Garage at Fallout Theater

Typ­i­cal­ly, Garage (Thurs­days 8:30pm at Fall­out The­ater) fea­tures a standup per­former fol­lowed by the women of Garage ply­ing their mag­ic as impro­vis­ers. The troupe is made up entire­ly of women, who are most­ly queer and most­ly single. 

Garage’s week­ly show at Fall­out The­ater took on a spe­cial mean­ing on Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 23, 2025, when the women orga­nized a ben­e­fit for a fam­i­ly who lost their home in the wake of the dev­as­tat­ing Los Ange­les fires. The spe­cial event fea­tured tarot card read­ings, a book sale (I found a few gems myself, includ­ing a book about SNL’s his­to­ry), and a raf­fle. While these all cap­tured every­one’s atten­tion in the lob­by of the Fall­out The­ater, the real mag­ic hap­pened the moment Angeli­na Mar­tin came on stage as host to intro­duce the evening’s spe­cial show. 

Due to the ben­e­fit, the night’s for­mat expand­ed to include two standup sets from the always gig­gly and supreme­ly sil­ly Avery Moore and Roxy Castil­lo, an excerpt from the Edin­burgh-bound How to Dri­ve Your­self Crazy per­form­ers Hol­ly Hart and Mimi Meier, before set­tling into the improv portion.

Improv stu­dents (I’ve recent­ly joined their ranks) are encour­aged to attend improv shows to learn the dif­fer­ent for­mats, styles, and qual­i­ties of improv shows around Austin. To say I was blown away by Garage would be an under­state­ment. I felt like I wit­nessed a bal­let as the play­ers grace­ful­ly took us through an evolv­ing sto­ry. The rapid pac­ing caused a lot of laugh bursts from the audi­ence as the play­ers wove a tale that on this evening explored father­hood, San­ta Claus, retail employ­ment, and an uncom­fort­able attempt to build fam­i­ly. As with any improv show, you can’t explain it and you’ll nev­er see it again, but at the time, it all made per­fect, hilar­i­ous sense.

Luck­i­ly every Thurs­day night at Fall­out The­ater we all have a chance to watch the tal­ent­ed women of Garage take us on new unfor­get­table and one-of-a-kind adventures.