Austin Comedy News: Out of Bounds Signs Off, Kevin McDonald in Limbo, Piven at Cap City

Out of Bounds wraps its 20th festival tonight at Esther's Follies, 525 E. Sixth, and it's going out the way an improv festival should, with nobody quite sure what's about to happen, including the people on stage. At 7 p.m. Girls Girls Girls, the Austin troupe that improvises whole Broadway-style musicals, plays its 25th year with Zeke Nicholson sitting in. Twenty-five years of making up musicals on the spot. Andrew Lloyd Webber has been at it longer, but I'm told he writes his down first.

The same bill has Fuck This Month, an LA show where Jiavani and Oscar Montoya build scenes out of audience members complaining about their month. In November in Austin that's mostly property taxes, so bring a calculator. At 9 the St. Louis duo Touch Baseball and the local duo The Blade open for the Lottery Show, where the festival's three Dropout headliners improvise beside whoever's name comes out of the hat. Both shows are $38.10 with fees, $32.85 for students, seniors and military. The ticket pages were showing a waitlist option this morning, so don't drive downtown on faith. KUT notes the festival brought on Rochelle McConico as its new stand-up director this year, and since stand-up's return was one of the year's selling points, she'll get the credit or the blame, depending on how the crowd-work show went.

Now the mystery. Fallout Theater, 616 Lavaca, still lists An Evening with Kevin McDonald, the Kids in the Hall co-founder, for Friday and Saturday at 7. The Eventbrite pages those listings link to say both nights are cancelled. Neither page gives a reason. So McDonald is booked on one website and gone on the other, two businesses calmly disagreeing about whether a man is coming to town, which is the most Kids in the Hall thing that could happen to a Kids in the Hall booking. If you bought a $25 ticket, check your email before you put on pants.

Elsewhere this week Mark Normand is sold out at Cap City on Thursday. Jeremy Piven takes Cap City Friday and Saturday. He spent years as Ari Gold on Entourage, a Hollywood agent who screamed at people for money, and now he's touring stand-up, which is the same job except the people screaming back are paying. Johnny Pemberton, Bo from Superstore, has four shows at the Creek and the Cave, and Michael Blaustein brings what the venue's page calls the Final Leg of his tour to ACL Live on Saturday. A tour that promises it's ending is the most honest thing in show business. Most of them just stop answering the phone.

Looking further out, Chelsea Handler plays ACL Live on November 20. And Visit Austin says Moontower comes back in April 2027, with the lineup to be announced closer to the date. You know the month, you know the weather will be wrong, and you learn who's coming about when the parking lot does.

Twenty years in, Out of Bounds has learned the thing every Austin institution learns eventually: the town will let you make it up as you go, provided you're done by the time the rent comes due.