![]() 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. 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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