Slaughter Your Shorts is ColdTowne Theater’s newest marquee improv comedy show. Slated for Saturdays at 8:30pm in October, the show will weave Nickelodeon’s 90s-cult favorite “Salute Your Shorts” with 80s slasher movie conventions, complete with live blood and gore.
The show’s concept is the brainchild of ColdTowne Theater veteran performer and faculty member Cody Dearing. Taking a cue from live horror stage shows like Splatter Theater and Evil Dead: The Musical, Dearing knows that fans of the genre will not be happy unless there is blood; the more the better.
Cody: The venue is intimate enough that every seat in the house is in the splatter zone. Ponchos will be given out to the front row of to help protect the audience from projectile blood, but all audience members are encouraged to dress down for the performance.”
Buy Tickets:
Saturday Oct 1st 8:30pm SOLDOUT!
Saturday Oct 8th 8:30pm SOLDOUT!
Minotaure“We sat down with ColdTowne’s own, Arthur Simone.”
CT: Tell us what we can expect as an audience member.
Arthur: Comedy, with an oft-overused rhythm and beat, can be so much more fluid when you just roll with the absurdity instead of trying to explain or explode it. Minotaure is a tapestry of fucked-up people who are cruel and deluded and myopic and FUNNY. Even though the title is a nod to a surrealist magazine, I wouldn’t say anything we’re doing is “surreal”; everything is very much rooted in human behavior. The show isn’t about the Minotaur myth or anything like that, it’s about humans and beasts and human-beasts. Expect to laugh, scratch your head, be uncomfortable, then laugh at yourself for being uncomfortable while your head still itches.
CT: What attracted you to create this show?
Arthur: Simply, I wanted to write and perform a show with a cast. With Dear Frailty, there was a great deal of reliance on the activated imagination of the audience, which is an apple to the orange of the power of action with other bodies in a theater space. Other actors open doors of possibility, and I like opening doors, because nobody likes stagnant air in a box. Plus, I really wanted to put up a movement piece or two, which is why I recruited a choreographer in addition to the ‘usual’ sketch comedy fare. ColdTowne Theater’s space is so small and so intimate–there are many staging conventions that would never read in a larger space that really work well here.
CT: Tell us about you and your cast.
Arthur: I’ve enjoyed working with everyone in the cast and crew, and getting the chance to really dig into scene work and characters with Kelli Bland has been a blast. She and I come from actor training backgrounds similar enough that we can kick the whistles and bells to the curb to get to the meat and the core of a scene faster. If a troupe is coming from a fundamentally silly core with raw believable emotion you can begin to see the lines between Comedy and Tragedy twist and tangle, and this cast really nails it!
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Thursday Oct 6th 8:30pm SOLD OUT!
Halloween Spooktacular IV: Midnight Gallery
Lance Gilstrap of Midnight Society tells us about the show.
CT: You guys do a Halloween-themed sketch show every year, correct?
Lance: Yes, this is Midnight Society’s fourth Halloween sketch show. We’ve said it before, but Halloween is our Christmas. It speaks to us. There’s nothing like a Ghost or Ghoul to get the comedy fires burning.
CT: Who is in this show? What will we see?
Lance: Rod Serling, Wolfmen, Ghosts, Ghouls, Surfers, and the coolest party you’ve ever seen.
CT: For those readers who do not know Midnight Society, tell us a bit more about yourself. We heard you were recently recognized here in Austin.
Lance: We have been performing sketch and improv for over four years. We perform every Saturday night with the Frank Mills and have twice been nominated for the B. Iden Payne award for improv.
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