A couple of months ago, I talked about a theory that the Harold does not have to be explained for audiences to enjoy it and appreciate it. Basically, the way I see it is that if an average individual who has never had a music or painting class can sit down and enjoy Bach or Van Gogh, respectively, then why do we feel the need to try to over explain improv to people? Most improv teams outside of the Big 3 improv hotspots that I've seen always try to give the audience a “crash course” in Harold theory before jumping into it: “First, we'll do an opening, then three scenes, then a game, then three scenes that are somehow related to their respective scenes, etc.” Why do we do that? The audience doesn't care, and I believe they don't need a road map to enjoy the journey. Mostly, it's a knee jerk reaction because we explain games in shortform, so surely we must explain structure in longform then too, right? I believe that is not so, provided the players are competent enough to make strong choices, and stick to them. Lead strong, and the audience will follow. Bill Arnett wrote in a blog post that because he was an artist that he didn't have to subject his “research” to peer review, but I've always been more of a scientist anyway, so I will; I am testing this theory. For those of you who didn't really pay attention in science class – a theory is only good until it is tested, and proven over and over again.
Here is my testing instrument: at two recent improv shows of a group that I direct but do not perform in (and hopefully will continue to do so in the future), theater staff passed out an anonymous questionnaire to the audience immediately following our presentation of the Harold (the first of which followed an opening of a “Shotgun!”) during a brief ten minute intermission (for the second show, the Harold was preceded by two stand up performers). Audience members, who had paid to attend the show, were encouraged to fill out a sheet, but not required. 26 copies of the questionnaire were prepared, and twelve and four, respectively, were returned to me at the conclusion of the evenings. No inquiries were made as to where the missing questionnaires went. The sheet consisted of three questions:
1.Did you enjoy the piece? What did you or didn't you like about it?
2.Was there anything confusing about the piece? If so, what do you think would have made the piece easier to understand?
3.If you've seen any other improvisation before (National Comedy Theatre, 'Whose Line is it Anyway?', etc.) how would you compare the Harold to that?
The National Comedy Theatre (NCT) is a local shortform-only improv house well known in San Diego. The selection of these two examples of shortform were selected as what I felt was an obvious and well known counterpoint to traditional longform improvisation. The entire questionnaire was designed with the intention of not leading potential subjects one way or the other in regards to my theory, while also evaluating audience's perception of whether or not an outright explanation was needed to enjoy the piece.
The testing instrument does have some fault in that according to the sheets, some individuals were not sure which piece (Harold v Shotgun!) was the questioned piece, and some people only answered questions about Shotgun! Additionally there were four practicing improvisers from the San Diego scene in the audience at both shows, two of which (at the first show) did fill out sheets. The author is not aware if any of the others also filled out sheets.
Next week: the results!
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