Gary Austin

Gary Austin's founding of The Groundlings in 1974 established the primary Los Angeles institutional node of the American improv tradition at a moment when the form's institutional geography was still concentrated in Chicago and New York. The Second City had been operating in Chicago since 1959 and the Compass Players tradition had been active in Chicago and New York since the mid-1950s, but Los Angeles had no comparable ongoing institutional home for ensemble improv before Austin began his workshops.

The character of The Groundlings that Austin established differed from both the Chicago and New York traditions in its emphasis on character specificity and behavioral realism as the primary goals of improv training, rather than comic facility or political satire. His insistence that improvisation was actor training rather than comedy training, articulated in his documented statement 'Most people who do improv do it for laughs. I do theater,' established a pedagogical orientation that distinguished the Groundlings approach from the game-based emphasis of Viola Spolin's method and from the Harold-centered longform approach of the Chicago school.

The Melrose Avenue location that The Groundlings established in 1975 placed the company in the geographical heart of the Los Angeles entertainment industry, providing performing and training access to actors who were seeking television and film work rather than theatrical careers. This proximity to the production industry shaped the Groundlings' institutional identity as a training ground whose primary outputs were actors prepared for the specific character-based improvisational demands of American television comedy.

Gary Austin's documented teaching philosophy centered on the distinction between comedy performance and theater performance as the fundamental orientation of the improviser. His often-cited statement 'Most people who do improv do it for laughs, and it comes off in a very shallow way. I do theater' articulates his core pedagogical position: that comedic outcomes are byproducts of authentic character behavior rather than the primary goal of improvisational work.

Austin emphasized being totally present in the moment as the foundational requirement of effective improvisation, viewing presence and authentic emotional engagement as preconditions for both character development and genuine connection with scene partners and audience. He demanded that performers discover idiosyncratic character behaviors, vocal specificity, and strong personal choices rather than relying on generic comic personas or recognizable types.

His method drew on Viola Spolin's theater games but merged them with character-based sketch performance to create a distinctly Los Angeles form that was oriented toward the professional demands of television acting rather than toward theatrical or political satire. His background in Nazarene Christianity, which he later left, shaped his view of performance as a spiritual practice requiring total commitment and self-revelation, a quality he subsequently described as secular spirituality. His improv training demanded the same quality of presence and authenticity that, in his understanding, effective religious performance had required.

The alumni roster of The Groundlings, which Austin founded and led through its formative years, constitutes one of the most consequential performer lineages in American television comedy. Performers who trained at The Groundlings include Phil Hartman, who developed his performance practice at the company and went on to Saturday Night Live and subsequent film and television work; Paul Reubens, who developed the Pee-wee Herman character with Hartman as his scene partner at The Groundlings before Pee-wee's Playhouse became a major television franchise; and Laraine Newman, who became one of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players on Saturday Night Live.

Subsequent generations of Groundlings alumni include Jon Lovitz, Julia Sweeney, Cheryl Hines, Kathy Griffin, Chris Kattan, Cheri Oteri, Ana Gasteyer, Phil LaMarr, and Mindy Sterling from the 1980s and 1990s, followed by Will Ferrell, Lisa Kudrow, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Jennifer Coolidge, and Wil Forte in subsequent decades. The scope of this alumni community, spanning four decades of American television comedy production, represents the most direct lineage from Austin's founding vision in a single institutional form.

His teaching methodology, with its insistence on emotional authenticity and behavioral specificity over comic performance, established the pedagogical foundation of The Groundlings' training program that has been sustained and developed by successive artistic directors. The school he co-established in 1979, with seventeen initial students, has grown into one of the most enrolled improv training programs in the United States.

Gary Austin was born Gary Moore on October 18, 1941, in Duncan, Oklahoma, into a fifth-generation Nazarene Christian family. His father worked for Halliburton oil company, and the family relocated frequently across Oklahoma, Texas, and California. Evangelical church services deeply influenced his early sense of performance and public presence. He attended San Francisco State University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater Arts in 1964, studying under directors Jules Irving and Herbert Blau.

Gary Austin battled cancer for more than twenty years before his death on April 1, 2017, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 75. He had described improvisation as a secular spiritual practice, a formulation reflecting his departure from the Nazarene Christian faith of his upbringing and his view of performance as a form of self-revelation and authentic presence analogous to religious experience.