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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Harold Theory: Part 1

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!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Sean and I

So, can I prove that the group dynamics exist the way I claim they do? Well, the difficulty with any theory is proving that it exists absolutely (making it a law) but I can provide supporting documentation to support my theory. The first improv group I was in, I was a member of for a long time – four years nearly, with the last three spent acting as second in command of the group (officially: “Minister of Misinformation and Propaganda”). The president of the group was my good friend, Sean, so right off the bat, using the information I presented last week, one of us was the hero (or leader, chief, etc.) and the other was the second banana (“Lancer” to use the TVTropes parlance). As he was officially above me, there's no reason to believe that he wasn't the hero, and I the lancer (no complaints here, cooler title anyway).

Sean and I couldn't be a better case in point for the “five and up” man dynamic; Sean was fun, charismatic, creative, optimistic, energetic, easy going, and level headed. I, on the other hand, was strict, cold, a stickler for details and rules, pessimistic, cynical, angry, and volatile. Together, we filled out the dynamic at the top of the group, whether we knew it or not. (Of course we didn't, but I do remember talking with him at one point about our dichotomy.) Despite these facts, we were still friends, and our interplay allowed our group to work: we had two of the jobs filled in the group, the conflicting points of view, giving the group balance. Everyone else filled in the rest of the roles: logic, heart, etc. No one told us to behave like that: we just did, it was who we were, and the resulting self organization allowed the group to operated. I personally think that was some of the best times I've had in regards to a group of people I like to just hang out with.

On a side note, Sean may have realized the balance, because he occasionally called on me to be the enforcer. Sean knew he didn't want to be “that guy” who forces people to do things (even if they needed to be done), and that I had no qualms about it. The result would be that he was the inspired dreamer, and I was the hard authoritarian. Sometimes we may not like the job we have and would like to be the fun guy – alas that's not the way the world works. We sometimes have to play our strengths, regardless of the consequences.

My last thought – groups need not understand or even recognize the details of these circumstances for it to work (they if you do, you have greater freedom in playing with concepts and roles). These dynamics arise on their own, reorganizing if necessary. The most important trait is to just love the people you're on stage with. They're really the only ones that matter, anyway.