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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > May > 08
Friday, May 8, 2009
Hideout Theatre comedy team buys itself, sorta
What to do when the lease to the theater you’ve been using for years is threatened with closure, when the owners of the business title and lease to the place just want to roll-up the show for good?
Buy it yourself.
That’s what a team of improv comedians have done with the Hideout Theatre, the popular yet intimate venue on Congress Avenue. When the owners of the business title decided they wanted out of the biz of running a theater and didn’t seek renewal on the lease, a group of comedians — all of whom started as improve students at the Hideout — did want improvisers do best. They improvised and found a way to buy the rights to Hideout Theatre as well as renew the lease for five years.
That’s clever. And show some business savvy too.
Jessica Arjet, Kareem Badr and Roy Janik are teachers, producers, directors and performers at The Hideout. Arjet is also creator of Austin’s only improv show for kids, Flying Theatre Machine, and Janik and Badhr are founding members of Parallelogramophonograph and co-producers of the Out of Bounds Improv Comedy Festival.
They declined to disclose how much was paid for the rights to the Hideout Theatre name or what the venue rent amount was.
“I don’t think we could have lived with ourselves if we had let the Hideout just go away. It means too much to everyone,” said Badr in a press release.
The group will celebrate its new self-ownership June 5 with a party and show.
In the meantime, the Hideout folks are reprising their popular ‘Improvised Shakespeare’ every Saturday at 8 p.m. in May and June.
See www.hideouttheatre.com for more information.
Image: Roy Janik, Jessica Arjet and Kareem Badr.
