Austin Comedy Weekend Picks: Alvin Kuai, D'Lai and a Puppet at Out of Bounds

Out of Bounds is in its final weekend, which means downtown Austin is briefly full of improvisers from Chicago, Minneapolis and Brooklyn, all of them walking around in lanyards, looking at rents and quietly deciding to stay home. The festival is the loud part of the weekend. The rest of the calendar is still there, and some of it is better than its billing.

Start up north. Cap City has a bigger name in its main room this weekend, but the smart money goes down the hall to the Red Room, where Alvin Kuai is in for three nights. He's a Comedy Cellar regular, and the New York Comedy Festival has picked him twice, once in 2019 for new talent and again in 2021 as a comic to watch. That's how New York says it likes you: twice, two years apart, as if it wants a second look before it commits. The Red Room is small, which is the point: the worst seat back there beats the best seat at an arena, and nobody makes you park in another zip code.

Saturday afternoon, D'Lai plays Cap City's main room at 4 PM. His credits run through Def Comedy Jam, Showtime and ComicView, and he's done military tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is the only gig in comedy where the hecklers are better armed than the bouncers. A 4 PM show is a strange and beautiful thing. You get out by dinner with your evening intact, the way your grandparents lived.

Out of Bounds has dozens of shows. I'd go for two. At Fallout on Saturday, a triple bill of clown, improv and puppet improv out of New York and Minneapolis, with Oscar Montoya of Minx sitting in with the puppets. A grown man paying $22 to watch a TV actor do improv beside a fuzzy puppet sounds like a cry for help. It's actually how a festival is supposed to work. At Originator Studios an hour later, Rochelle McConico hosts a crowd work show with no scripts and comics from New York, LA, San Francisco and Austin, one of them a retired NYPD detective. If you've ever wanted to be questioned by a professional, this is the safe way to do it.

For the late shift, the Creek and the Cave's Circus Fire goes up at 11 PM Friday, a showcase that promises stand-up mixed with character acts. Eleven o'clock is the hour when comedy stops pretending it's dinner theater. It's 21 and over, which in a town full of developers is the closest anybody comes to zoning.

Prices below are what the venues list. Cap City and Crowdwork say their prices include fees, and Cap City adds a two-item minimum, which is the club's way of reminding you that a joke goes down easier when you've paid for the drink twice. You can spend the weekend at a festival and come home a better person, or see one great comic in a small room and come home the same person, only happier, which is a cheaper trade and the only kind Austin still offers.