In 2002, the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival was founded in Austin. It featured several local improv troupes in addition to groups from Dallas and College Station. And it only grew from there.
For nearly two decades, the festival brought improv performers from across Texas and strengthened the capital city’s role in the comedy scene. Then it went on hiatus after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Until now.
On Thursday, the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival made its return. Asaf Ronen, the festival’s co-producer and one of the performers, joined the Texas Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Well, this festival has been on a break for a while. What should people expect this year?
Asaf Ronen: Well, we’re bringing in a wide range of acts from all over the country, as well as spotlighting a lot of local talent that exists here that people might not know about, especially since the pandemic.
We haven’t quite gotten audiences at the improv theaters to the levels that they were before. And so we’re trying to help draw a spotlight by showcasing them alongside folks from L.A., from Dallas, from Oklahoma City, Chicago, et cetera. And you can expect a wide range from improvised opera to improvised Star Trek parodies.
Well, it’s my understanding that you’ve been doing improv for more than 30 years now. What’s kept you in it for so long?
I came in as a writer in college and was just playing with some friends. We were big fans of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” so we decided to play some of the games that we saw and I just got hooked with the idea of writing on your feet and collaborating with other people in the moment.
That collaboration, that collaborative feeling, it’s mini community every time you get up on stage and then when you get off stage it’s an even larger community because improvisers are very welcoming. And they like meeting new improvisers. And so it just held me, held my heart for all these 35 years.
Well, in your opinion, what makes good improv?
First of all, you have to have initiative. It’s all about initiative until you get out there and get up there and put out an idea like you’re not really in it.
And so you have give yourself a certain level of permission to say things without fully understanding what they’re going to mean right away. And then hopefully connect with the other people on stage, connect with the audience through that idea. And that’ll just connect you to more ideas.
So who does improv? I think we kind of have an idea, some of us who aren’t that familiar with it, but really it can be anyone. Give us some sense of who is participating.
Yeah, you’d be surprised by all the people that do improv. It’s not just your actors and your writers. I’ve been to a lot of people’s very first improv experience.
I did a lot of intro classes at the different theaters and we would have those people, but alongside them would be IT people who are trying to hone their social skills or lawyers who are looking to get better at arguments or retirees who are just kind of hitting a reset button. And just trying something new.
And it’s amazing how many people had this on their bucket list and would show up in that intro class. So yeah, probably some of your coworkers are in improv classes and they haven’t mentioned it to you yet.
When most people think of improv, their minds go to New York or L.A. How does the scene in Austin compare?
Well, I’ll tell ya, I lived in New York for the first 34 years of my life and moved here because I loved the scene so much. When I came in 2006 for the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival as a teacher and performer, I felt what the community was like here.
And it’s amazing that in a city that’s not at the same population size as New York, New York, they all seem to be fighting for the same audience in Austin. They were all sharing with each other and collaborating with each other and not competing with each other.
This community is so great that we do a potluck every year the weekend before Thanksgiving and all the improvisers from all the theaters come and take a big photo together and that’s what Austin’s about. It’s about melding different styles.
We have people that have moved here from all over or moved elsewhere and come back because they love it so much and brought what they learned. And everybody here is just hungry to learn all the different ways of approaching this.
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Well, let’s talk a little bit about Upright Citizens Brigade. It’s a chain of theaters in New York and L.A. that launches a lot of big careers in comedy. They recently acquired ColdTowne Theater in Austin. Do you expect that to have an impact on the local improv scene?
Well, the thing to understand is it’s not UCB that bought the ColdTowne Theater. It’s the company that owns the IP of UCB that now owns ColdTowne Theater. So ColdTowne is maintaining its identity while also making offerings of UCB-style classes and UCB-style shows.
So I don’t know what changes we’ll see on the outside. I think there’ll be a lot of changes that they’ll have on the inside in their infrastructure.
Well, what else would you want people to know about the festival and the improv scene?
It’s growing exponentially every year. We have hundreds upon hundreds of students and performers and a wide, diverse group of points of view of different styles of doing this. And I think you’ll see a lot of those different styles in every show, because like I said, we have that high and low art of the opera and the Star Trek and they’re actually going to perform together in our big show on Sunday.
But we’re also bringing in folks from Dropout .TV, which a lot of people will know, especially from streaming, from YouTube clips that have gone viral. And so we’re bringing in these performers, but not just showcasing them. We’re having them sit in with local troupes so that we’re even more infusing different styles together.
Well, finally, let’s get back to the Out of Bounds Festival. We talked about it. You took a break because of the pandemic. Say more about the improv scene now. How has it changed post-pandemic?
It has changed and it hasn’t. It’s gotten a little bit more… You know the difference between a blue heat and a red heat? A red heat just kind of spreads a little wider but a blue heat burns hotter and more focused. I feel like that’s how the improv community has gotten post-pandemic.
We’re not seeing as many groups right now as we usually do and not as many show offerings – partly because we’re building audiences back up, but also because we’ve refined our focus on what we’re trying to get out of this art form.
