Keith Johnstone Memorial Boot Camp
Workshop with Hideout Education Director Andy Crouch
Sundays, June 25 and July 9, 7-9:30pm

Keith Johnstone passed away this year, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about his legacy and the kind of improv we teach and perform at The Hideout these days. Keith’s stubbornly original thinking and teaching was the entire core of what The Hideout was in the beginning. Sean Hill started The Hideout as Austin Theatresports after studying with Keith and with a bunch amazing instructors who were direct “disciples” of Keith. Our curriculum was largely cribbed from what all those folks were teaching, and the kinds of shows we did were all versions of what BATS and Unexpected Productions were doing in SF and Seattle.

Over the years as Austin became an amazing melting pot of improv, The Hideout has evolved and assimilated all kinds of improv philosophies, teaching tools, and performance styles, and while there’s still a dominant strain of Keith Johnstone’s playfulness, psychological curiosity, theatricality, and emphasis on story, a lot of things have fallen by the wayside.

This workshop is a fast-paced review of the most iconic games and exercises that Keith developed over his 70-year career as a teacher and director of improvisation. We’ll bring back some classics from the early days of the Hideout that no one has done for years; we’ll reinvestigate favorite games in more depth that you might have seen once or twice but definitely haven’t mastered, we’ll pull games out of the pages of his two groundbreaking books (Impro and Impro for Storytellers); and we’ll play with some Keith games that I’m only just now hearing about as the world has been celebrating his life over the past few weeks.

The classes will move fast, cover tons of material and give everyone lots of playtime in pairs and small groups (hence the Boot Camp theme). I’m doing this twice in the coming weeks, but both nights will cover different material, and if it’s fun and popular, we’ll do more of these in the future.

2.5 hours each / Limited space / Class held at The Hideout Theatre downtown (617 Congress Ave)