My favorite compliment to receive as an improviser is open skepticism that the show was actually improvised. When a group is fully in flow state, when a show is exceptionally well-prepared, then the skepticism is warranted. I’m not a hippie-dippie person, but it feels in those moments like it really was pre-planned; feels like the show was waiting, like a sculpture in marble, for us to chip away until we revealed it.

“Process,” the recurring Hideout mainstage show directed by Jeremy Sweetlamb, was one of those. Partway through one of the shows I saw, an improviser friend next to me whispered: “But they planned this, right?” Only a few minutes later, she whispered again, more insistently: “But they planned THIS, right?”

“Process” was essentially an improvised “Noises Off,” depicting the preparation, rehearsal, and performance of a play-within-a-play. The twist, of course, being that nobody knew what the meta-play was. Its title, plot, and characters were being invented in real time. By nature, an improvised production has a lower level of effort than an equivalent scripted production. But in “Process,” it was higher.

In Act One, the actors—that is, actors playing actors—auditioned for their various parts, introducing themselves with fictional names and delivering “rehearsed” monologues for even-more-fictional characters. Act Two was the rehearsal, starting with a read-through where the cast “read” from stapled stacks of blank paper, turning the pages in unison.¹

What came after intermission is dizzying to describe: Act Three of “Process” was the Act Three performance of the meta-play, incorporating all the characters and plot elements that had been improvised thus far and bringing both the show and the show-within-a-show to a conclusion. 

That was what we saw in the theater. But there was a third show, the show I want to tell you about, happening out of sight offstage. “Process” was the best technical improv work I’ve ever seen, or might ever see.

The crew stationed a spotter in the light booth who had a live chat open to the green room upstairs. There, a whole squad stood ready, surrounded by costumes, props, and crafting materials. From the opening scene, the spotter was relaying information upstairs about the play-within-a-play: its setting, “actor” and character names, themes, and so on. The crew leapt into action, organizing costumes for each player and building set pieces for a play that was, I repeat, being invented downstairs in the same moment. 

The audience was ushered out of the theater for intermission, and then came 15 minutes of controlled chaos as the crew built the entire set onstage while dressing the actors as their characters. (Play’s set in Poland? We made a Polish flag. Character’s disabled? Here’s your crutch and cardboard leg braces.) Once ready, the audience re-entered the theater and was handed programs for the fictional play, with the fictional actors listed next to the fictional characters. 

There must have been dozens of fantastic innovative moments in that green room, and I like to think I was witness to one of the best. At the top of the show, it was established that the meta-play was set at a high school. The green room got to work, and somebody began drawing a set of high-school lockers on a sheet of butcher paper. “Wait a minute,” said someone else, and pointed. There was a full set of lockers standing right there in the green room. So, on top of their already-heroic efforts, the crew maneuvered this enormous metal locker bank down the twisting back staircase of the Hideout. When we returned to the theater after intermission, there it stood onstage.

So if the audience was skeptical that this wasn’t all planned in advance, you’ll understand why. I’m reminded of a Teller quote: “Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” For an audience who probably thought of improv as “white guys in hoodies standing in an empty stage,” “Process” was magic.

(All photos by Steve Rogers, who probably deserves a blogpost of his own for his absolutely essential role in documenting Austin improv shows for 15 years and counting.)

1. For some reason, the coordinated page-flip remains one of the simplest, most compelling bits of improv stagework I’ve ever seen.