The Three Types

A couple of months ago, I did a workshop on the improvised narrative, and ended up getting into a rather heated discussion with some of my fellow improvisers. There statement was that they had performed many Harolds, and that the Harold was finely suited to support a longform narrative; mine was that I had never seen a Harold done well that used a narrative plot based structure. (Also worth noting is an Improv Etiquette lesson learned that weekend – Rule #1: never, ever tell an improviser that the way they are doing the Harold is wrong.) They did present an engaging argument: they have done a number of Harolds in the past and had success using it for plot.

My problem with using the Harold in this way is that the Harold was, in my opinion, never designed to support plot. In fact, few of the strict forms hold up plot, which is why when I teach I use the concept “plot shreds improv”. The problem is two fold; the first is that the opening, conclusion, and group games don't really fit into a narrative easily – they stick out a little awkwardly. Additionally, if the form is being used fully, you wind up with a problem of “three lines some waiting”. You have your A plot, which is hopefully very engaging and interesting, but if you stick to the form, it has to share stage time with possibly uninteresting B and C plots. Or even worse, you have three A plots, none of which ever get resolved or linked up in a meaningful way. Now sure, you can do some other scenes here and there, or shift around the weight of the other scenes, but then you're not really doing a Harold anymore, are you. (Go ahead, call me a Harold Purist, but may I remind you of Improv Etiquette Rule #1.)

My hardliner stance for the Harold arises because, in my mind, the Harold is an extremely unique form, and we should be trying to explore what it can do instead of trying to hybridize it with other non-congruent types. Of all the improv I've seen, I would say all longforms fall into one of three categories: Narrative, Deconstructive, and Constructive. The narrative is exactly what it sounds like – it's the improvised story. The Improvised X is riddled with the narrative types, where X is Shakespeare, Star Trek, Movie, etc. This is the one with plots, recurring characters, increasing stakes, climax, and resolution. If you're telling a story, you're doing the narrative type. The deconstructive forms are ones that are based around a central piece, which will ultimately be used as inspiration for scenes, by looking for meaning in the central piece. The Deconstruction (obviously) is the prime one, but Armando, Living Room are also members of this type. The last is constructive, which is where ideas and meaning are all being generated organically by the group. This is the artsy one, and the only form I see fitting this category is the Harold. It's supposed to be a weird, art piece of longform. This one relies on group mind in its group games and beginning. Meaning is found by looking at the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas, and is largely up to the audience to discern.

So, is there anything wrong with using the Harold as a platform for storytelling (Rule #1; if you're happy, I'm happy)? Does the Harold support narrative fluidly and easily? In my humble opinion, no, but then again what the hell do I matter? But I would pose this question – aren't there already enough forms that do narrative (and if you want to do that so much, why aren't you?) or deconstructive things? Seeing as the Harold is so unique, shouldn't we see what it can do for us when we really pursue the constructive things it can do? Shouldn't we be equally interested in finding the places we can get to when we embrace the weird, non-linear, organic nature that Harold can give us?

The Harold Theory: Part 2

The twelve questionnaires for the first show revealed the following data: six subjects had seen some form of improvisation prior to the show, six answered that they definitively had not (one sheet put it simply: “No.”), had not seen any live, or did not answer the question. Of those that had seen some form of improv previously, there were three instances of 'Whose Line', three of NCT, and four I defined as “other” (meaning any reference to a group not explicitly named in the question which did include one instance of iO West). Note that this adds up to more than the number in the “yes” group – multiple named groups on a single sheet were each counted. One individual noted four different group instances as well as noting that he was an “improv junkie” (glad we could provide a fix). One individual in the “non” group stated that he had only seen primarily stand up. As this was not improv, this was not counted into the six affirmative improv watchers group.

The four questionnaires from the second show, one instance of Second City was mentioned, the other three mentioned no other groups or organizations.

A number of subjects used the questionnaire to air grievances (“Music is too loud”), or to single out specific players or scenes. This occurred both in positive and negative lights. Most took the sheets to provide constructive criticism on scenework technique for the group as a whole. From the first show, ten individuals responded yes to whether they enjoyed the piece, the other two did not answer the question (hope we did, guys). In the second show, all four responded positively that they did enjoy the Harold. In the second set, half (n=2) replied that they enjoyed how the different “plots” interweaved – one individual even stating that he thought the beginning was confusing, but then he “caught on.” Only two people answering the sheets in the first show explicitly stated that they would like an explanation of what the Harold is (17%). No one explicitly made that request in the second show. Of those two, one stated “Maybe an explanation of what the Harold is?”, so the author is not sure if this is trepidation about asking the question or perhaps not being sure if he needed a reply. A few in show one (n=3) replied with some variation on wishing for more structure, or being a little confused, but none of these sheets said they couldn't understand the piece. Instead, it seems that there was only difficulty in understanding the show (which may be related to us, in my objective opinion, no where near our best work in the past). Three people also replied that the piece was either “slow”, “too long”, or should have been “shorter”. Clearly, longer, meandering and confusing scenework may contribute to some difficulty in understanding the piece. If the players are struggling and the piece becomes amorphous as a result, then it will be difficult to follow for even experienced and informed players.

These results are comforting; they seem to indicate that a minimalist approach to explaining the Harold is sufficient to ensure an audience's enjoyment. I have on more than one occasion witnessed an audience glaze over during an explanation of a game or piece, so my recommendation would be to skip explanations of games and forms entirely (I'm looking at you “What are you doing!”) whenever possible. Certainly, the fewer hard rules in a particular section, the less needs to be explained. Games like “Fresh Choice” rely on the rules in order for the scene to function, but contrast to the Harold, which really has no rules, and can function with only a minor amount of structure.

The current study instrument is sufficient as a questionnaire, but the questions will need to be reworded for future work, as they don't currently assess the proposed theory sufficiently – instead, most subjects focused on answering whether parts of the show were confusing, instead of whether knowing the “rules” was instrumental to understanding. The difficulty is in designing questions that keep the focus on this area of research without leading audience members to a particular conclusion. This study is being expanded, so if you have a group that would be interested in joining the study, please contact me for instructions. All improv, short and long, is currently being investigated.

The Harold

This week's post is in response to the Matt Krell from Alabama (I think. That's where he was the last time I checked, about two years ago, so I guess he's still there. Holla back Krell.) Matt wants to know just what is the Harold, and while I could link to it and save myself the time, this gives me chance to prep my notes in advance of teaching it to my group out here in the SD.

The Harold is the de facto longform; longform being the kind of improv that lasts longer than 3 minutes, and usually involves weaving multiple scenes together into a single, contiguous piece, but can also just be improvising a single scene for long periods of time without gimmicks – just straight-up long distance running of scenework. (A more in depth of longform would be an essay in and of itself. Stay tuned.) The Harold was originally developed by Del Close in the sixties while he was with The Committee in San Francisco. The piece was actually visualized as what it was going to do well before anyone figured out how to do it. (The name was attached to it this point, and was apparently a point of contention for Close; selected by the theater's pianist as reference to a Beatles' quote. Close considered renaming it later but decided not to to avoid confusion.) The Harold was envisioned as a platform for improvising scenes, games, songs, etc. as a full on non-stop performance piece, with the various parts seamlessly working together “like the members of a jazz band.” Essentially, everything is tied around some central theme, and everyone just riffs on that – a means of exploring and elevating common eccentricities and finding that they are grandiose and connected to epic ideas.

The Harold toiled like this for quite a while, as Close did know what it should be, he just didn't know how to make the whole thing work. The breakthrough was while watching a shortform game called “Time Dash” that involved a scene jumping forward and backward in time to see how relationships changed. The design of the Harold then became built around the idea of starting several scenes and then jumping around so that concepts from the other scenes could play into each other – essentially starting with disparate story lines and then watching them slowly weave together until they were all talking about the same thing. The formal Harold has three beats, and each beat has three scenes (for a total of 9 scenes throughout the entire piece). The first scenes in each beat are connected, as are the second scenes, etc. Each beat is separated by a “group game”, which is just an everybody out on stage and let's goof around a bit so that we can kind of reset for the next beat kind of thing. Cap it with an opening and a conclusion, and the end result is, in order:

OPENING/SCENES 1A, 2A, 3A/GAME/SCENES 1B, 2B, 3B/GAME/SCENES 1C, 2C, 3C/ENDING

(Apologies for the lack of graphic representation; I couldn't even find a good one through Google, but there are bound to be some good ones out there.) Often times, the third beat (“C” in my display) will be a merging of all the scenes, but not necessarily. The important thing here is that the Harold is meant to be a platform for the exploration of ideas because it's repetitive nature encourages exploring similar ideas rather than spiraling away. You can think of this as a road map – and one that you will be infinitely grateful for when you realize you go for thirty minutes without stopping. The Harold is significant in my mind for a few reasons: a) nearly every improviser on the planet has started doing longform with the Harold and b) understand the Harold, and most of the next level of difficulty of forms comes easy, because they are all built on the Harold's blueprint. But one of the greatest things about the Harold is that it really is actually simple once you've done a few of them, which means it's quite open to improvise on the structure of the Harold itself. So, fellow Harolders – happy hunting in the great exploratory world of the Harold.

Further reading: definitely "Truth in Comedy", or just Google "Harold". Got improv questions? Leave them in the comments section below or email stagemonkeyssandiego@gmail.com.

The Harold Sacrifice

I've been trying to book my group's first show for the last few weeks, and in the SD, there are very few places to choose from, and most of them want way too much for a group with a fan base you can count on one hand and a show budget of $0. One of the places I called was run by a very nice guy, who when I said “improv group”, instantly perked up, and wanted to know all about what kind of improv we do, what kind I've studied, etc. (Some people like this kind of questioning as interest, but for some reason I feel that some improvisers around here treat it more like an interrogation so that they feel like they know more about improv than you do.) He also wanted to make sure that we wouldn't go blue, which I assured him in a very diplomatic way that we don't go blue without actually saying “I hate cursing”. He also tried to pitch me on the San Francisco improv workshops as a great way to learn linear, narrative improv, and said that it was better than Chicago. I bit my lip, because after all I want this guy to let us have shows there; sorry man, but I'm an iO Chicago guy all the way, so that kind of talk is like insulting my Alma Mater (and I don't even have that strong of an opinion about my real Alma Mater). I also tried to repress the fact that I have been taught linear, narrative improv at the iO; they're no slouches. But he did have reasoning: their in house improv team has tried doing Harold's and the like in the past and has found that the audiences respond better to improvised plays than they do the more “artistic” forms.

About a week later, I met up with some longform improvisers from Lafayette, LA at an improv meet-up, and they seemed to echo the other guy's sentiment. When they do Harolds back home, they explain the entire structure of the Harold to the audience before performing it like they would a shortform game, to which I said, “You're doing too much explaining.” They claimed the same issue – if they just did the form, then the audience seemed confused, but apparently by giving a sort of map at the start of the show then they could follow it. Both different parties claimed that probably in Chicago, someone could do a Harold and not explain the improv particulars to the audience and it still work because the Chicago improv watching crowd was just more savvy when it came to improv. (Congratulations Chicago people – other parts of the country think you're infinitely smarter when it comes to improv than audiences anywhere else!) Now I find it hard to believe that people in SD or Lafayette just “don't get it”. I invited my whole master's program to see one of my shows, and while they are all very smart people when it comes to science, none of them know theater that well, much less improv, and none of them came up later and asked me to explain anything (and we were doing forms that my class had invented – they should have been more confused!) In fact, they only came up and quoted me from the show (in fact they still do – I'll get a Facebook wall post from time to time with my line in it.) The typical iO intro will only say that each group is going to go for about thirty minutes and will improvise scenes, games, or songs based on a suggestion from the audience, and while I would agree that on some nights there was a lot of improvising students in the audience, I can't believe that the entire audience was only getting it because they were students of the art of improv (or perhaps because they came and watched improv shows all the time).

Del Close said that we can't blame the audience for a bad show – especially for “not getting it”, because audiences are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Often times, he said, they get it before the players do. So do we really have to sacrifice the Harold? Granted, it is the first form that most improvisers do, so as a result it's often the first one to go as they become more experienced, but if we eschew the Harold, won't we just start to get rid of the other ones too? Sure improvised narratives are fun (and they probably are, I admit, more accessible), but when we limit ourselves, we're sort of being anti-improv, and I think the audience is smart enough that we don't have to hold their hand.