The Austin Chronicle Best of Austin 2009 issue singled out the Hideout Theatre as the Best Creative Takeover of a Downtown Performance Venue.

“After a decade of providing Austin with a Downtown epicenter of improv comedy, the beloved Hideout Theatre was about to bar its storied doors for good.  Sorrow loomed. But, no! Up jumps Parallelogramophonograph’s Kareem Badr and Roy Janik and Jessica Arjet of Flying Theater Machine, forming a fierce triumvirate of entrepreneurial wherewithal to…

We had a rehearsal last night for the new Flying Theater Machine format, Wonderland.  I’m so excited.  There is something magical about bringing an idea to a bunch of fun, creative people and working together to create a show.  Working for kids allows you to really be free and let you imagination soar.  This one will be in a theatrical style, with some of the same games and story formats that we’ve gotten really good at, but transmuted to the next level so we can create a kid centric world on…

New Improv Classes for Kids starting soon!

The Flying Theater Machine, The Hideout’s kid-focused, Nickelodeon Parent’s-choice award winning improv program, is starting up its latest round of kids classes.  In these classes kids will learn to:

• Be positive
• Get more creative
• Focus on the people they’re working with
• Take risks
• Overcome shyness

These classes create a fun and supportive environment for kids to learn the basics of creating improv, story telling, and stagecraft. The…

The Hideout Theatre is putting on a production of Improvised Charles Dickens this November and December, Saturdays at 8pm. We are holding open auditions Tuesday September 15th at 7:00pm for additional cast members and understudies to join our talented and experienced cast.

The production will be directed by Kaci Beeler and Jessica Arjet and feature costumes, a painted set, music, lights, sound design, and a heavy marketing push. It’s going to be our big holiday show of the season….

Jenna Baddeley, a recent Hideout student, has an article up in the Psychology Today blog entitled “Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from Improv”.

Here are a couple of choice quotes:

“Want to get along better with life? I think of ‘yes, and’ in the broadest sense as saying ‘yes’ to what life brings you – the good, the bad, the indifferent – and building on what’s already there.”

We couldn’t agree more. For some reason, our natural tendency in life is to say “no” to opportunities that…

Kaci has just finished the Nintendo set. Here it is in all its 8-bit glory:

What lucky dogs get to perform on this masterpiece?

Naturally all the groups performing in the Hideout upstairs at Out of Bounds.  See the massive show calendar on the OOB website for that lineup.

But  your first chance to see it in action is tonight (8/27) in the Threefer, with 2nd Place Finish, The Love Notes, & Snackers. Buy tickets here.

Then of course there’s all the shows this Friday and…

Kaci, our Director of Design, is at this very moment painting the stage walls. We’ve loved having the dark forest motif. It worked great for Shakespeare, and looked dang cool for the other shows.

But change comes to everything, and it’s time to move on. Specifically, it’s time for the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, and that means a custom set. It’s going to be something matching the style of the Out of Bounds website, which means bright colors and blocky, Nintendo 8-bit graphics… so…

Kaci’s fantastic work on the set painting for Out of Bounds continues.

LOOK AT THIS:

Kaci says she’s not finished, so tomorrow will bring a lot of detail work.

I know that this is just for Out of Bounds, but this really makes me want to do a Ninendo-themed one-off show before painting over this set.

Did I mention that we have stickers, now? Cuz we do! And you can have one for free. Just come to a show?

It’s rare to get an article about improv in print in Austin. It’s even rarer to get a review of a show, because the show’s already happened. But in the Austin Chronice out today, Robert Faires wrote a glowing review of the Marathon, or at least the last two hours that he witnessed.

My favorite quote:

“Like the meteors they referenced in this last spontaneous tale, the eight improvisers of this first marathon went out in a glorious blaze of light.”

Read the whole thing here.

Oh wow! So you might not be aware of this, but Brian Boyko filmed the vast majority of the festival. He’s packaging and editing everything together, and we’ll make it available online in some format eventually.

Today, though, here is hour 33, The Bat, in mp3 format. The Bat is an improv show done in the dark, where the performers create environments and scenes solely with the power of their voices and imaginations.

The core 8 players joined ColdTowne to put on the Bat during the festival, and everyone agreed that it was crazy fun, and one of their favorite shows.

(if you’re reading this on Facebook, you’ll have to click “view the original post” to hear the audio)

BONUS CLIP!!! All these videos come from Kaci’s fancy schmancy Iphone 3GS, which has video capabilities. Basically I would film stuff on the phone, hit “Publish to YouTube”, fill out some information, and away it would go. A few minutes later, it would be on YouTube, and I’d post it to the blog.

Along the way, I filmed a ton of stuff that I didn’t submit to YouTube at the time because I wasn’t sure it would work. But there are some real gems.

This clip is from Play-by-Play, where the improvisers provided commentary to a baseball game and made up new dialogue for the commercials.

One thing I didn’t touch on much when writing this blog was that the Marathon also served as a fundraiser. In that regard, I think we did quite well. Attendance at shows was much higher all around than we anticipated, a lot of folks bought items on our “Giving Tree”, and quite a few raffle tickets were purchased.

We’re still tallying the numbers, but they look good.

That being said, if you missed the marathon, or simply would like to help out more, you can click the link above to donate to the Hideout online.

Clicke the above link to see Peter’s pictures from the marathon.

Boyko filmed the entire marathon. And now he’s putting together a video package thing. Here’s an intro/teaser.