Stag Comedy Brings a New Theme to Austin

STAG Com­e­dy is quite pos­si­bly Austin’s pre­mier sketch com­e­dy group and their annu­al Hal­loween show called STAB opens this week at The Alamo Draft­house Ritz this Thurs­day, Octo­ber 16^th at 7:30pm.

Strong Com­e­dy Roots

STAG was found­ed by Joe Par­sons. The Austin native found­ed the sketch group some­time around 2007 with two oth­er per­form­ers. In 2009, Mac Blake (Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin Win­ner, 2013), David Jara, and Xime­na Estra­da joined the sketch group. Even­tu­al­ly the three found­ing mem­ber moved on to oth­er projects, but Dave Youmans, Andrew Rosas, Lance Gilstrap, and Sam Mal­colm joined bring­ing the total of per­form­ers to seven.

The cur­rent line up for STAG has worked hard to cre­ate a high qual­i­ty and enter­tain­ing show for audi­ences. Their efforts have helped built a loy­al fan base and strong rep­u­ta­tion for good sketch com­e­dy. It’s paid off in spades as STAG has per­formed at SXSW, Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy Fest, Out of Bounds Com­e­dy Fest, Toron­to Sketch Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val, Chica­go Sketch Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val, Seat­tle Sketchfest.

STAB Takes Hal­loween to Task

STAG has put their show, Below the Law on the shelf for a while and is start­ing up with STAB which opens this Thurs­day in Austin. STAB is a spooky Hal­loween themed show which fea­tures accord­ing to the press release, “.. It’s a mix of live and video sketch com­e­dy. It has were­wolves, mur­der but­tons, dis­em­bow­el­ment, filthy lan­guage, out­er space judge­ment, and so much more.” They had me at mur­der buttons.

STAG is pulling out all the stops for the open­ing show. Mac Blake loves the Draft­house, ​“The Alamo Draft­house Ritz is a giant room, but so much fun. Our Draft­house shows are ones we try to go all out for and we’ll do some stuff that’s spe­cif­ic to the Ritz show.” If you’re won­der­ing what spe­cials plans STAG has for their Ritz show, remem­ber the Ritz is a movie the­ater. STAG has some spe­cial video sketch­es planned for the audience.

Mac Blake also told me they’re tak­ing STAB on the road with shows in San Anto­nio and Hous­ton. This isn’t the first time the troupe has left the com­fort­ing con­fines of their Austin home,

Go Watch STAG Comedy

While they’ve per­formed at Moon­tow­er Com­e­dy Fest and SXSW, I first saw them at Out of Bounds Com­e­dy Fest this year. I had them on my list of must see acts, so I was stoked as a I sat down in the Hide­out The­ater. At the time they were doing the Below the Law show. It was some­thing to behold. They brought a ton of ener­gy to the stage and by the time they were done, I thought I had an aneurysm . Of course, I mean that in a good way. Mac Blake is a very tal­ent­ed while doing stand-up. Jara, Estra­da, Youmans, Rosas, Gilstrap and Mal­colm are equal­ly tal­ent­ed and active out­side the realm of STAG com­e­dy. David Jara, for exam­ple, has been on the ever rotat­ing cast of Mas­ter Pan­cake Theater.

So ask your­self this, ​“Am I real­ly busy on Thurs­day nights?” If you do some soul search­ing, and the answer is ​“No, I am not busy on Thurs­day nights,” then get online and buy a tick­et or two for STAG Com­e­dy’s STAB show at the Alamo Draft­house Ritz on the 16^th. It’ll be worth it. Tick­ets are avail­able at the Alamo Draft­house website.

More Infor­ma­tion

• STAG Com­e­dy Website
• Alamo Draft­house Website

You can fol­low me on Twit­ter @ElDavidThomas