As far back as college, which is not that long before our story begins, I remember thinking that I didn’t have a “thing.” My housemates had a variety of hobbies: acting, guitar, death-defying sports, hell even Native American dancing. I was into… poking on the pre-Facebook Internet and watching the Simpsons. I remember telling my best friend that I needed something.

That was my situation in mid-2001, soon after graduating, when my college pal Andy Crouch fatefully invited me to his improv graduation showcase at the Hideout Theatre, where he’d been taking classes from my other college pal Shana Merlin. 

Sidebar: I always need to remind myself that this wasn’t the first improv show I’d ever seen. During college I attended a ComedySportz show on the UT campus; an exceptionally lewd set at a conference in Oklahoma; and most vividly, a show in College Station where I was an audience volunteer onstage.¹ 

But anyway, all that was prehistory. Andy’s show was the first time I’d ever bought an improv ticket with enthusiasm. And given my lack of a “thing,” I was improv-curious as I walked into the Hideout for the first time. But I thought to myself what everybody probably thinks: I can be funny, but I don’t know if I can just… walk out onstage and be funny.² 

Here’s the important part of the story: the show wasn’t that good.

Don’t get mad, Andy! It was exactly what a graduation showcase should be: brand-new improvisers, surely terrified, charmingly fumbling their way through their first-ever performance for a live audience. Everything I’ve seen dozens of times since then. The thing is, if the show had been spectacular, my assumptions would have been confirmed. “No way,” I can see myself thinking, and I might’ve ended up going full-time into Lego or something. The whole course of my life might’ve been different. I could have been on Lego Masters!

But, because the show was simply, basically good, I thought: Alright, I could do that. After handing out the graduation certificates, Shana announced that she was starting a new Level 1 class the very next morning. I signed up on the spot. The rest was history.

Postscript: It’s truly wild that all these years later, all three of those college pals—Andy, Shana, and myself—are still active leaders in the improv scene. It’s not just us: Valerie Ward (seen above), Curtis Luciani, and a few others were also from the same broad Plan II clique at UT. Andy himself is largely to credit (or blame) for this. Like a good cult member, he helped recruit a number of his buddies to the game and was a founding member of Ed32, a legendary troupe in Austin improv. Many improvisers since have their own stories of Andy encouraging them to stick with it. It’s a weird thing to say about someone so prominent at the Hideout Theatre, but Andy is nonetheless one of its unsung heroes. In retrospect, it was an honor to be there for his birth.

1. At one point one of the players roasted me for having a receding hairline, shocking to look back on. I WOULD NEVER.
2. A common misconception about how improv works. To be hilariously concise, there’s more to it than that.