Growing the Community

It has been awhile since I've written anything here... maybe because I needed to be anonymous for a spell. But now some things are beginning to happen in the improv scene in Houston that would possibly be interesting to have logged for posterity in case it actually takes root.

I guess I should say first that I love Houston. I guess it's mostly the people and the weather that make it stick in my heart. It's a mystery to me that a city this large doesn't have a larger improv community, or even performing arts community.

For the last few years Massive has been trying to change that - mostly on our own. Now - finally - we seem to have figured out that it's much better to band together with other folks, to be more open and giving. Guy seems to think it was some brillant idea of mine, nut I won't take credit for that. We had put on several larger scale shows to attempt to draw a wider audience and had mostly failed. Our last attempt in Dec. 2006 was a collaboration with a team in Austin, The Frank Mills. I think the show went well, but the turnout was pitiful.

That's when I thought we'd be much better off collaborating with local teams - maybe the quality wouldn't be as high as some established team from Austin, but at least everyone would invite their friends and we'd have an audience. That simple, self-serving idea paid off for our show Feb. 23, 24th at Midtown Arts. We had audiences of 100+ each night - nearly half of the crowd being local improvisers. We all realized that weekend that we'd accidentally tapped something much bigger than ourselves. We had to widen our focus from just growing Massive Improv to growing the broader community at large.