Shortform v Longform Part II

I have previously extolled the virtues of shortform improv on many occasions. It is still, in my opinion, a fine art form, and I have come to understand that each has its place. It would be ignorant and pretentious to presume that longform is the only improv worth doing because of this or that. And to be fair, shortform still has a lot going for it – it’s simple and fun, and most importantly, it is highly structured. Humans (pay attention here, aliens) like structure for the most part. We like rules, even if just to break them, and shortform has got rules in spades. Even better, shortform shows are not just four people goofing off on stage for an hour and a half; they’re presentations, especially the successful ones. Comedy Sportz, and I’m sure others, present some two hours of entertainment as a whole freakin’ show, with lights, sound, and an emcee (usually referred to and dressed as a referee) who dishes the whole thing as a big variety show.

Why do we need to do this? Because shortform is boring. I mean, not all the time, but most of the time. But each scene is referred to as a ‘game’ for a reason. Each game has a different set of rules and components, and it takes time to get them set up. Most importantly, with library of probably more than 200 games (although I can tell you from personal experience that improv groups regularly use maybe 5% of that, strange), it’s unreasonable, and probably impossible to expect the average audience member to recall the rules for even a small portion of the games. Heck, most people probably couldn’t accurately recall all the rules for Monopoly or Sorry, and those are way more common than Scene in Reverse. What this means is that for every scene, there is one to three minutes of informing the audience what the game is, what the rules are, what the catch is, and then finally getting the suggestion for the scene. That’s a lot of setup for three minutes of improv, especially given that for a longform show of several teams will usually do five minutes of set up in the very beginning, and an ask for before each set of thirty minutes. This makes the ratio of improv to setup roughly 10:1, whereas shortform has a ratio of more like 2:1. This means that if you pay 10 dollars for either show, you’re paying 3 dollars in the shortform, versus 90 cents in the longform, just to listen to people talk. Jason Chin famously hates setup; in his opinion, a lot of setup before a show is like a magician telling everyone how the bunny is inside the hat the whole time, and then doing it.

My own personal example is a show I did back in Mississippi with my college group. Our show design was that we had two competing hosts (I was one of them), each with their own games list, and the audience would vote on which of the two games they would rather see. The audience loved it, the performers loved it, but I hated it. Part of what everyone liked was the banter between me and the other host between games. While it may have been funny, it seriously cut into improv time, and worst of all, it involved setup up two games every time, just so we could not use one of them!

My reason for bringing this up is that I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the local improv house. It being the only real improv game in town, I’m keenly interested in getting on a team there, and I noticed a key problem with one of their games. In fact it’s not just any game: it’s their signature game (I mean if iO can have the Harold, then why not?). It’s called “Five Things”, and here’s how it plays out. One player leaves the room, and the audience is asked for five activities. When the player comes back in, the other team members have to get him to guess the activity using mime and gibberish. But of course, there’s a catch: elements of the five things will be changes (e.g. swimming, but instead of water, he’s swimming in tangerines! Are you laughing yet?), and the player will have two and a half minutes to guess all five things (the title of the game!) and the two-three changes per activity. Here’s the problem, and I’ve timed it several times now. The game will last two and a half minutes, that’s laid out in front. But the game requires a minimum of 15 ask fors, and upwards of 20. No only that, but you have to explain the game, and then the team giving the clues gets to pick the order, and then the host reminds the audience of all the “things” again. It takes between ten and fifteen minutes just to get a less than three minute game going.

Now, I won’t argue that the game isn’t funny, because it can be quite entertaining. (If you really want a rabbit-in-the-hat secret for this game though, in class we learn that because the same suggestions come up so often, the players have no trouble with them because they’re so familiar with the clues.) But the problem here is indicative of the whole problem with shortform. It gets in its own way all too often. This entire show runs just shy of two hours, with nearly twenty minutes of introductions, setup and ground rules before the players are even on stage. The entire show has barely ten games for the whole run. So, now the reason for the showmanship becomes apparent. In film presentation, there’s a thing called “persistence of vision”. Essentially, when you watch a movie in the theatre, half of the time you’re watching a black screen, because there’s a moment between each frame when the projector has closed off the light to move the film. We don’t see the gap in image though, because the image lingers on our retinas. The same thing is applied here; in order to keep the momentum going, the show has to be presented as a seamless act of energy in order to keep the image of comedy lingering on our mind’s eye.

So shortform figured this trick out a long time ago, but the lesson has not carried over to longform. My coach Danny Mora would chide us for not beginning a scene the second the previous was edited. If you don’t fill the space, the vacuum of an empty stage threatens to drown the entire piece. We spend a lot of energy getting an audience pumped up to watch us and to get performers pumped to perform it. If we don’t use that energy, we’re going to lose it to the atmosphere.

Keep that image alive, boys.

Patience and Spontaneity

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Almost without argument, one could say that the heart of improvisation is in spontaneity; by it's very definition, improv is merely theater that is performed without a script, therefore, to paraphrase Huey Lewis (and the News), the “Heart of improv is still unplanned.” That's just the name of the game, as soon as you start planning stuff, and honestly trying to achieve what you've planned, it's no longer improvised theater, it's just plain theater. Improv teachers go to great lengths to achieve spontaneity and true artistic inspiration (because this is what improv really boils down to – you can do anything you want, so you need to be free to do anything you want.) Most of what is done, especially to beginning improvisers, is in the name of speed: Story, Story (Die), Dirty Hand Randy, New Choice, etc. are probably some of the most truly improvised games (at least in the short form sphere) because they are intended to move so quickly that the player doesn't have time to plan. You either just let your brain run wild and with abandon, or you get left behind.

The problem with this is it is essentially a crutch we hand to people: just move quickly and it will be improvised. The problem here is that experienced players don't need that crutch anymore – they are capable of stepping on stage and acting without thinking or pre-planning, only they have been trained such that they will step on stage and run so quickly through even the most complicated transactions that they don't really improvise any more. Generally speaking, this kind of speed is okay in the slam, bam, thank you ma'am world that is shortform, where the emphasis is not on artistic exploration but on entertainment, and where that kind of energetic, fast-paced scene work thrives especially well in “games”. But as you move into long form (where you do a scene that may last three minutes still, but you may have to come back to, or make run an entire thirty minutes (I've seen it done, nonbelievers)) that no longer has the gimmicks (or referee or MC to bail you out) that kind of speed works to your detriment.

Longform requires more patient, discovery-based improv, and as my mother and I can attest, you just can't enjoy the sights when Dad is driving past them at 70 miles per hour (a condition which I now believe may be genetic – sorry passengers). Give a group of new-to-longform improvisers a scenario (any scenario really), and they will be done with it in a blink. Give the same scenario to experienced improvisers, and they will take their time exploring every single, tiny moment, and not just tediously waiting for the next big thing to happen, but really enjoying themselves in the pace of normal life. This is where really improvisation lies: moving slow enough that you can actually enjoy and discover things about your partner, scene objects, or environment. A shortform improviser flows from his head, while a longform improviser flows from everything.

I saw some improv last weekend that definitely fits this bill: no one would argue that these were energetic improvisers, capable of editing with abandon, and fast, too. In thirty minutes they probably did 20 independent scenes, but it wasn't entertaining. Sure, the dialog was improvised (at least I hope it was, scenework that bad had better not been written out ahead of time and approved) but it was just manic (well that and nobody was working together, but that's a subject for a different essay all together). My point is this: scenes don't have to fly by and ninety eleven miles an hour to be interesting or even improvised. The easiest way to get yourself out of a “pre-thinking” mode is to truly focus on only the last thing that was said. All improv really should be is a series of reactions to different stimulus, just true, honest reactions. And that's the whole point of using speed as a training tool in the first place. Quick thinking, and just react. And don't rush, or you'll miss all that pretty scenery.

Long and Short

I love shortform versus longform arguments – they usually fall down along these lines: shortform is popular, but shallow and hokey, and longform is more complex, but elitist and condescending. My friend has a great analogy that I'm going to invoke here, which is that shortform is like Lady Gaga, and longform is like Miles Davis. Now Lady Gaga (or really any large-scale, arena rock, top 40 artist) is “quick, fun, and the masses love it”. Lady Gaga is a far-out character in her own right, she has, it can be argued, built a majority of her following on her ostentatious and outrageous approach to fashion and self. (Fine, complain about the inherent chauvinism in that sentence if you must, but Gaga has built an empire on being a strange weirdo as much as Katy Perry has on being the bubble-gum girl next door, or any rapper in history has on being a from-the-hood “gangsta”.) Gaga's music (like Perry or Kings of Leon, et al) is not complex – it is fairly derivative and repetitive, but damn if it isn't catchy (I spent the better part of a week in a waiting room for a court case the summer that “California Girls” hit big, and damned if I didn't hear Perry crooning about melting Popsicles once an hour, and still enjoyed it.)

Now, the converse is that longform is more like Miles; its “complex, difficult, and there are a lot of people that can't appreciate it.” Miles probably never wanted (or intended) to create art that stood on the shoulders of his own persona, and probably just wanted the music to stand on its own. But his (very valid) point is that longform has (at the very least) the perception of being kind of art for art's sake. In another word: masturbatory. I've spent a number of nights in longform shows where I'd wager somewhere between 25-50% of the audience was other improvisers, or improv students. (At some shows, it may be even higher.) I've also spent nights in shortform shows that were completely occupied by people who weren't just non-improvisers, but had never been to any improv show before. Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (the best selling jazz album of all time) has only sold 4 million copies, whereas Gaga's The Fame has sold over 12 million, Kings of Leon's Only by the Night has sold 6.2 million, and Katy Perry's Teenage Dream has sold 5.5 million, in addition to 30 million copies just for the singles (outside of album sales), and is only the second artist in history to have an album spawn five singles (behind Michael Jackson).

Now the argument of Gaga v Davis is a (unfortunately) very manifest one, which is that longform tends to be a little self-obsessed. Self-important, even. Some of the more well-known longforms are very artistic, can be very “modal jazz”, obtuse, and self-aggrandizing, such as the Harold, which is such a dense form, that it is surprising that anyone ever does it well. But to make the assumption that all longform is weird and onanistic is to miss the point of longform – it is not impenetrable by nature, but by nurture. Longform is more complex than shortform, both for players and audience, and can be quite difficult, but can also be very deep, meaningful, and painfully entertaining. I have seen countless shortform shows that are just as self-important, self-aggrandizing, boring, and dense as I have longform shows – it's not the form that makes the show, it is always the improviser that makes the show. If you have elitist, vapid, and over-wrought players, you're going to have an elitist, vapid, and over-wrought show, regardless of whether you're doing “Freeze Tag” or the “Three Mad Rituals”.

Now, let's go back to music briefly. Fine, Gaga outsold Davis by 8 million copies, even with Blue having a 50 year head start. But let's compare: remember those numbers above for a bunch of the current big artists? Well, they don't even score on the list of the best selling albums – Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is considered one of the best albums ever made, and has sold a whopping 50 million copies world wide, and is the second best selling album of all time (behind MJ's Thriller). And Moon is no Fame – it is very artistic, groundbreaking in sound design as well as songwriting, uses interview clips to break up songs, and is a dense (and also entertaining) album, yet still outsold Gaga more than 4 times over.

This tells me that audience's don't care about art/entertainment so much; “I may not know much about art, but I know what I like”. Sure, you may get some people who'd prefer to watch a few games than invest in a whole involved piece, but the fact remains that well-executed trumps for-the-masses every time. Look at movies like Kazaam to see something that was intended to be easily accessible, lowest common denominator popcorn fare, and is universally reviled. (As a fun project, go look at the lowest scored films on Metacritic, and, sure, you'll see Date Movie, but you'll also see Adventures of Pluto Nash (with Eddie freakin' Murphy), which also has the dishonor of being one the biggest flops in movie history. That list is a veritable rouge's gallery of cinematic failure in commercial film-making aspirations.) It is not by virtue of the medium, but the artist that makes the art impossible to watch.

Pieces of the Whole

I overheard one of the local improv teachers here give the following advice to a student: “shortform is for the audience, longform is for the improvisers”, which is a very distressing argument for a teacher to make and is, while very ignorant, one that comes up time and time again as an occasionally legitimate argument against longform improvisations: longform is a artistic device where nothing happens.

The AV Club published a very interesting article that explored the modern style of storytelling in some of the more “acclaimed” programming (e.g. Breaking Bad, Luck, The Sopranos). The way seasons, and in some cases, entire shows are divined now to reward sustained and completist viewing of seasons – the emphasis has shifted the emphasis to how an episode fits into the greater picture of the show. This is very similar to the way we think longform should work: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A great longform piece is enriched by the order and placement of the pieces therein, elevating it in meaning and purpose. But this means that we may sacrifice making those parts worthwhile in name of focusing on the “bigger message”. This precocious, and dare I say pretentious approach to creating is what threatens to drag any unit of art down.

Shortform's strength is also it's greatest weakness: a slavish amount of attention heaped on a single game, that comes at the expense of fitting it into the fabric of the larger piece. Shortform is as guilty of being shortsighted as longform is of being farsighted in this respect. We spend an inordinate amount of attention in a Harold trying to say “the something” that we can potentially hobble the entire production. This slavish devotion to perfection in the piece is an admirable and lofty goal, but the focus must always be on the present. The great improv questions of 1) if this is true, what else is true, and 2) if this is true, why is it true suddenly become more about the entire act of improvising, rather than just tools to play good scenes. (Del even said that the end is in the beginning.)

An over-attention to detail, one that is meticulous, even compulsive and obsessive, can derail attempts to be experimentative and explorative, stagnating innovation. The entire piece should be reflective, not the scenes. The scenes should be concrete, and something should happen in each and every one of them. These concrete blocks build on each other to create something meaningful – hollow, empty bricks build nothing of significance.

So how did we get here? Well, I have to agree with the AV Club's conclusion that “creating a lengthy, layered narrative is really fucking hard.” People like that teacher up there have no doubt seen some improv group that got in their own way of having fun in the moment and got caught up in being profound, which groups will do as they learn to master the craft. You see those kinds of shows in an audience mostly full of improvisers, because improvisers are far more forgiving of an ambitious move that completely fails than a typical non-improviser audience would be. But you don't get to the point of being able to tell deeper stories by refusing to take the risk.

Shortform v Longform

I, like so many of my fellow improvisers, started doing improv in college, and started by doing what is commonly known as shortform improvisation. This is in contrast to longform improvisation, and though there is no “official” definition or difference between the two, the generally accepted demarcation is that longform is any improvisation that lasts, uninterrupted, for more than five minutes. Shortform is, well, everything else. Shortform is by far the most common form of improvisation, and prior to moving to Chicago, I was only exposed to longform very briefly and very sporadically. Shortform is so common, that it is even known to people outside of the improv world; I can’t think of a single person who, when describing what improv is to a friend, parent, relative, or co-worker, didn’t say “It’s kind of like ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’”

In fact, shortform improv probably encompasses a good 75% of all improv ever performed. And with good reason: it involves the audience tremendously, is almost always funny, and allows for the kinds of outrageous characters and situations that audiences have come to expect of their modern comedians. Longform on the other hand, is unpredictable, often unwatchable if performed by even mid-level experienced actors, and if it uses crazy characters and situations, often collapses into a hot mess within minutes. The difference is largely in structure; while longform has attempted to codify itself by creating forms (e.g. the Harold, the Deconstruction, the Armando), adherence to the form is pretty much open to the interpretation of the director and/or performers and definitely not necessary. On the other hand, shortform is heavily dictated by rules and structure. In fact the success or failure of a game is largely a part of how well the players follow the rules and exploit the particular gimmicks of a game. Even the names show the difference in how seriously people take it: shortform pieces are called “games”, and longform ones “forms”. The former suggests that it is solely for entertainment, while the latter suggests a larger, more amorphous thing.

I like to think of shortform as ‘improv with training wheels’. Follow the structure of the games, and people will laugh. This is important in the beginning, as it allows improvisers to get a feel for the basics of improv, get comfortable on stage and with their fellow players, and most importantly have fun. The biggest plus of shortform is that the rules are designed to make nearly every attempt funny and by definition, the game can only last three-ish minutes. Even if it stinks, it’ll be over shortly with a bell ring, and you can start anew. (Whether or not those three minutes can seem like an eternity is discussion of relativity that is beyond the scope of this article.) Longform is generally not as popular among the general population, excluding of course, the forms that are very gimmicky. (The most significant is the various improvised musical acts, which consistently draw large crowds, probably not least of which because people love musicals in general.)

Now, while shortform is a crowd favorite, it is generally looked down upon by ‘serious’ improvisers. Shortform is seen as silly and valueless to longformers, while shortformers look upon longform as unnecessarily cumbersome and often unfunny. In fact, when I first started doing improv, my group watched one of our sister-troupes perform a Harold, and we all swore that we would never bother doing it. Uninteresting and unfunny. We’ll stick to our “Dating Games” and “Stand, Sit, Kneels”, thank you very much.

One of the big improv teachers in San Diego will only teach shortform, despite interest to the contrary. I asked her why, and she said that it wasn’t worth doing improv if it wasn’t on the level of “TJ and Dave”. For the benefit of those not in Chicago, “TJ and Dave” is generally considered to be the best improv show in Chicago, which pretty much makes it the best improv show in the world. To put it in perspective, they play on Wednesday nights at 11:00 to sold-out crowds. Every week. To say that these extremely talented players are the only ones who should even bother doing longform is like saying it isn’t worth living unless you’re going to be the smartest man alive. The point that I had trouble getting across to her was that improv takes time. Carol Hazenfield described longform as the “outback”, and to be honest, it takes time to cross the outback and see everything in it. You don’t become the best gunslinger overnight – you’ve got to rob a few banks first, and yes, botch a couple too. But shortform advocates see every longform failure as proof that the art is unworkable, and indeed many groups have fallen flat on their face as a direct result of not minding the gap between thirst and sense.

It’s true that longform is more challenging; I won’t argue that. It’s a full 27 weeks into the iO’s program before they let you attempt going for over five minutes. It’s scary being up there with no safety net; no team-member standing by the bell, no built in gimmicks, and no rules. But it’s also exhilarating and rewarding – a well performed thirty minute show blows away both audiences and performers alike. I won’t say that shortform doesn’t have its place; without shortform, I never would have been entertained with improv long enough to be still doing it. And audiences will always love shortform, but shortform has limited potential. Those rules are fences which keep improv focused and ‘normal’, but also limit its creative capacity, because just beyond those fences is a whole untamed, anything-goes world of scenes if you’ll just open the gate and walk outside.

A Cult

People get really put off by the word “cult”; my group, the Stage Monkeys, when it originally started in Louisiana, was (and still is) called the Cult of the Stage Monkey, but when it moved to Mississippi, dropped the “Cult” part, because nearly all of the Miss is in the bible belt, and they don't take to kindly to that kind of talk down there. But improv is in general, a cult itself, and not just in the way that other folks have pointed out before (we make you pay money, we steal your time, we make you more open, emotionally bare weirdos), I mean we are a cult of personality.

Even outside of the near religious reverence of people like Del Close (who does have a shrine at the iO Chicago, for Del's sake) – we revere the people that are involved in it. There are certain people, whose personalities are magnetic – players we love watching, regardless of what show we're watching them in, in fact, we may even prefer to see them in low-concept shows so that we can just watch them. I'm as guilty of this as anyone; you tell me Greg Hess or Blaine Swen or Dave Hill or -stop the presses- Bill Arnett is in a show, and I'm there – I don't even care what they're doing. That's a cult of personality: the devotion of a group of people or community to a single person, based solely on the fact that they are them. A religion built on someone's persona.

Now, in contrast, I just started playing in a community band and noticed something that I had really forgotten about bands – the melding of disparate voices into one sound (“one band, one sound”, to use my Drumline parlance). It's really there in the name: band, ensemble, etc., you have a bunch of very different sounds, that all work together to create a song. Now some instruments are stronger than others (trumpet, trombone) in their big, splashy (often brassy) sounds, while others are cooler, more mellow instruments (saxaphone, clarinet) – but the point is that the entire sound of the group isn't derived from a single voice; it's all the tones working together that complete the sound – it is the very nature of the myriad instruments working together that you can make music. Sure, you can still play some songs without some instruments, but you need all of them working together (and in the right balance) or what you're playing isn't complete.

By the same token, it's important that groups of improvisers recognize the need to have a “complete” ensemble to make “complete” improvs. You can't have an orchestra made of just english horns, and you can't have an improv group made of just smart-witty improviser types. We often lose sight of this when recognizing good improv, in focusing on one particular solo, and forgetting that it was the tubas and bass clarinets that finished the picture. And I say this being well aware that being in two-man improvs, it is all about the cult of personality. Two people can't just be playing the bass line; they've gotta carry the melody and the harmony just to make the song go. You watch a two-man improv, and you buy into the cult of personality: you're saying that what these two people do is interesting enough to sustain your attention.

The Onion's AV Club pointed out in a recent article that rock is currently a post-decadence period: we built nearly the entirety of music (and movies, and a lot of other art) on the backs of artists. “A gross display of power” was how they put it; popular musicians with easy access to money, drugs, and women, and in a lot of ways, we celebrated them for it. Sure, we want them to put out good music, but we also want to see how outrageously oppulent their mansions were, although, the AV Club does point out that now being a “rock band” is discouraged among rock bands. Look at the virtual indiffference to film like I'm Still Here, that follows the faux-destruction of Joaquin Phoenix. These are artistic endeavors nearly more focused on the behavior of the people making it than what they're actually making.

But it's that exact same reason that I am always more impressed to watch a group of people put something together than I am to watch a two-man show, it's just plain harder. You get more people, you add more voices to the sound, which both makes the work harder and at the same time more complex, distinct, and diverse. You are no longer relying on two people to do a duet or an accompanied solo, you're watching the whole orchestra folding themselves into each other to create a rich ensemble piece. Which isn't to demean or diminish the work of a great duo of improvisers, as that has its own inherent difficulties, but its to say that there is a difference between a note and a chord. When you diminish the inherent power of the individual, you heighten the value of the collective – the group mind, or in this case, the group sound. But remember that your group is playing a chord, and every instrument should be utilized to fill it out.

Hulk Versus Superman

I just finished reading the DC versus Marvel trade paperback. I remember catching a few issues way back when it first came out, but I wasn't really in to comics at that time, so it sort of fell by the wayside for me. The premise, for those of you who haven't read it, is that two all powerful beings, one from each universe, decides they will pit the greatest warriors from each universe against each other, to see which universe is superior. Simple, right? I even remember having similar conversations with a friend back in college: who would win in a fight between Hulk and Superman? (Superman, duh. Come on, people.)

If we think about it though, this simple question is essentially the perfect set up for an improv scene. In ten words, we have the whole scene. Who? Two characters, Hulk and Superman. What's going on? They're fighting. When? The present (no time like it). Where? Doesn't really matter.

But notice I didn't ask "why". That's because it really doesn't matter. When we ask questions like this, the why is so unimportant. The comic, for that matter, essentially glosses over the whole topic. There are two supreme beings we don't care one lick about. They were created for this story alone, and will never be discussed once the last page is turned. Their plot is distinctly unimportant, and really only exists to hang the whole thing together. Even the heroes, when summoned for their respective battles, just go along with it.

Remember how I mentioned improv earlier? A scene begins, two actors on stage, and they set to improvising. For our purposes, we don't really care what they're doing, just so long as they're doing something. We also don't care why they're there, which one of them is to blame, or why they're friends (or coworkers, or whatever). What we care about is what's going on, who they are, who they are to each other, and how the whole thing is going to shake out (whether Hulk or Superman will win).

Here's a fun experiment: the next scene you're in either a) start blaming the other person for causing the situation (or just recount how you got there) or b) start asking your other player why he is acting the way that he is.
In the next scene either a) don't worry about why you got there, just accept the fact that its reality or b) treat the other person like this is how they always act (because if they are actually a friend (or coworker, or whatever) this would be how they'd always act).
We don't want to see people argue and bicker, we see enough of that in real life. We go to see performances to see people be honest and deal with each other. Any time we try to "fix" the other person or the situation, we're essentially negotiating the scene with our partner. And time spent negotiating scene points is time wasted.

We don't want to see Superman and the Hulk argue amongst themselves about their predicament, or try arguing with supreme beings as to whether they actually have to do this. We want to see two superheroes go toe-to-toe, and fight each other like they mean it.
Who cares why you're friends or why you're there? You are, so deal with it, and act like this is normal.

The audience wants it.

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?

Cause and Affect 3: Oh Geez...

My uncle flew re-fueler planes in Vietnam; just close enough to the action to hear it, but far enough to not really participate in it. The Air Force uses a so called "guard channel" that radio traffic about enemy planes is relayed over. The fighter pilots are a hard bunch - they have the speed and the firepower, so they are in the melee all the time, but again, they are battle-hardened, so they are uniquely unfazed about things that would make most other pilots take pause, at least. Routinely listening to traffic, you could hear various pilots relaying clipped, urgent messages back and forth to each other as they came in contact with bogeys, reacting in ways that seem fairly normal to the rest of us. But among this excited (possibly worried) chatter, the fighter pilots would stick out with simple, terse lines like: "Bogey, 10 O'clock, low. Got him." One particular story is during a refueling flight, my uncle's plane linked up with a fighter element, and the various pilots would go through, reading off their remaining fuel, until it gets to the last plane, who replies in a high-pitched squeal, "I'm almost out of fuel!"

I started watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm" recently, and I was thinking about it in terms of the idea of reaction-based scenework (see my two previous posts, Cause and Affect 1 & 2 in the archives), and Larry David would not, by any means, be considered a "badass". He is only interacting in a very "real" universe: there are no zombies, storm troopers, or supervillains; only the regular kind of everyday people even you could encounter on a regular basis. And in this world, he cannot fulfill the basic criteria for being a badass: 1) having the capability to affect change and 2) being willing to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. Larry David repeatedly shows that he lacks completely the capability to affect change (sure, he can make small gains, but he is so nebbish, tactless, and misanthropic that he routinely fails in relating to others) and is generally more than willing to allow perceived slights against him to go un-remedied and often un-addressed.

So then, why is this character able to maintain a story around himself? The answer is that Larry David is an anti-badass (The complete opposite of a badass. Goodbutt? Nicetush? Greatfanny?) Here's the way it works: Larry doesn't actually cause much change around him, but what he does do is changed by much of what goes on around him. Small stimuli from others around him, cause him to change greatly. He gets very bent out of shape, deeply affected, and dramatically changed in mental and emotional ways by every single one of those stimuli. Remember how we can tell if someone is a badass (or make someone a badass) by creating change to their affects? Batman starts fighting 20 thugs, and we know whether or not he is a badass by whether or not he beats them, and how easily. If he doesn't break a sweat, he is more badass, if he barely crawls away, he seems like less of a badass. If he is defeated, he's not a badass any longer. In effect:

[BF] = [HE] - [EOH]

Where:

BF = Badass Factor (how badass a character seems)

HE = Hero effect (what and magnitude of changes precipitated by hero

EOH = Effect on Hero (what changes the Other precipitates on hero)

Now, in Larry David's case, he effects so little change and is so greatly affected by everyone around him that his BF is effectively negative, which makes everyone else a badass. Remember that there has to be a response to stimuli in order to register change - you can't force the Other to change for you, but you can choose to be changed by stimuli, and because Larry is so changed everytime - greatly frustrated, embarrased, anxious, and angered by everything that goes on around him, that he makes everyone else badass.

Greatbehind?

Field Guide to the North American Improv Scene

My father and his two brothers grew up in east Texas, and from what I can tell, the vast majority of their formative education appears to have been built around naturalism. It's not nearly enough for them to be outdoorsmen – they want to be able to identify literally everything in the natural world. Typical conversations with them go something like this:

Me: Oh, that's a cool [tree, bird, animal, fish].

My Dad or either Uncle: That's called a [name of tree, bird, animal, fish, as appropriate].

Me: Cool.

They seem to have a near encyclopedic knowledge of the various flora and fauna (which may be more a product of growing up on a farm, pre-internet, than anything) but these facts allow them to draw parallels about the world, to understand it beyond merely wandering through it. By that same token, I'm the one my father calls when he wants to know “what else [actor/actress's name] has been in”. This kind of fundamental information becomes critical in truly understanding our worlds, so here is a review of the four basic scenes (I would like to specifically thank iO West's Brian O'Connell who taught me this list).

Straight/Absurd: The most commonly encountered scene. Person A is wacky and strange; he has strange points of view, is irrational and expresses those elements. Person B is a normal guy – he's us, the audience – reacting to the craziness. This basic scene is one of the most commonly exploited for laughs; provided you set up the A causes B frustration (a hammer/anvil situation) then you've got comedy. “Ghostbusters” is a classic example, where depending on the scene, different people play the part of straight or absurd (which is a key element of this dynamic: it's all relative). Peter and Egon sell Ray's family home, and they're absurd and he's straight. They visit the new headquarters and critique it as Ray slides down the pole; now he's absurd and they're straight. Janine asks Egon what his hobbies are and he replies “I collect spores, mold, and fungus”, and you get the idea.

Character: This is the second most common, and is in essence just an extension of the previous scene type. In this one, two characters have similar (often identical) viewpoints. In this one, the points of view often have to be far more exceptional, because now the burden of the “straight man” has passed to the actual audience, who has to recognize the ridiculousness. It's important to note that in a character scene, A and B need not have peculiar characterizations, it's more about how they think. Also, if a third player enters and presents a different viewpoint, you're back to a Straight/Absurd.

Alternate Reality: In this very rarely encountered scene, the players are normal, but the world has gone absurd. Whatever universe these characters inhabit, it has different rules than our own. iO West's Lusty Horde revels in this kind of scenework, where ice bases, dragons, mole men, and other classic B movie fare are considered normal. The fun comes in watching how life works in this other realm. By this same token, Improvised Shakespeare and Improvised Musical pieces could also be considered this scene type, since each of those shows present worlds with different rules than our own.

Roommate: You don't actually have to be roommates in this scene, but this dynamic is one that is set in our own reality, and has normal characters. A and B will often have very similar statuses, and this scene can also have elements of any of the other scene types, but the emphasis is on highlighting reality – absurdism is kept to a minimum. Shootin' the Shit with EJ is great example, but so is Shotgun!, Dinner for Six, and Hold 'em.

Those are your four basic scene types; they can intermingle and hybridize, but you'll find that when you're in a scene, if you can identify the particular species, you can figure out how to make it thrive.

An Open Letter

*Writer's note: I wrote this article about three years ago - I had just saved it because it is a vitriolic, but I also needed content today. Though it is directed to one person, the point I believe is endemic to more than just this one instance.

Dear White Shirt Guy,

Hi there! I saw your improv show last Saturday night; I was the guy in the third row, center stage who wasn’t laughing (more on that later). It might help if I point out that I was sitting next to the two older couples who wouldn’t shut up and left fifteen minutes into your set. They may have had the right idea.

Now you may be asking yourself: “Why am I being targeted for this letter?” Well, there are a couple of reasons, the first of which is that you were one of the two hosts, and therefore I assume that you are in some semblance of in charge of the group. Additionally, you are undoubtedly the most handsome member of the team. Now, I may not be gay, but I do appreciate and respect handsome looking fellas. And you are definitely aware of this fact, as you fulfill the role of “handsome leading guy character” in every scene you’re in.

Allow me briefly to emphasize that last point. You see, what I really mean to say is: every single scene. I’m not sure if you’re aware of the fact, but you were in nearly every single scene. At first I sort of suspected it, like when you’re walking past a window and you think you see two people having sex out of the corner of your eye. But just like my two lesbian neighbors, I had to stop, and step back to see if my initial observation was correct. (It was, and they were. And boy were they going at it.) I started paying very close attention to you, and you were in every god damn scene.

I reckon you fancy yourself as the guy to beat in your troupe. You’ve probably been doing this for a couple of years, and in the tiny fishbowl that is the San Diego improv scene, you’re kind of a big fish (perhaps a halibut?). But I’ve seen this kind of thing before. You feel it’s your duty to make all the scenes funny, and by god, you’re the only man who can do it. Problem is, you’re not very funny, and you play the same character every time. Now, I don’t want to come off too harsh; after all, there wasn’t a single person I saw that entire night who was particularly funny, but I’m singling you out, because at least your problem can be fixed.

Improv is a team sport, man. There is no quarterback, no point guard, no Queen. Now, I’m a big proponent of people playing their group roles and group strengths (you’re the good-looking one, okay), but I have never seen a scene be saved and only rarely made funnier by the addition of another player. And trust me, I have tried. My friends have tried. I have seen the experiment played out in the laboratory of the stage over a dozen times, and it never works. If a scene isn’t going well, the best thing you can do is just edit it. If it is going well, then leave it the hell alone.

Very respectfully,
Dude in the third row, center

Group Suck

There was an improv article that I found circulating the internet a while back, written by Adam Felber, titled “Why Improv Sucks” (the article can be found here, for those who want it in its original context: http://www.improvresourcecenter.com/mb/showthread.php?t=1075). The article is a fairly succinct missive about the many shortcomings that improv has that continue to prevent its professional evolution, and one point in particular stuck with me, if only because I've written on a related topic about a year ago (you can read it in my archives in August 2010, “Expert or Fun?”). I'll only paraphrase Adam's point here, which is that improv groups have a unique organizational structure, by which he means (and I agree with) that unlike in other endeavors, under-performing, weaker members are often allowed to remain on a group's rosters forever effectively hindering what the group can ultimately do.

Now obviously, being an improviser himself, I'm sure Adam is aware where this attitude comes from; it's the “Theater of the Heart” concept put forth by Close. In order for improv to be successful, we had to train people to cherish and celebrate each other's ideas on stage, or scenes would never form (or just one or two railroading individuals would control everything and everyone else would just follow along). This “treat others like geniuses, artists and poets” (as well as “yes, and...”) conceit extended from the stage into the organization, which was great, because that helps encourage along the “group mind” books are always going on and on about. Groups have to be more than people holding each other at a detached, professional distance to achieve the level of powerful artistic intuitiveness that leads to great improv – they need to be open & available. (This quest for group mind, I believe, is largely the reason for the current immobility of membership – I disagree with Adam's notion that “there's too few good improvisors [sic] around”; that may have been true back in 2001 when Adam wrote the article, but I see too many talented people for that to really be a valid argument anymore. Alternatively, it may be because, as Carrane and Allen put it – we're “too nice”. Or even more, that improvisers see themselves as so different from “real acting” as to be more accepting of mistakes – the “populist”, “accept all mistakes as offers”, or “acting-is-bad-because-actors-are-snooty” theories. I personally think that there is an unfortunate spiral of having a flippant attitude towards improv – there are too few that take it seriously, and too many who just see it as a whatever hobby – the latter, majority viewpoint has more people adhering it, and tends to make even people in the former camp switch sides.)

However, we've allowed that to extend into a family-oriented dynamic that overrides our professional sensibilities about making good art. I had a conversation with a fellow improviser who is a member of a group that has that kind of people-don't-leave-except-by-their-own-accord dynamic, and he told me how much he loved being a member of such a group because it meant not having to worry about getting kicked out of a group – essentially, he liked the fact that he could coast once he got in (alternatively, he could continue to work hard, and he does because he's a good improviser, but not everyone will have the same work ethic). That group as a result has a some really talented people, and some real clunkers, but no system to foster creative or talent growth, other than a wish and a prayer. The plus side of this approach, it should be noted, is that no one needs to feel afraid of failure, because nothing bad can happen to you in such an event (side question: is that such a good thing – improvisers are lazy enough as is).

But this is the other side of Adam's rub – if members are never removed, even if they under-perform (like my friend likes), then the group suffers by having a few weak links, but because new people can't be brought in, then improv suffers (because you're not putting the most talented people together – you're splintering your talent pool). My friend compared this to groups he was familiar with in NYC (though the comparison holds true to other large cities as well) where getting in the theater is a struggle, as is staying in it – though this fosters growth and does not allow “coasting”.

Now, I am by no means am going to tell you what to do (but you're likely interested if you've read this far), but you're two option are thus: 1) value friendship, fellowship, and fraternity or 2) value talent, productivity, and skill. Notice at no point did I say that the first option is wrong in any way. I have a friend who has been practicing once a week for the last seven+ years with a group and they've never done a show. There's nothing wrong with that; it's just a bunch of people who like the artistic outlet and the social aspect, but don't need to do the whole show thing. If you take option one though, you can't be upset about your group not exceeding expectations and breaking new ground artistically – you have to be happy with the people you have, whether they're an “A+” improviser or a “D-” who's just doing it because he has time and it's fun. (It should be pointed out that even your iO or UCB or Second City rosters aren't immune – but the difference is that new additions are heavily vetted, and those that are at the point that they don't have to worry about being removed have been doing it for a great number of years, and are usually, let's face it, really good.) By the same token, option two isn't automatically right – it certainly won't make you any friends among those you don't deem up to snuff – but getting the best people together is how you make the new cutting edge, and hopefully you won't forget to still love and cherish each other once you get there. Though do read my previously mentioned article – even in a superstar team, you'll still need to grind the whole thing out and stick with it.

It would do well to remember that even under option 2, we still have a duty to our fellow improvisers that we share the stage with to be supportive, and to still look to play with people we enjoy the company of (see my previously indicated article). We can still strive for constant improvement, push harder and farther in our craft without being snooty, self-absorbed blowhards. Got a player in your group who's not working like everyone else is? Push them harder – make it clear that the group wants to keep moving, and they'll either step up the game (which is awesome if you like playing with them) or both parties will realize that it's time to part ways (which sucks if you like playing with them). Improv is still a team sport if you're taking it seriously, and the whole team will have to go along pushing it up to the next level for it to work.

To Err is Improv Part 3

Our brains are good at making connections and finding patterns, but that is often all we do. We simplify the world around us into generalizations and stereotypes, we discuss things in probabilities and statistics, but as my friend used to say: “Statistically speaking, statistics are meaningless.” When we trade details for abstractions, we run the risk of missing potentially damming and useful information. The easy fix for this is to simplify. This may sound counter to my previous statements, but we really have to do a lot less work than we usually end up doing. Be blunt in the information you present, and it makes it easier to interpret it bluntly. Often we learn more from summaries of information, yet we still decide to overload ourselves with information, which, as it turns out, doesn't actually help us. (We also tend to focus on the inconsequential and easily observed.)

This is, for the most part, one of the great obstacles for a young improviser: humans dread finality. We prefer to think of our worlds as pliable and malleable, with options available to us, which interpreted into an improv scene is what Keith Johnstone referred to as wimping, Tom Salinsky called waffling, but you can just think of as “wiggle room”. It's the difference between a general saying we're in a missle silo, and the some dude saying we're at work. Put bluntly (here we go): “Hope impedes adaptation”. When you're stuck with something, you have to adapt and learn to live with it. In our current model, we can break it down a little more, and take the opposite form of “hope impedes”, and make it instead “decisions breed”, and make “adaptation” into “justification” (a wonderful improv word), and we get a fantastic improv mantra: “decisions breed justification”, which is (roughewn) Del Close's third “Kitchen Rule”.

Decisions, properly committed to will give you more defined, clear scenes. You can't fear mistakes and errors in improv. But to do so isn't the end of the world – you just learn more. Studies seem to repeatedly show that adults and children have trouble tolerating mistakes, which is the opposite of what improv teachers try to breed in players (Salinsky I think put it best: “This is going to be great! What is it?” Improvisers need to be made to see the perceived benefits of taking risks are worth taking them – the tightrope is where the tension is, not in the safety net.

“A pilot who doesn't have any fear probably isn't flying his plane to its maximum.” - Astronaut Jon McBride

I had an enlightening discussion with a fellow improviser a little while back; his argument was that beginner improvisers need a teacher to tell them how to do things correctly, and we ended up putting it into terms of skydiving instruction. The first few times you take dives, you are strapped to an experienced skydiver, and after doing that, you get to move up to heavily supervised solo jumps. Now, my friend's stance was that you need that instructor flying with you because otherwise you might die – a completely valid concern about skydiving. The problem with using the metaphor in discussing improv is that messing up while skydiving can at the very least seriously injure the diver if not kill them, but that doesn't really happen in improv. If your scene tanks, you and your scene partner don't slam into the ground at 120 miles per hour and get carted off in body bags, you go “that sucked” and move on. But fearing failure like the plague and relying on someone else to tell you the “right” way defeats much of the point of learning a craft. A better metaphor for improv is Legos: sure, the lego company tells you how to put the pieces together to make the pirate ship or the castle displayed on the box, and just doing that doesn't make you a bad person, but there is literally nothing stopping you from making the pieces into anything you want. Put together something strange, or unwieldy, or that falls over instantly? No problem – take it apart and start over. Want to make a pirate spaceship instead? Knock yourself out.

Never leaving a comfort zone means that you are potentially preventing yourself from discovering something amazing that may exist just beyond the bounds of what you currently know that works. I'm not saying that there aren't dragons out there, but you can't let fear of encountering them keep you from venturing forth.

To Err is Improv Part 1

From the very first time we start improv, we are taught that one of the basic rules is that there are no mistakes (or at least I hope you were). The very nature of the craft is that nothing you can possibly do is wrong because, since there is no script, technically nothing can be a mistake. By definition, a mistake is a wrong action, and how can anything necessarily be wrong when there is no “right”? After all, improv is in the interpretive, and what is right to you is correct – there isn't a test proctor who can grade you against what the right answers were. On the flip side however, everyone who's ever gotten notes after a show or class knows that it is possible to make mistakes, but how is this possible? A quick check of scenes that are “right” and ones that are “wrong” shows where the rubric lies: it's not in the individual answers, but in the piece as a whole, and from that perspective, we want something that is entertaining for an audience. But that still doesn't satisfy the dichotomy in mistake making.

“The Buddha said each mistake is a rebirth ... don't you want to get reborn?” - Charlie Crews, Life

Improv is, in a strictly technical sense, a practice that is built for failure. When systems or tools are designed to maximize success and minimize failure, they are built with what are known as constraints – devices meant to block failure. A Phillip's head screwdriver has the familiar plus sign shape that locks into a Phillip's head screw, and as a result it is difficult to use incorrectly because the system doesn't allow for many configurations. This may explain why some people prefer multiple choice tests over essay ones; multiple choice answers effectively constrain the possible answers. Improv has no such constraints – anything is possible, which means there are an infinite number of ways to make mistakes. There are also an infinite number of ways to be correct, and a lot of improv games and forms are actually just a system of constraints meant to block the capacity for making errors, and drive you down a road of success. Because there are no errors in improv, we build the constraint that as information is added to a scene it becomes fact. (The first “Kitchen Rule” - don't deny the established reality.)

Then how is it possible that mistakes can drive a scene off the rails? First, it may be helpful to indicate a few common types of errors: errors of commission and omission and errors of wimping and waffling. An error of commission is one where someone intentionally goes against the scene, for example: calling someone “Dad” when they previously established as “Mom” simply because you didn't like the original decision. Errors of omission are ones where something is forgotten, not seen, or not heard – there is no malicious intent here, just human nature (more on this later). Errors of wimping are ones where a player prefers to keep things vague instead of concrete, for example, compare “Hand me that over there” with “Hand me that rifle next to the zombie head”. This is because when we are going to make a mistake, we would rather make that mistake by failing to do something as opposed to doing the wrong thing. Errors of waffling could also be thought of as errors of committing, where ideas are tossed away because we either don't feel like keeping it in the air or because we want to try another idea. It's also important to look at errors in terms of their significance: minor all the way up to major.

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.