The First Improv Show You Ever Saw

[beardedlamb]

Inspired by another thread about DCM, what was the first improv show you saw live and what do you remember about it?

My first was ComedySportz at Northcross Mall in 1996 or so. I was a junior in high school and it was a date. They asked for a volunteer for a dubbing game and since I had always been such a huge fan of the British Whose Line reruns I'd been watching for years, I went up. I rocked the classic moving my mouth for a long time when the dubber just said one short little line. It got a huge laugh and I was hooked.
I met them after the show. Tyler Bryce, now of Obviously Unrehearsed at OU and the guy who organized the Improv Festival they just had in OKC, was one of the performers and super nice. I told them it was amazing and that I would be back every weekend. Never went back.
But it did get me hooked on going to Monks Night Out shows at the Velveeta Room which I did many times in high school. I remember deciding on the drive down from the burbs one time that it would be hilarious to yell out proctologist when they asked for an occupation. I did. Don't remember what happened after that.


et tu?

[kbadr]

I told them it was amazing and that I would be back every weekend. Never went back.

There's a valuable bit of knowledge to consider when pondering the behavior of audience members. Lack of repeat-business clearly doesn't always imply some sort of apathy or disinterest about improv.

[acrouch]

I think mine was actually a Monk's Night Out show at the Bad Dog Theater in the spring of 2001. I was taking the world's worst Improv for Non Majors class in the theater department at UT and we were supposed to go see shows during the semester. As awful as the class was, that show was fun, and then the ones I saw at the Hideout around the same time (Theatresports, Maestro and Six Degrees) got me hooked for good.

[Matt]

Theatre Strike Force, a stupidly huge improv troupe at my college. They performed every other week in the student union. I joined up pretty shortly after seeing their show (all short form gamey games), and my free time has been sucked away ever since

[Roy Janik]

The first show I remember seeing was Micetro, sometime around 2000, maybe, in the downstairs. Man, I didn't know it at the time, but it was early on in the Hideout's life.

I don't remember much about it, except that I did like it. I remember someone in a black turtleneck I thought was the epitome of cool. I remember that Yasmine was in the show, because I knew her vaguely from something else.

I remember getting my suggestion gently shut down by the director. Someone had said something like "pirates" and I was like "monkey pirates", thinking that if pirates were funny, monkey pirates were even funnier. Note that these aren't the actual suggestions. I just can't remember.

And I remember that it was someone's first solo scene as a performer. The directors made a HUGE deal out of the fact that they were doing their first solo scene, and I remember thinking as an audience member that it was a really big deal. My mind invented a whole backstory... that this girl had somehow graduated and had been given the go-ahead before the show to do a solo scene, etc., etc...

But yeah, I liked the show, but I never felt the inclination to go back. I would've if it had come up.

[HerrHerr]

I know it was a Micetro (as it was originally spelled). But I saw a few in a couple months...so my memory may trick me...

But kevin Miller, Rene Pinnell, Bob Apthorpe and Andrea Young were in a show I remember.

Kevin did Demon Voice very well. Got a five. since then, I've done several Demon Voices.

Andrea had a solo scene where she had to play jherself and her dad and I think it was her first solo scene.
I could tell she was nervous, but I loved that she played the scene anyway.

Bob...and I think Andrea had a school principal's office scene...I loved it!

[kaci_beeler]

The first improv I had really been introduced to was doing Freeze Tag in my middle school theatre class. I knew improv only then as an acting tool or a distraction tool so the teacher can bid on ebay while the kids play around onstage.

In my freshman year of high school everyone was talking about the Well Hung Jury, an improv group of "cool people" who had graduated several years before I got there.

So in the summer of 2002 I started going to see their shows with some friends (Phil of You, Me, and Greg and Xaq who used to be a Hideout house manager). I saw so many of their shows over the next few years that I can't exactly remember what happened at the first one. I do remember seeing a really hilarious improvised Shakespeare show they did and a disgusting no rules show they did. I also remember a Real/Surreal in which the phrase, "I am not Batman." was uttered over and over again.

I always sat as far as I could in the front at every show. If they ever needed a volunteer I was more than ready to participate. I would laugh so hard at their shows I would almost fall out of my chair.
I never thought, "I can do this." I figured they were just really funny and talented guys, I never thought at the time that what they were doing was a learned art.


Sometimes now when I play with those same guys in the Cupholders I laugh really hard. Except this time I'm on the sidelines/onstage and it's not as appropriate so I have to bite back my giggles. I still think they're super funny. Except that Ace guy.

[Jon Bolden]

Available Cupholders Saturday show during Christmas 2007. I was so amazed that I immediately started going to shows all the time and then to the jams.

[ashleylowe]

I actually know the date of my first improv show January 31, 2009 (nerd). It's still one of my favorite Maestros. I really only distinctly remember two scenes. There was a death in a minute scene where either Pat Daniels either was killed or killed someone one with a bible-we both said Corinthians at the same time which is always hilarious. Then when it got down to solo scenes and I believe Andy was directing. He asked the audience what they wanted to see Tom Booker do-someone suggested dance. And dance he did! He went behind the stage and when the lights came up he swung open the window and he was just in his boxers. And he danced, and I laughed so hard I cried. I believe he got a unanimous 5 so he went back stage, to change one would assume, but instead came out with just his hands covering. CeeJ put up his points for him. And then I was hooked! I hardly ever missed a maestro after that and signed up for classes and some how I'm still hooked..

[LuBu McJohnson]

I was in the first one I ever saw. UIL competition at Bryan High School in 2000. Group Improv was an optional event(you signed up when you got there) and so me and a few other guys from my Speech Team went for it.

If that doesn't count, then it's got to be Ed32/Gorrila Theatre which I watched sometime in late 2003, when I was planning to audition for Ed32(I was soon not able to). Good stuff, of course.

[chelsea gilman]

i saw some improv shows as a kid and performed "who's line is it anyway" games for a show in high school...

but the first improv show i saw in austin was in the texas union building my freshman year at UT, so 1999-2000 sometime. it was well hung jury, and i didn't know any of them, except that i recognized ben sterling from the theatre department at UT.

i also saw fatbuckle's first show that year, and remember lee eddy trying to get someone to guess Yoko Ono, by buying eggs, cracking them, and then saying "No yoke, oh no!"

it looked like a lot of fun, so that spring when i saw an ad in the chronicle, i auditioned for We Could Be Heroes.

[Baldenhofer]

I was visiting Austin for one night in December of 2006, and on that night the Frank Mills opened for ColdTowne. It was sweet. I remember telling Bob "good show" as we waited on line for the bathroom.

"Where are the tomatoes?" still makes me giggle.

[ratliff]

The first improv I saw was on TV: in a hotel room somewhere in the '80s I saw War Babies, a shortform troupe featuring Caren (My Tutor) Kaye; a little later I saw what was probably a reunion of The Committee, the legendary SF group with Howard "Dr. Johnny Fever" Hesseman and Peter "Jerry the Dentist" Bonerz.

I may be forgetting something, but I'm pretty sure the first live improv I saw was Get Up's Hideout show at Out of Bounds 2005 -- during which Shannon and Shana generously gave up part of their slot to ColdTowne Heroes, who were fleeing Hurricane Katrina and had just washed up in Austin.

In other words, I was present at THE BEGINNING OF THE MODERN ERA.

[Jeff]

Monks Night Out at the Velveeta in 1995. I didn't like the show much, but I was impressed that everybody was making it up on the spot. I remember I enjoyed that, for a scene in which every actor played different genres, one guy took my suggestion of "blaxploitation," and the results were delightfully offensive. I kept coming back many times, because my friend Becca, a Monk, kept trying to convince me to take classes and join the Monks, because she thought I was funny. I saw Monks Night Out many times between 95-98, and I did love some of the shows. I never had the courage to attempt improv myself, however, until around ten years later.

[Chelley]

The First Improv show I saw was the British "Whose line is it anyway" when it aired on PBS in Dallas. I continued watching the show when it came to the US. I always found it delightful.

But the first live show was actually at New Years this year. I went to the ring in the midnight show at the hideout and saw the two Kacies, Kareem and another guy (can't remember his name) with Roy directing. It was fantastic and the perfect way to ring in a new year. Definitely better than most drunken dramas that most of my friends went through that night.

Funnily enough I was already taking classes at the Hideout when I went to this show. Never seen a show live but wanted to take classes anyway b/c my friend Kevin Miller always talked about his days in Improv and it always seemed fun.