“The Hideout is and always has been more than the physical place,� says Roy Janik, the co-owner and artistic director of the venerable improv theater. “But we have been there for 26 years, so it's a big change.�

The change he’s referring to is the Hideout’s upcoming change of location � after more than a quarter of a century at its Congress Avenue locale, a change in their building’s ownership means that the folks of the Hideout will have to find a new venue soon. But Janik and the rest of the Hideout crew is staying positive about the transition.

“The announcement that we're moving really put a perspective in place for us about what the Hideout is,� says longtime performer and head of marketing Courtney Hopkin. “It being the community, it being the shows, the improv, the performances, the classes, and not the place. We did, you know, for the entire time we were there, refer to the building as ‘The Hideout.� And moving means that we � In a good way � need to reassess what we think the Hideout is. And the Hideout is more than a building.�

Before they leave the space, though, the Hideout will present their annual 48 Hour Improv Marathon one last time at their current location.

“It's exactly what it sounds like: a bad idea,� Janik says. “But the best idea. Some of our best ideas are our worst ideas. Does that make sense? Every year, the marathon is a fundraiser, and normally it's a fundraiser for our youth program and our Building Connections program. But this year, because we're moving� it's part of a more general fundraising effort and so it's raising money for our relocation fund.�

As the name implies, the 48 Hour Improv Marathon is a two-day nonstop marathon of improv performances. “There are eight performers that do the entire thing,� Janik explains, “but every hour is a completely different improv show. So we might have a group that does improvised Shakespeare come in one hour and they'll join the eight people that perform the entire time and be like, hey, we're doing Shakespeare and the eight people will be like, what? Oh, OK. And then we do that for an hour and then we come back, and now it's like Whose Line is it Anyway-style games and then the next [hour] it's a musical. So those eight people do the entire thing, but over the course of the weekend there are hundreds of other performers that come through and play with them, basically.�

Hopkin and Janik have both been in the core eight in the past, performing in the entirety of the marathon. This year, Hopkin will perform off and on throughout the weekend, but Janik will be onstage for the duration. “Courtney did it last year,� Janik says. “The last time I did the 48 hour improv marathon was when it was only 43 hours. We started a long time ago at 40 hours, and we added 1 hour each year. And so we got to 48 and I said, ‘we can't add any more hours. This is unhealthy.� And I didn't think I would ever do it again, but now that it's our last few months at the downtown location, I was like, this kind of seems like the perfect way to say goodbye to a place that I've spent the past few decades at, you know? So, 48 hours. And it already makes you emotional staying up for 48 hours, but I expect that this was an emotional mistake on my part.�

Is there any time for the performers to catch a break (or a nap) during those two days? “In between shows you can,� Hopkin says, “but it definitely comes at a price. You get a little taste of that sweet rest, and then you don't want to go back. And you wake up and you are angry.�

“Yeah, [the break between shows is] really only 10 minutes,� Janik agrees, “and I think science says like 20 minutes is the sweet spot for a short nap, so it is not a good length of time. There is one show that is a competition show that we do every weekend at the Hideout called Maestro, and we do it in the marathon too, and it's a two-hour block. And it's everyone's favorite show because there's a chance you might do poorly and get eliminated early, and then you have like an hour to sleep. But most of the time the marathoners do really well and make it all the way to the end.�

Hopkin says things can get weird as the hours wear on. “You genuinely hallucinate,� she says. “It is a terrible idea, but you get� you reach a sort of point where you are having realizations about the way you perform, about who you perform with, about how you perform with other people, how generous you can be, how snippy you can be. And, you know, there's a lot of personal breakthroughs that you have when you are so tired and you've been sort of being on for people for that long. And you� make a lot of breakthroughs.�

“Yeah, one of the goals with improv is trying to strip away those barriers that get between you and� your impulse and your creativity,� Janik says. “And once you are sleep deprived, those barriers go away because they have to. And yeah, I think it levels up anyone who does it.�

The PRX Podcast Creator Summit is a free three-day event featuring lectures, panels, hands-on training, networking opportunities and 1-on-1 mentoring June 16-18 on the Apple campus in Austin.

New podcasters looking for collaboration and community can work with professionals from KUT & KUTX Studios, The Drag Audio, Texas Monthly, The Texas Tribune, Exactly Right Media, The Roost and more.

This summit is presented by PRX in partnership with Apple, KUT & KUTX Studios and The Drag Audio.

for the free in-person summit and to receive more information.

Speakers and session leaders include:

• A.J. Feliciano, general manager of The Roost podcast network
• Elizabeth McQueen, manager of podcasts at KUT & KUTX Studios
• Katey Psencik, managing director of The Drag Audio Production House
• Nikki DaVaughn, host of City Cast Austin
• Eleanor Klibanoff, host of The Texas Tribune’s TribCast
• Brian Standefer, director of audio at Texas Monthly
• John Spong, host of Texas Monthly and PRX’s One by Willie 
• Kate Winkler Dawson of Exactly Right Media’s Tenfold More Wicked 
• Landon Cotham of Moontower Soccer: An Austin FC Podcast
• Amira Rose Davis, co-host of Burn It All Down
• Ivy Le, host of FOGO: Fear of Going Outside

As part of the programming, PRX is also hosting a free in-person workshop for a group of Austinites who are pursuing podcasting as a career. If that sounds like you, . This workshop will be modeled after PRX's transformational design sprints for audio, helping participants approach podcast development more creatively and strategically.

“We kind of have like an internal challenge that, you know, anything we do, the next one has to be more of a challenge to us,� says Alchemy Theatre artistic director Michael Cooper, “and we truly live by that."

Alchemy’s latest challenge is the musical Grand Hotel, which opens May 30 on the ZACH’s Wisenhunt stage. �Grand Hotel the Musical has always held a fascination with me because of how it's constructed and how challenging a piece it is,� Cooper says.

Producer Marnie Near says that internal challenge isn’t necessarily about always trying to do something harder � it’s more about always doing something different. “It's challenges in a different way,� she says. “It's more that Michael's always looking for something that's a [new] challenge because of whatever it might be. So, you know, one year it might be because there's a large cast, [or] the music's complicated. We need a lot of actors that are triple threats � that sing, dance and act. So there's all sorts of different ways to be a challenge, and I think it isn't necessarily building on itself, it's just building in a different way that we've never done before. And we're also performing this in the round. So this is for the first time we've done this.�

For this production, Cooper says he’s going all the way back to Grand Hotel’s roots. �Grand Hotel the Musical has a very interesting history,� he says. “I don't know how many people know that it started as a novel by Vicki Baum in 1929, and it came full circle because the last rendition of it went back to that novel, as I did for most of the inspiration. Soon off the success of her novel came a play in the same year of 1929. And then that play did OK. Then in 1932, there was a famous movie, so we can't forget that. So most people do know the movie, but the theatrical history is a little bit more interesting. In 1958, they adapted the play into a musical called At the Grand. And it was hugely unsuccessful, didn't do well at all. After that 1958 [failure] that story sat dormant and Tommy Tune and Maury Yeston then picked it up in the early �80s and went back to the original novel and drew all of their inspiration from that to kind of reinvent what that story was and how that story is being told. And that's another reason I was interested in the piece, because one of the Alchemy’s kind of goals when picking musicals to do, we choose things that are seldom done, or we would reinvent them. And then I had to add my own reinvention on top of that, like taking a cast of 30 from the Broadway version and doing it with 17 people in the round.�

Performing in the round on ZACH’s intimate Wisenhunt stage creates another connection to the original novel, Cooper says. “Vicki Baum had a really, really astute sense of following people and eavesdropping on them,� he says. “I mean, that was her whole style in that book. So it does have that whole sense of eavesdropping on people.�

At the Wisenhunt, Cooper says, “we do get a lot of people saying, oh, it's like peering over your neighbor's fence and listening in on their conversation, you know, and that's exactly what we want� with the type of things that we do. And even in a musical that sounds and feels this big, there's still a lot of that intimacy.�

Near agrees, saying “the audience is really gonna feel like they are in that hotel with these people experiencing along with them.�

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Vanessa Priya Daniel, Social Justice Activist and Organizer and author of ‘Unrig The Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning.�

In this country, many of the most significant social justice and environmental victories of our time have been spearheaded by women of color leaders. African American women founded Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the U.S. Reproductive Justice movement—three of the most influential social change efforts in decades.

On This Is My Thing, we are continuing our mission to talk with people about the things they do just for themselves â€� not because it’s their job and not because it’s a responsibility, just because they love to do it. The stuff you do because it’s your thing.

The latest episode of This Is My Thing is about the game of Cowboy Golf, invented by Steve Merritt several years ago on his property outside Wimberley and now played yearly in the Three Steves and a Dan tournament (Steve plays with his friends Steve Dehmer, Steve Raatz, and Dan Vineyard). Dan couldn’t make the taping, but all three Steves were on hand to talk about the game’s history, its future, and what it means to their decades-long friendship.

On this page, you can listen to the on-air version of this story, but if you check out the This Is My Thingpodcast feed, you’ll find a longer version of this piece (as well as some older pieces you might have missed or might just want to listen to again).

We’ve talked to a lot of other people about their things and those stories will be coming in future weeks. We’re working on stories about a sport called Underwater Torpedo League, the ancient board game Go, and an encaustic painter who’s keeping the millennia-old artform alive. Stay tuned!

 And we want to hear from you about the thing you do just because you love it! You’ll find an online form on the main This Is My Thing page where you can tell us about the thing that brings you joy, calms your mind, or feeds your soul in some way.

When I sat down to chat with Molly Hale, she had spent part of her morning pushing pieces of string through a small wooden loom.

“I am working on a tapestry, weaving out of different types of threads,� she said. “It just comes randomly what I want. I got three done over there and I also add charms to them.�

Hale is an artist who produces work at SAGE Studio & Gallery, an organization in East Austin that supports and shows the work of creators with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

“My mom is my big advocate,� said Hale. “She got me into all the fiber art stuff. She taught me when I was 13 years old and I am actually 41, so I’ve been doing it ever since.�

Like many studios, SAGE is not just a location where people produce art. It’s a place where creatives find community.

Hale is not originally from Texas and, according to her, the transition to living in the Lone Star State was difficult.

“It took a long time to cope,� she said, “but I suffered enough, and I’m mostly thinking on the bright side of things than on the wrong side of things. I found a couple of good friends here actually in SAGE.�

First founded in 2017, SAGE is not a day program where people with disabilities simply make friends and learn social skills. It is a studio and gallery space that is looking to make a name for itself and the artists it represents.

“To date, we’ve paid over $200,000 in commissions to our artists,� said director of external relations and cofounder Lucy Gross. “We have artists that earn upwards of $30,000 a year from their art sales.�

Artists at SAGE work with a wide range of materials like paint, pastels, colored pencils and fibers. When an artist sells an original work, they keep half of the final sale price. The other half goes to SAGE.

“We’re constantly looking for new opportunities for our artists,� said Gross.

Since its inception, SAGE has done collaborations with companies like Vans, Whataburger and Austin FC. One of its goals is to help artists with disabilities break into and build careers in the mainstream art world.

“My hope is that we can sort of evolve to where we’re just showing art,� said Gross. “Whether that art is made by artists with or without disabilities, that’s kind of moot.�

The burgeoning progressives

SAGE Studio & Gallery is a self-styled progressive studio. These are organizations dedicated explicitly to cultivating and promoting the work of artists with intellectual disabilities.

Progressive studios have been around since at least the late 1970s. Any attempt to come up with an exact count of how many there are is an exercise in futility.

“It’s been really challenging to pinpoint a specific number,� said Cléa Massiani.

Massiani is an independent curator and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland. She is currently working on a dissertation about the history and role of progressive studios.

“I have counted over 80 studios across the country at the moment,� she said. “I’m sure by the end of my dissertation, I’m going to get to at least 90.�

By Massiani’s count, California, New York and Illinois are the states with the most progressive studios. Texas has at least seven.

Part of what makes creating a definitive list impossible is that “progressive studio� is still not a widely understood term in the art world.

“There is a clear lack of scholarship, so a lot of people are not even aware that they are in existence,� explained Massiani.

One of the leading efforts at raising awareness of progressive studios is , a project that has tracked, written about and highlighted the contributions of artists with disabilities since 2014.

“There is more connectivity among studios than when we started,� said cofounder Andreana Donahue. “A lot of us know each other.�

This relatively small movement is still establishing itself, but there have been some recent breakthroughs in visibility.

In December of 2024, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City featured the work of , a painter who works out of the progressive studio NIAD Art Center in Richmond, California.

In conjunction with Mullen’s exhibition, MoMA added the term “progressive art studio� to its list of art terms on the museum’s website, a move that advocates view as helping legitimize their cause.

“I’ve been working in this field for over 10 years, so I’ve been able to witness the continued convergence with the mainstream contemporary art world,� said Donahue.

The pipe cleaner artist

first started making art out of pipe cleaners in third grade, when he had a teacher who incorporated them into a math lesson.

After the class was done, Beverly asked for permission to play with some of the leftover pipe cleaners.

“I made a Sonic figurine. It wasn’t the best-looking thing, but I loved it,� Beverly reminisced. “Sadly, the next day when I went to grab it, a janitor threw it away.�

Beverley attends SAGE Studio & Gallery four times a week, and when he first started coming, he spent most of his time making figurines of anime, cartoon and video game characters.

“I like making silly things and stuff like that,� he said. “Basically I kind of have like a kiddish brain.�

Beverly has worked with pipe cleaners for more than a decade, and in recent years, the scope of his work has expanded. Since joining SAGE, his work has been displayed at more than a dozen exhibitions.

His favorite was a solo exhibition hosted at SAGE called “Go To Your Room.�

“Basically my solo show was a teenage room in the �90s and �80s,� said Beverly. “I made Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em, Hungry Hungry Hippos. I made old classic snacks like the Lunchables Deluxe.�

At the time I interviewed Beverly, he and other studio artists at SAGE were preparing for an upcoming show called , a three-day event hosted at the Loren Hotel in downtown Austin.

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For the exhibition, SAGE will display work alongside 10 other galleries and have an entire hotel room that it’s repurposing with art for a concept that Beverly explained to me.

“It’s going to be a honeymoon for a rancher and his city girl wife,� he said.

For the show, Beverly has made pipe cleaner roses, an engagement ring, cowboy boots, a champagne bottle and many other items that might be found in a recently married couple’s honeymoon suite.

One of the centerpieces of SAGE’s new exhibition is a three-foot, pipe cleaner recreation of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss that Beverly has spent a month making.

“The frame is made out of sparkly pipe cleaners,� explained Beverly. “They’re very very shiny, but the cons are they’re like glitter, so they’re a mess to clean up and they stick all over you.�

Beverly’s reinterpretation of The Kiss is breathtaking.

It glistens and has flowers, and he stitched thousands of pipe cleaners together to make it possible. But the process of creating it wasn’t exactly fun for him.

“It’s kind of like doing homework at school,� he said. “It’s kind of boring to make.�

This is not the first time Beverly has reimagined a famous piece of art. He’s also made pipe cleaner versions of The Birth of Venus, American Gothic and The Last Supper.

“It’s a headache to make these,� he said. “But it’s worth it in the end.�

Recreating the classics is not artistically fulfilling to Beverly, but these pieces are visually striking, widely recognizable and, because they sell, they make his career as an artist more sustainable.

“I’ll keep making artwork until my fingers give out,� he said.

Artists at SAGE Studio will have around 40 pieces on display at the Friends Fair, and everything is for sale. Pieces start at $50 and go up from there.

The most expensive item will be Beverly’s recreation of The Kiss.

The asking price is $3,000 because having a disability doesn’t preclude anybody from ambition.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it . Your gift helps pay for everything you find on  and . Thanks for donating today.

Carlton Dixon’s company, Reveal Suits, outfits professional athletes, college stars and hall of famers in custom-tailored suits that reflect their personal journeys � often featuring the colors, logos or mottos of the universities they once called home.

Reveal Suits says it has grown into a thriving brand with licensing deals with more than 90 colleges.

The idea came to the UT Austin alumnus in 2015 while he was watching the NBA and NFL drafts. As he saw players step into the spotlight, something struck him: “How cool would it be to have a suit that represented the college you attended or something special in your life?"

That question sparked what would become a transformative business. Just 15 months later, Reveal Suits was born. Since then, Dixon has helped athletes dress for milestone moments â€� draft nights, hall of fame inductions and media appearances â€� and redefined how they express their stories through fashion.

But Dixon’s path to success began long before the idea for his company.

A former guard for the Texas Longhorns men’s basketball team, Dixon understood the pride athletes carry for their schools and how that connection shapes their identity long after their playing days. After graduating, he worked in education and athletic administration, gaining insight into the student-athlete experience and the relationships between players, schools and branding.

That perspective became the cornerstone of Reveal Suits. Dixon wasn’t just selling clothing, he says he was offering athletes a way to carry a piece of their legacy.

Born in Chicago and raised in Dallas, Dixon’s love for basketball took root in the Oak Cliff neighborhood, where he played at the local YMCA with other neighborhood kids.

“It’s just something about doing it with the guys from the neighborhood,� Dixon told John L. Hanson Jr. on the In Black America podcast. “Everybody’s got their challenges, but when it came to that basketball court, we had one common goal.�

As his skills developed, Dixon joined school teams and quickly stood out.

“By ninth grade, I was starting on varsity, and I thought, 'OK, we might have something here.'�

By the time he was graduating from Dallas ISD, college coaches across the country were vying for his commitment. He ultimately chose Texas over Purdue.

“Texas was run-and-gun, they were on TV, and it was close enough for friends and family to watch me play," he said.

At UT, Dixon’s passion for basketball deepened as he became curious about the inner workings of the athletic program.

“I wanted to understand the machine that was Texas Athletics,� he said. “I was just grateful no one ever kicked me out of their office when I wanted to learn more.�

To hear more about Carlton Dixon’s journey from player to coach to founder and CEO, check out his interview with John L. Hanson Jr. on the latest episode of In Black America.

In 1939, Irish author James Joyce published Finnegans Wake, a piece of literature that defies comprehension.

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s,� it begins, “from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.�

The book starts and ends with a sentence fragment, combines multiple languages and has no clear or linear plot.

It’s a work that’s so dense, one group that started in Austin has been working on it for more than a decade.

“We’re only reading one page at a time,� said Peter Quadrino, founder and organizer of the

Every other week, Quadrino hosts a Zoom call where people from around the world gather and attempt to understand one of the most infamous books in English literature.

The group spends the first 15 minutes of each meeting socializing. Then they all go around in a circle, and each person reads two lines until they’re done with that week’s page.

After that, they spend about an hour and a half researching, annotating and trying to make sense of Joyce’s experimental prose.

“We used to read two pages per meeting,� said Quadrino. “Then at a certain point there was just so much going on in the pages and so much in the discussion that we had to lower it to one page per meeting.�

Finnegans Wake is confusing � and, to many, totally incomprehensible � but the book’s complexity has made it a point of fascination for literary enthusiasts in the eight decades since it was first published.

Houston, New York, Boston, Seattle, Dublin, Kyiv and many other cities around the world host groups dedicated to reading and analyzing Finnegans Wake.

“I’ve spoken at Joyce conferences in I think six different countries now,� said Quadrino, “and just being in this world, I’ve made so many friends.�

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group of Austin, TX is moving through its book at a glacial place � and that’s the point. Their focus is the journey, not the destination.

“I never really consider what it’s going to be like when we finish because I don’t want it to end,� explained Quadrino, “and if we do finish, we’ll just circle right back to the beginning and keep reading.�

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it . Your gift helps pay for everything you find on  and . Thanks for donating today.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. presents his second, and final, discussion with Carlton Dixon, former star high school and collegiate basketball player ,high school coach, and athletic director and Founder and CEO of Reveal Suits.

As a National Merit Finalist and Basketball All-American, Dixon was enjoying a successful career as a High School Basketball Coach, then as an Athletic Director, when the idea for Reveal Suits came upon him.

While watching the NBA or NFL Draft, Dixon would see athletes wearing creative suits that often represented their colleges, so he thought he would distribute personalized suits with officially licensed lining before the big-name apparel companies could beat him to it.

Peggy Stern has spent the past couple of decades producing Lulu Fest (or its predecessor, the Wall Street Jazz Festival), an annual music festival with two guiding principles: the celebration of female bandleaders and the idea that the term ‘jazz� encompasses all improvised American music.

“This [fest] I would call jazz, yes,� Stern says. “And you know, I've always been a little bit leery of saying that jazz word because it's like, you know, Austin is taking its time growing into it. But it seems like the time is now. And to me jazz is improvised American music. Period. So if there's improvisation � and it doesn't matter whether it started as Brazilian music or a Brazilian tune � if there's improvising in it, it becomes jazz. The same thing for Western swing music or for bebop.�

The core mission of Lulu Fest remains the same, but the festival itself changes a bit from year to year. “First of all,� Stern says, “we're changing venues. We're going to the first Universalist Unitarian Church over on Grover, and I've wanted to do it there for years, but this is the year that it finally worked out. They have two beautiful pianos there � they have a Mason & Hamlin and a Steinway, both grands, both beautifully kept pianos. So I decided that this is the year to do some two-piano work. So� that's the opening set on Friday night, with Emily Gimble and myself and Dena DeRose, who is coming from Austria. The second and final act, the headlining act if you will, on Friday night is Carolyn Trowbridge and her quintet. She's an excellent musician.�

DeRose will appear again on night two (“you know, doing her actual set where she sings and plays piano at the same time,� Stern says), and then the two-night fest will close with Ada Rovatti. “It's very beautiful, exciting music,� Stern says. “I'm really excited about that set. [Also], it turns out I'm the pianist � side man, side person � in Ada Rovatti’s set and we're playing all her music and it's very tricky. I have to study it, which has been really fun, [I’m] really enjoying it. And it's gonna actually involve electric piano and acoustic piano at the same time so I'm working on it. This music really calls for electric piano in a lot of places and the combination of acoustic piano and electric piano together is really crunchy. I love it.�