The Hideout Theatre

Founding (1998–1999)

Sean Hill founded Austin Theatresports in 1998 and the following year co-founded The Hideout Theatre with Shana Merlin, who performed with the Austin improv troupe We Could Be Heroes. The theatre opened at 617 Congress Avenue at 7th Street in downtown Austin, occupying a formerly run-down pawn shop space.

Congress Avenue Years (1999–2025)

The Hideout operated from its Congress Avenue location for more than twenty-five years, establishing itself as Austin's primary dedicated improv venue. In mid-2009, when Sean Hill's lease ended, Jessica Arjet, Kareem Badr, and Roy Janik acquired the property and continued the theatre. The Hideout presented regular short-form and long-form shows, an Improvised Shakespeare format, youth Sunday shows, and training programmes.

Relocation (2025)

In October 2025, The Hideout announced the end of its twenty-six-year run at 617 Congress Avenue and a planned relocation to the Art Hub ATX complex at 2801 S. I-35 in South Austin.

The Hideout Theatre operates across multiple improv forms: short-form competitions in the Theatresports tradition, long-form narrative improv, and format-specific shows including the Improvised Shakespeare series. This breadth reflects the venue's position as Austin's primary generalist improv institution, serving both the local improv community and the broader Austin arts audience. The Congress Avenue address, near the symbolic centre of downtown Austin, gave the theatre a physical presence in the city's cultural core.

The Hideout Theatre's longest-running and most distinctive show is Improvised Shakespeare, a long-form production in which performers create an entirely unscripted play in the style of William Shakespeare based on audience suggestions, complete with period-appropriate language and dramatic structure. Parallelogramophonograph (also billed as PGraph) holds a regular Friday night residency performing their signature long-form work. The Mainstage Saturday night show presents a rotating slate of full-scale improvised productions. Other recurring formats include Maestro, a competitive short-form show driven by audience voting, and the narrative ensemble piece LakeVale. The calendar also features recurring productions including Glitter Witch, The Knuckleball Now, An Evening With, and The Improvised Movie, reflecting the theater's range across formats.

Sean Hill and Shana Merlin founded The Hideout Theatre in 1999 at 617 Congress Avenue in downtown Austin, establishing what would become Austin's longest-running improv theater. The building, which had previously housed a pawn shop, anchored the company's identity as a scrappy, community-rooted institution. Over more than two decades at that address, The Hideout became the training ground and performance home for multiple generations of Austin improvisers, developing a distinctive house style that drew from Chicago long-form, New York approaches, and local Austin sensibility. The company developed a corporate training division, The Hideout At Work, serving hundreds of companies nationally including clients such as Whole Foods and the University of Texas. In 2014 the theater hosted an International Improv Experience, and in 2025 it announced a planned relocation to the Art Hub ATX complex in South Austin, marking the end of its 25-plus-year tenure on Congress Avenue.

The theater's current leadership includes Artistic Director Roy Janik, Managing Director Kareem Badr, Youth Director Jessica Arjet, and Director of Education Andy Crouch, reflecting the depth of institutional infrastructure built over its history. Parallelogramophonograph, the resident long-form troupe of Janik and others, has developed a national reputation within the improv community for its patient, character-rich long-form work. The Hideout's multi-level class program, running from free introductory sessions through Level Nine, has trained a large portion of Austin's active improv community, and its youth programming including summer camps, after-school programs, and the Building Connections initiative for neurodivergent participants has extended its community footprint well beyond performance.