Is the Hideout’s Improvised Play Festival Just Too Much to Deal With?

The tyranny of choice, citizen: If that’s the harshest shit we ever have to deal with in life, oh my goodness, are we a big steaming pile of entitlement or what?

And yet.

And yet, maaaaaaaaaaan, it does crimp the old gray matter a bit, doesn’t it? Having to make a decision when each of so many diverse options seems equally enticing?

Yeah: Thanks a lot, Improvised Play Festival, thanks one hell of a lot.

Because what can a humble journo do as even just a recommender-of-things, here? Can I tell the Austin Chronicle readers parsing these words that they’ll be happiest if they go to the Hideout Theatre and catch an IPF show called Teenage Wasteland on Friday night?

Because, I mean, Teenage Wasteland, it’s a terrific show, set in the midst of one of those epic teen parties that you might recall, through a booze-addled haze, from your own misspent youth. But what if that night’s Boy Howdy production – evoking TV-cowboy shows of the Sixties – is even more awesome? And what if the previous night’s edition of F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Save the World should’ve been the top thing on the you’ve-gotta-see-this list? Or maybe Saturday night’s Austin Secrets show will be the single transcendent experience of an entire lifetime – always a possibility, right? – and so here I’ve gone and steered the public wrong? And what about, like, can a person even, I mean –

FOMO: It’s a bitch, isn’t it?

And I haven't even mentioned the text-message play, Magpie's Diner – created in collaboration with the legendary Physical Plant Theater – that displays itself in multiple POV texts via the screen of your favorite smartphone for an hour.

Of course, it is possible for you to buy an All-Fest Pass and just see as much improvised theatre as you can physically accommodate in one long weekend, just see as much of this local stuff (and some of what’s been flown in from Seattle and Vancouver and London, too) as you can before systemic collapse sets in & you’re laid out on the couch with visions of Del Close’s skull dancing behind your twitching eyelids.

Or I could personally abdicate my responsibility here. I could just ask one of the honchos of the Hideout – Roy Janik, say, of renowned troupe Parallelogramophonograph – what he thinks is a good recommendation for your best entertainment value … ?

Sure I could.

But you know these theatre owners, these showbiz people: They’ll want to pimp everything.

So – their feet, you know? You’ve got to hold their feet to the fire, citizen. You’ve got to grill ‘em, all hard-nosed and investigative-reporterlike, like you’re Chase fucking Hoffberger or something.

And so, with that attitude firmly in place, I placed a call to that Janik – utilizing the Hideout’s special Media Access Only number – and this is how it went down:

Brenner: Okay, listen, Janik –

Janik: Please, call me Roy.

Brenner: Listen, Roy –

Janik: Yes?

Brenner: Parents, right? Parents who have more than one child – they're not supposed to show preference for any of them, right? That's the deal, right, that all the kids are equally loved?

Janik: Well, ah, I don’t have any kids, myself … but, yes, I understand that that’s usually the deal.

Brenner: Well, fuck that. You have to choose, man. You have to choose one show out of the entire Improvised Play Festival this weekend. Just one show that you think people should see more than anything else in the entire festival. You get me, here?

Janik: Well, uh …

Brenner: Which one is it, man? Which one is it?

Janik: Okay, here’s what I think. Obviously, you should see everything – but, if you have to pick just one, pick Ten Thousand Million Love Stories.

Brenner: Ten Thousand Million Love Stories?

Janik: Yes! It's a duo show in which a love story unfolds bit by bit. The stars and creators of the show are Jules Munns and Heather Urquhart, who are from the UK, and between the two of them, they’re big forces behind the Maydays from Brighton and the Nursery Theatre in London.

Brenner: Okay, that sounds pretty good. Love stories, London, yadda yadda –

Janik: But that’s not all! The show’s delightful, of course – it’s patient, funny, real, incredibly British, and super different each time. But the thing that's tweaking me out right now, the fascinating thing, is that when Munns and Urquhart came here three years ago? They were decidedly not a couple. They told us repeatedly that they had no romantic interest in each other. Their show was just their show, you know?

Brenner: Sure, it works that way for a lot of duos, right? I mean –

Janik: Well, they’re a couple now.

Brenner: No … for real?

Janik: Yeah! I guess somewhere around Love Story #2,342,100, they learned that the real love story … was being told all along.

Brenner: That’s … oh fuck, Roy … I … [heart breaks into one hundred million pieces]