![]() ![]() In the Airport Boulevard corridor between I-35 and Koenig, amidst a host of small, beloved local businesses (Mrs. Malin, and myself offer this introduction to improv in Austin. With the year's biggest improv party, the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, commencing this week, Chronicle writers Wayne Alan Brenner, Ashley Moreno, Sean L. It's also about the troupes that have been together for years and grown into rich ensembles, about Austin improvisers whose reputations have grown in the international improv community and are in demand as teachers and performers around the world, about the individuals who have built the theatres where improvisers have honed their skills, and about an open community of improvisers who support and encourage one another. ![]() ![]() Oh, and the audiences to fill those 1,800 shows.īut that growth isn't only about numbers. And even once improv did take root here, it took more than a decade for the number of homegrown troupes to hit the double digits.īut in the past 10 years, improv's expansion locally has been explosive, turning Austin into a Spindletop of "yes, and" – a boomtown boasting four theatres showcasing improv year-round, all offering performances and classes, plus an institute providing personal education and corporate training (put them together and you have what's jokingly called the "Five Families of Austin improv") nationally recognized festivals and, between the theatres and fests, 1,800 improv performances annually. Until the mid-Eighties, the capital of Texas hadn't much use for improvisation, preferring its humor from stand-up comics and sketch troupes like Esther's Follies. Talk about an unlikely place for a crowd to gather. They combine and collaborate in scores of troupes, as varied in style and hard to track as local bands, and every few months, they congregate in festivals so well-established that they draw improvisers here from across the nation. They present dozens of different shows weekly, everything from short-form competitions to long-form narratives based on literary and film genres to stories for kids narrated by a dog (with an actual dog onstage). Several hundred are said to be active at present, and you can find them making instant theatre across the city seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. They are improvisers, and Austin is overrun with them. They are adepts of spontaneity, practitioners of the unpredictable. ![]() They set out with no preconceived direction for their tale, no destination or path to move along they just pull character, narrative, emotion, and, yes, pratfalls and punch lines out of thin air as they go. Trending Questions What is the distance modulus for a star that is 1 million parsecs away? What type of organism could you have found on Earth 3.7 billion years ago? Is there evidence of life on Saturn? What does the moons horizon look like? What is the perihelion of europa? When was Give Me the Stars created? What two properties of a star determine its luminosity? Why does the Cepheid distance method fail us beyond about 20 Mpc? Why will the shapes of constellations be different in the future? Who is the singer of planet shakers? Can you see the sun rising over the ocean in LA? When will sun rise sept 16 2010? Worn bearing in rotating machinery? How do I calculate the f stop of a fixed power spotting scope using only the objective lens diameter and the magnification of the device? What are the star life cycle that are accurate? Are stars are only there at night? What theory says the earth is the center of the universe.With no more than a simple suggestion – say, an unlikely place for a crowd to gather, like a broccoli farm or the bottom of the sea – these artists can spin a story as elaborate as one of Scheherazade's, with vivid characters, winding plots, and sudden surprises. ![]()
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