Improvising (and Sketching Out) Your Weekend

As far as funny goes, things don’t get much better than the screwball comedies of the 1930s and ‘40s. Bickering couples, quicksilver dialogue, social class clashes, flirtation with the boundaries of the Hays Code—this stuff’s comic gold. And while the seven-season run of “Gilmore Girls” might be this decade’s definitive homage to genre, Parallelogramophonograph isn’t about to let Lorelai and Rory just walk away with that distinction. To that end, Austin’s premier narrative improv troupe will present a fresh, never-before-seen screwball comedy tomorrow tonight at 8pm—and every Thursday through Oct. 16—at Coldtowne Theater. All the fun and smoldering passion of a Grant-Hepburn marathon, without a single frame repeated.

Midnight Society would probably give William Harrison Hays, Sr. a heart attack, but if he came to the debut of the troupe’s monthly sketch showcase at Coldtowne, he’d have some free pizza in addition to a coronary. Aptly titled “Pizza Party!,” the show isn’t the Coldtowne Conservatory graduates’ first foray in show production—that’d be the open mic/gong show/variety spectacle “Midnight Special"—but it is the first that’s 100 percent Midnight Society. “Pizza Party!” commences tomorrow tonight at 10.

Sorry to be entirely Coldtowne-centric...or not sorry, really, because the theater and the troupe are playing host to so much great stuff this weekend, including one more special event: an unexpected visit from the world travelers of Mission Improvable. If you’ve attended a college or university in the last nine years, you’ve probably seen Mission Improvable, but this time, you won’t have to deal with the drunk bros yelling “proctologist” every time the group asks for a suggestion. Mission Improvable shares the stage with Coldtowne and Look Cookie Saturday at 10 p.m.

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