Station Theater, Houston’s home for improvisational arts, plays host to an ambitiously tight three-day schedule (which on the surface seems to go against the very nature of improv itself) with The TRILL Comedy Festival, a collection of sketches, structures and riffs. ”The TRILL Comedy Festival will have every kind of bizarre and avant-garde comedy,” promises producer Shyla Ray, who teaches comedy at Station and Rice University. After producing laff fests in multiple big-city markets, Ray sensed that Houston was fertile ground for a similar endeavor. Glaundor (”the best damn college improv group in the nation”); Waterpark: Austin’s Hottest & Coolest Unscripted Musical; Stupid Time Machine; Texas comedy royalty Andy Huggins; and internationally renowned Parallelogramophonograph are among the must-see acts of the weekend.
”My favorite thing about Houston comedy is how many people are teachers, nurses, NASA scientists, engineers and designers during the day but at night they break loose and become wild comedians!” she says. ”Houston comedians are all Batman.”
6 p.m. to midnight Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 1230 Houston Avenue. For information, call 903-271-3203 or visit stationtheater.com. $6 to $10.
May 23-25, 6 p.m., 2013
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2012.