Tuesday marked the beginning of the "Out of Bounds Comedy Festival" here in Austin. Out of Bounds is a 7 day comedy festival that features some of the countries best improv, sketch comedy, and stand up performers. One of the groups being spotlighted is Scatter, a long form improv group from Houston.
Tonight I was lucky enough to catch Scatter's performance at the Savage Vanguard theater. Scatter wasn't however a group that I just randomly stumbled upon, when I was in high school I did improv with Scatter's Matt Lusk. Lusk is two years older than me and was the guy that influenced me to try out for the group...so I may be a little bit biased in my evaluation of the performance.
After high school I decided to stop doing improv for awhile, and instead worked more on school and getting used to living in Austin. So now, 3 years later, I have trouble remembering the good parts about it. Instead my mind is cluttered with the obnoxious people we used to perform with and the outrageous skits we would end up doing. Improv can very easily slip and become a very silly, and very stupid thing. The guys in Scatter realize this. You can tell when they perform that they are aware of the inherent goofiness of improv and they make light of that. For example half way through their performance one of the 8 members called for a break and all 8 members walked over to the side of the stage and grabbed their water bottles, rested, and discussed their work so far. One member said they needed to work on their environment in scenes and when they started back up two of them intentionally performed a terribly hilarious improv scene where they broke almost every basic rule for making a good scene. In the hour that they performed they covered all sorts of topics and as morally wrong as it sounds made even the most terrible of topics, abusive step fathers, and hilarious subject.
The troupe was incredibly funny, making sure that everyone in the audience had a good time. After talking to the guys after their performance it was obvious that they where good friends, and that contributed a lot to their on stage chemistry. The best part of the performance was that it reminded me of the good times that I had doing improv.
Just now I turned on the TV and caught the last 5 minutes of the second episode of "Men of a Certain Age" and I think I'm in love. To be fair it was only 5 minutes, but it went straight for the heart. It was funny, sweet, sad and sincere. The three main actors (Ray Romano, Andre Braugher, and Scott Bakula) have great chemistry and act like friends actually act. 3 old guys living life, drinking beer, and cursing; based on my brief exposure to the show I want to see more.
