CC: Hello?

DB: Chris Compton?

CC: Dave?

DB: Yeah. Wow. This is weird.

CC: This is weird. The last I heard you were in Chicago. How did you get to Austin?

DB: I bounced around a bit after BSI. I went from Chicago to Amsterdam to do Boom Chicago and then Second City in Chicago and to Cleveland and then to Austin. I got to Austin almost five years ago. How did you get to L.A.?

CC: After AU, I went to L.A. to write for Midnight with Chris Wylde [a short lived Comedy Central talk show] in 2001. I left town for about two years to go home in South Carolina to take care of my mom for awhile. When I got back to L.A., I hadn't done improv for like two years. So, then I just kind of wound up at Second City L.A.

DB: I stumbled upon your name accidentally just trolling around some improv forums a year or two ago. I saw your profile and thought, "Could that be the same Chris Compton?" And it was! I felt such joy that you were still in the game.

CC: The last I heard of you you were doing Boom Chicago and then recently, maybe last year, someone told me you were in Austin.

DB: Austin has been very good to me.

CC: The scene there is just incredible. We were there last year and I was just blown away by what you guys have going on down there. It's insane.

DB: Yeah, there's so many people doing improv here for the love of the art form. There's no one trying to get famous or noticed by networks or agents... but the impetus seems to be more about how far can we take the art and what other kind of show can we do.

CC: Which is so great to see. It's weird out here. For the most part people are trying to get noticed relatively quickly and seeing if they can build a better Doritos commercial. But in Austin, it feels quite the opposite. The P-graph kids are the ones I hung out with quite a lot while i was down there. And their show was so good. they were doing the show....uhh, I'm drawing a blank... Roy (Janik) was mind-blowingly good.

DB: French Farce?

CC: No. it was, uh... just genius. Not French Farce. It was dark and medieval.

DB: Oh, the Grimm's Fairy Tales?

CC: YES! Roy was some sort of hunchbacked guard character.

DB: They are unbelievable how they can just tackle genres that nobody has thought of yet.

CC: You don't even know that they are genres until you see them do it.

DB: Right! You hear about it and you are, like "Wow!" and then you see their shows and your like "WOW!!! There's no way in hell I can do that."

CC: Yeah, there's no way in hell I can do one of those things, much less several. There was a really good improvised Chekov show out here, but that troupe... that's all they do. P-Graph does several. They’re unreal. They also have the most unsellable name... outside of Mission:Improv-able.

DB: Tell me about Nerdvana.

CC: Stephen [James] and I were in the same Level 1 Second City class back in 2005. We wrote like 6 or 7 scenes together and we were like, "If it was just you and I, then everybody would be showing up to rehearsals." We're both nerdy dudes and we run a weekly night at iO for an eclectic mix of groups that are either having their first show or groups that have been around forever.

DB: What do you have planned for OoB?

CC: We do a mix of monologues and scenes and we're working on a new form. Monologues are really good for sketch writing and finding a strong point of view. We're playing with something now that is a more looser, that allows us to pick up the pace and find more callbacks for the end. We're also going through the UCB program now, so we’re picking up a little bit of that style. Stephen and I work really well together. He's a middle school drama teacher and I have intentionally avoided any kind of career path.

DB: What's something you're looking forward to doing in Austin this year?

CC: Stephen grew up right outside of Houston, so he has his ritual things that he has to do each time he goes there. So last year we had to do get Margaritas at Trudy's. I imagine that will be on the bill again. The house parties were great too. There was one all the way out somewhere last year that was just tremendous fun. Such a great mix of people.

DB: Any shows?

CC: I can't wait to see Get Up again. They had a great show last year. Is You're Not My Real Dad playing?

DB: Yes we are. Thursday.

CC: Crap. We get in on Friday. How about The Frank Mills?

DB: We play Friday and then again on Monday with Cackowski & Talarico.

CC: Wow. That will be like the OK Corral Battle. That name...

DB: Frank Mills?

CC: Yes. That song. It was stuck from Hair in my head for three months after last year's festival and I couldn't figure out why. It took me forever to realize where I had heard it.

DB: I didn't even know the song before we chose the name. I like it because it reminds me of a factory of directness.

CC: Nice. I was in a group out here for a while called Charles Whitman Reilly.

DB: That would go over big here, I think.

CC: I am also looking forward to seeing Tom Booker again too. I haven't seen him in awhile. Tom is one of my favorite human beings. When I found out he was moving to Austin I thought, "Man, that is our loss and Austin's gain."

DB: He has been an amazing resource here in town. He's putting up a show this month called Staged By The Bell. Actual episodes of Saved by the Bell.

CC: That's terrific. It made me so happy to run into him last year and see him doing so well. So, I'm looking forward to seeing him again and also, getting out of Los Angeles for a little bit and getting some of my soul back.