On any given Friday night, you’ll find a few dozen Austinites climbing the stairs at the Hideout and crowding into in the tiny upstairs room to enjoy the antics of Get Up! and Girls Girls Girls, Wooden Nickel and Gigglepants, or Foolish Mortals and Knuckleball Now. What may sound like another battle of the bands is a new night of hilarity building on the recent explosion of improvisational theatre and comedy troupes in Austin. Dubbed the Friday Night Twofer, the setup features two or sometimes three improv troupes performing in 30-minute intervals every Friday at 9pm.
The program is a project of the new Austin Improv Co-op, a yet-to-be nonprofit organization that seeks to channel the energies of the currently burgeoning improv scene. “Austin’s improv scene has been through cycles,” says Andy Crouch, founder of the co-op; artistic director of Heroes of Comedy, the house troupe for the Hideout; and, conveniently, the Hideout’s manager. “Troupes move away and troupes go into hibernation. When I got into it in 2001, it was kind of on the downswing.” But Heroes of Comedy continued to offer workshops and classes in improv and, in Crouch’s words, “it’s been churning out improv students who stick around,” leading to the recent surge in troupes. “We try to get people communicating, give them a venue to perform easily because it’s a hassle to put up your own show and book somewhere like the Vortex,” he says.
The Hideout has offered the Friday Night Twofer for three months now, and “it will be every Friday night forever unless something goes horribly wrong,” says Crouch. Many of the troupes involved are Heroes of Comedy grads, but the co-op’s forging efforts have brought in some out-of-towners such as Chicago’s Tight, Houston’s Massive Creativity, and Waco’s Guerilla Comedy Troupe.
When the Twofer started, the houses were full. Still, Austin’s improv scene is young and much of the audience right now continues to be drawn from those who are just in the know, like friends, family, and other improvisers. And while the Hideout has a prime downtown location on Congress, it doesn’t receive the constant weekend foot traffic that, say, Esther’s Follies gets on Sixth Street.
Crouch hopes that the Austin Improv Co-op can help turn that around and, with their strength in numbers, get the word out about the spontaneity and creativity in the local improv scene. “When people are deciding what they want to do on a Friday night,” Crouch says, “they ought to be like, ‘Let’s go see some improv.'”
Comedic Amoeba and Wooden Nickel, plus Chicago improv duo McNichol & May, perform in the Friday Night Twofer on July 29, 9pm, at the Hideout, 617 Congress. For more information, call 443-3688 or visit www.hideouttheatre.com.
This article appears in July 29 • 2005.