roommate Matt Nelson was in the group, and he'd just quit his pre-med track and had gotten bitten hard by the comedy bug. As a theatrical experience it wasn't much.....


BUT

Matt graduated a couple years before me and moved to Chicago (he's now in Felt, the puppet troupe that plays/played? at IO and took some Second City Classes with Erika May, I believe--who'd have thought a couple of small town Iowa boys would both still be in the comedy game almost 20 years out) and I would drive over from Iowa City sometimes and we'd go see shows.

The one of two I remember best was the Sedaris/Colbert cast at Second City. This was probably in '93. Amy Sedaris is the only name I remembered from the show--she was just unbelievably great--so correct me if I'm wrong about Colbert being in that cast. Can't remember the name of the revue. Anyway, at the time I didn't understand much about the Second City process and how most of what I was seeing was scripted, but I thought it was awesome and I had some vague impression that I had seen some improvisation at some point in the set.

About the same time, maybe on a different trip, spring of '94 say, saw some shows at the old Annoyance, hot off their success with Brady Bunch. Saw one full-on improv show with Mick Napier that I thought was just ok, but then I saw a late night show that was scripted but came out of their improv process--Brainwarp II: That Baby Eater. Something like that, Tom Booker would probably know. It was a glorious, disastrous mindfuck of a show. Just wonderfully, gleefully, self-consciously campy and well, bad, in all senses of the word. This year at Seattle talking with Mark and Joe from Bassprov, I discovered that both were in it--Joe as a giant bouffanted transsexual named Chili Dog and Mark Sutton as Brainwarp's vaguely Clockwork Orangish minion, LeFoote. This show included probably my favorite line ever: "Hahha, you can't kill a wig!" shouted as the hero tries to shoot a remote controlled wig ( a dude wiggling around under a homemade blanket of glued-on cotton balls) at the top of the Washington Monument, from which Brainwarp was conspiring to physically throw a nuclear bomb. You get the idea. Still one of my top five theater experiences ever, I'd say.

BUT

So, still no full on improv that made me say, "Oh ho, this is the thing! This is all made up and it really and truly is the thing!" That came when I saw Dad's Garage's in Atlanta in Scandal in its first season in 1998. Just. Totally. Amazing. I think our mutual affection for Dad's Garage is one of the reasons Shana and I like playing with each other as much as we do, and I'd say they are one of the most criminally underrated improv groups in the country, maybe because they really operate more like a theater company and don't tour and do festivals much, I don't know. But if you're in Atlanta, go check them out, just totally the coolest people and a lot of the original members are still there.

Then I left Atlanta and went to grad school to learn I wasn't going to be the next David Foster Wallace and moved to Austin with a huge theater jones in 2000. Both the Hideout and Bad Dog were open at the time and I kind of flipped a coin as to where I was going to take classes. For some vague reason I chose the Hideout--I think I liked the intimacy of the stage more than the cavern that was the Bad Dog. The first person I met was Shana. Ace Manning and Kacey Samiee were both in my class and both, I think, were still in high school.

I want to say it was the same evening as my first class, I'm not sure, but the first improv show I saw in Austin was the very first Six Degrees, which premiered as part of the late, lamented MOMFest. The cast was Jeremy Lamb, Craig Kotfas, Jon Benner, Amy McCurdy, Sean Hill, and maybe Shana? I was hooked, and haven't really looked back since.

Thanks for letting me take this digressive trip down memory lane and to stitch together the various threads that make up my pre-improv history. Y'all drive safe now, you hear.

I'm an unusual one in that I was taking a class at the Hideout and almost done with Level 1 with Shana before actually watching a show. I started in on the classes because my friend Corey Huinker told me I should take it, just as a 'lesson in life' - applicable to many situations. Being involved in theatre since High School, through College and doing some community theatre later on....it also attracted me to reconnect with that side of life.

It kills me to think of it now, but since our classes took place in the downstairs theater at the Hideout, I didn't even know the upstairs theater existed until Corey found out that I hadn't actually seen a show and invited me out to a Maestro he was playing in. It was shortly before he left for New York and I think the cast rigged it for him to win. I could be wrong. I thought it was a great show and remember that Amy Holloway was also in the cast...kind of funny since we now know each other by a very circuitous route.

Anyways - I really enjoyed it and the drinks with the cast afterwards at the Stephen F. Austin - and have stayed involved since. The second show I saw was a Start Trekkin' with a French co-worker of mine who was visiting. It was a great show but it didn't translate well.

Dad's Garage in Atlanta while I was a student at Georgia Tech. My combinatorics professor explained to us that they charged patrons whatever dollar amount came up when they rolled two dice and how that meant we should only plan on paying $7.

They had some kind of week-to-week rolling long-form narrative. It made no sense to me. Something about a really evil monster-king guy and his do-gooder kid who were playing a high stakes game of softball against the area wizard and his loosely affiliated coalition of anti-monarchists.

Two parts of the show still crack me up to the point where I laugh out loud. One was when the wizard guy got so confused that the king had to ask him if he "had any idea what was going on", and the other was in a little short form scene they did as an intermission where they had a beautiful platform tilt thing about this guy who sold art... ah forget it, it will never make sense.

It was a fun show and gives me an 'in' whenever Shana starts talking about Dad's Garage.

I'm with Miggy. I didn't actually see a show until I was half-way into my Level 1 class. I was taking improv because my agent told me to. Until then, I didn't know it stood alone as an art. I certainly spend more time in improv than film or stage. I'm invested.

My first was Pavlov's Dogs, a short-form troupe. I was given a free ticket by a co-worker who'd just seen them. They did well, good first show.

other than practicing improv as an exercise in high school theatre (as every other Westwood alum has put) and imported Whose Line on PBS and Comedy Central...first shows i ever saw were both, i believe, Monks sub-troupes at the Velveeta Room, and both because guys i was friends with in Westwood theatre were in them. the first was, i believe, Code Blue with Joplin and the second was Los Paranoias with the Bearded one. never actually considered performing myself...then the end of my junior year, Jeremy decided to put a troupe together. i had to duck in and out of auditions as i was also rehearsing the spring musical, Sound of Music, wherein i played one Captain Georg Von Trapp. understandably, i didn't quite make the cut. but they needed someone to get shot and spit blood all over the audience for the final scene in their debut show as Mad Ezekiel and the Oedipus Freaks...so i got drafted, watched the whole show, slipped a blood capsule in my mouth as the sketch started, stood up and tried to say my line as clearly as possible with a blood capsule slowly dissolving in my mouth, then ran as Jeremy pulled a fake gun on me, did a prat fall and spat fake blood on Jon Benner's dad as i fell.

the next show was in Jeremy's back yard. Aaron couldn't be there, so i filled in. it was the first time we went by Well Hung Jury. and it would take a few more years for Bill Stern to join and make us truly sweet.

The first improv show I saw I was actually in. It was with GGG at LAFF some 3 or 4 years ago. I had no idea what I was doing and if I saw it on tape now I'd probably be yelling at myself through the screen. I do remember I felt that I'd overplayed, and so at my second show I made a point of hanging back. I got more criticism for that strategy than I did for my first show so I quickly abandoned that approach. It really wasn't until I'd amassed a little more knowledge about the process and the quirks and strengths of the ladies themselves that I began to get a bit comfortable.

Comfortable may not be the right word, though. I should say, rather, that it took about a year until my bag of tricks got deep enough that I felt that at least I wasn't going to screw anything up royally. Since then it's been a matter of trying to push my boundaries a little bit every time I see a chance to, so the ol' bag of tricks gets deeper. I also try to practice being more "in the moment" and not digging around in said bag as much. Nevertheless, I'm a thinker who doesn't do the "in the moment" thing very easily (part of the reason I've never had a yen to go Ratliff and be an improv performer). It's rare for me to really let go and react. I'm usually sitting up there with 10-20 possible options in my head based on what I'm seeing and looking at the performers for cues to steer me towards one of them. One of my biggest joys are those occasional moments when a performer does something I didn't see coming from any direction and I'm really forced to think on my feet. That's probably as close as I'll ever come to real improvising.

Which, slightly off topic, brings me to the question. Is being a good improviser, like being a good musician, more a question of having a really large toolbox and the reaction time necessary to get to and use your tools quickly? Or is it really more about being a blank slate?

Ponder that, if you will...

The first show I saw was at the Velveeta Room. I'm not sure when. Late 90's. It was Ray Pruitt's 4th Grade Class. I knew a lot of the players through the 'theatre' world and sat behind some lady that obviously played with them or knew them. She kept yelling out suggestions. I think it was some short form. I enjoyed seeing my friends on stage. I also remember lobbing terrible suggestions to 'stump the chumps'. Macramé was one of them. I was a jackass.

Available Cupholders Dec 2007 on accident (thought I was seeing something else but forgot what). I walked home that night to my place on south congress with my hands in my face like "wow, what have I been missing?" and then *rocket launch*

James Snacker wrote:Dad's Garage in Atlanta while I was a student at Georgia Tech. .....
They had some kind of week-to-week rolling long-form narrative. It made no sense to me. Something about a really evil monster-king guy and his do-gooder kid who were playing a high stakes game of softball against the area wizard and his loosely affiliated coalition of anti-monarchists.

I saw an episode of this too! It was "Scandal!" their yearly soap opera, which is set in a different location/time/style every year. This was during the Lord of the Rings movie hype and it was Fantasy Scandal. And people had these crazy costumes and characters. I remember there was a viking store called "Linens 'und Tings". Like you, there are a few lines from that show that Jon and I still use to crack ourselves up.

In current news, Dads Garage just got a new Artistic Director, from Edmonton. http://a.ss7.chennells.com/new/en_send_ ... D=10271138

ps- I'm so tickled that I was in several people's first improv shows they say. I was even in Los Paranoias at the Velveeta Room back in the day.

The first improv show I saw was during freshman orientation at Rice University. The troupe was Spontaneous Combustion and I can't say I was inspired by that evening's show. Then many years later, my friend who I taught with at the Alley Theatre invited me to see her perform in Houston with her improv troupe F*Squared (Alison Coriell and Michael Garcia). The show had crazy story lines that they linked together in delightful ways and they acted out compelling and varied characters. I loved it so much that it led me to see them at Out of Bounds in 2007 along with some headliners (Matt quite possibly handed me my ticket), see Junk (Wafflefest?), and sign up for improv classes at The Hideout.

UCB tour co came to my college. For someone who didn't really know what improv could be, and only knew UCB from their comedy central show it was mind blowing. Bobby Moynihan played. I knew him from that derrick video. Then I forgot all about improv until I graduated and found there were groups in Philly.