Gary Austin

Gary Austin (born Gary Moore; October 18, 1941 – April 1, 2017) was an American improvisational theatre teacher, writer, and director who founded The Groundlings theatre company in 1974.

Early life Austin grew up in the Nazarene Church and in Halliburton oil camps in Oklahoma, Texas and California. He graduated from Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe Springs, California, in 1960 and earned his BA in Theatre from San Francisco State University in 1964.

The Committee After college, Austin moved to Los Angeles where he became a stage manager for the L.A. branch of San Francisco's famed improvisational comedy group, The Committee. It was here Austin worked as an improviser with Second City's Del Close and began to develop characters. When the Los Angeles company closed in 1969, Austin moved to San Francisco where he became a performing member of The Committee.

After his departure from The Committee, Austin moved back to Los Angeles and worked at the newly-opened Comedy Store where he improvised with The Comedy Store Players, worked as emcee, and did stand-up.

In 1972, Gary gathered together a group of actors and started the Gary Austin Workshops. After a year he decided it was time for the actors to perform publicly and he began directing shows in Los Angeles. As word got around about the workshop, the improvisers began to perform at various venues around Hollywood.

The Groundlings

In January 1974, Austin created the non-profit improvisational theatre company, The Groundlings, composed of members of his workshops. The company moved into the Oxford Theatre in East Hollywood. Austin continued as Artistic Director.

A non-profit company requires a name to be agreed to by the charter members. After taking a poll, Gary found that most members wanted the company to be called "The Working Class." The night before the vote, Austin was reading Hamlet's speech to the players "with the intention of using Shakespeare's acting lesson as a jumping off point for the next day's workshop" and came up with the name Groundlings (a reference in the play to the lower class audience members who sat on the ground in front of the stage to watch plays at the Globe Theatre in Shakespeare's day). The next day, Austin presented the name and after much debate, "The Groundlings" won. The Groundlings' official biography also describes Austin conducting workshops and developing projects in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

Austin's workshops treated improvisation as a form of actor training as well as performance. Backstage described the Gary Austin Workshops as using improvisation to help actors develop spontaneity, performance skills, characters, and material. In 1997, The Austin Chronicle reported that Austin taught workshops at the Big Stinkin' International Improv & Sketch Comedy Festival in Austin, TX, describing his instruction as emphasizing character development, emotional commitment, radical choices, and the use of personal experience in scene work.

In New York, Austin worked with Artistic New Directions and the Peoples Improv Theater. The Groundlings' biography describes him as a frequent guest instructor at both organizations, as well as at Second City locations in Chicago and New York. A University of Georgia faculty curriculum vitae also documents master classes at Artistic New Directions summer improvisation workshops in 2001 and 2002 with Austin, Sweet, Gellman, Carol Fox Prescott, and others.

Other work

Austin wrote two solo shows, "Church" and "Oil," and performed them coast to coast. In 2014, he released his album The Traveler, which featured both songs and storytelling.

His final show at The Groundlings was "Gary Austin in Word and Song" in 2016.

Death Austin died of cancer in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 75. He was survived by his wife Wenndy MacKenzie and daughter Audrey Moore.

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