Minneapolis improv comedy kings bow down to 'Harold'

"Chia Pets!"

The voice rang out above dozens of others as the near-sellout crowd at Huge Improv Theater scrambled to suggest something nostalgic.

Then members of an improv comedy team stepped up to relate anecdotes and associations the phrase brought to mind — like how the shoulder-pad fashion trend of the 1980s made every woman look like a linebacker.

Ten minutes later, the team and the audience were in the thick of three off-kilter narratives, following a quintet of musically inclined fur trappers; a father intent on watching bizarre VHS tapes with his son; and a quest for the secret of Rob Lowe's eternal youth. By the end of a half-hour, all of those seemingly unrelated stories managed to dovetail into something resembling a satisfying conclusion.

Welcome to the Harold. Or at least, one interpretation of the Harold. It's all part of Huge's "Harold Turns 50" celebration of what's arguably the most important cornerstone of long-form improv.

So what exactly is a Harold? Basically, it's a set of guidelines that help an improv team develop a scene. "The simplest explanation is just three story lines, each visited three times," said Huge co-founder Butch Roy.

You can pick out the familiar beats of the Harold in just about every TV sitcom.

"A group of performers will take an audience suggestion and build on that idea in ways that are unpredictable even to the performers," said Molly Chase, director of House of Whimsy, one of three teams that are performing at Huge every Saturday through the end of October. "There will likely be moments of poignancy and humor, and the whole room — audience and improvisers — are in it together.

"It's immediate, it has never happened before, and will never happen again."

The first Harold was performed in 1967 by the Committee, a San Francisco-based comedy group known for experimenting with narrative structures that employed improv games and exercises.

When the group decided that it needed a name for its creation, one member reportedly cracked that "Harold" would be nice. The handle stuck, to the slight chagrin of generations of performers who have had to explain its origin.

Committee member Del Close dedicated much of his career to honing and teaching the Harold. In the 1994 book "Truth in Comedy," generally regarded as the improviser's bible, he and co-authors Charna Halpern and Kim "Howard" Johnson explain that "the Harold is like the space shuttle, incorporating all of the developments and discoveries that have gone before it into one new, superior design."

Close's efforts as an instructor and co-founder of Chicago's iO Theater became the foundation for much of American comedy as we know it.

No local venue feels that influence more acutely than Huge Theater. With "Harold Turns 50," Minnesota's most visible improv venue is paying homage to its roots and giving some of the Twin Cities' top improvisers a chance to get back to the basics.

"There are a lot of improv structures, but there's something magic about the Harold, the way you start with an opening and it brings out a truth," said Drew Kersten, director of the Kempt team.

Kempt assistant director John Gebretatose agreed that it's all about capturing those truths. "It's people playing with confidence … making comment on real-life things. Like women's shoulder pads in the '80s and how they had to look like football players just to get through life. For me, that's what makes it successful: a through-line or a narrative commenting on society."

One of the reasons improv remains a hard sell for some audiences is that it's the ultimate "had to be there" entertainment. It's difficult to explain how the shoulder pad observation might snowball into a scene about Jennifer Aniston devouring the life force of her young fans, but for those watching the performers feed off one another's energy and make connections, the evolution is electrifying.

Those hazy connections are very much by design, Kersten said. "If the opening is about Diet Coke, you don't want to see three scenes about Diet Coke. You want them spread out as far as possible, so when they start to come back together it brings a bit more of that magic."

The laughs in a Harold show seldom come from a standard setup/punchline delivery. In fact, one of the first rules laid out in "Truth in Comedy" is "Don't go for the jokes." Instead, the comedy in a long-form show comes largely from watching relatable situations spiral into unexpected directions.

"The least successful Harolds are when we let our 'I know where this needs to go' take over and steer things instead of discovering all the way through," Roy said. "Because if we know where it needs to go, so does the audience."

The form's flexibility is obvious watching the three teams of five performers in the "Harold Turns 50" showcase.

On opening night, the House of Whimsy team produced a trio of focused, slice-of-life vignettes about crumbling relationships, disillusioned carnival workers and spiteful chess players. While the scenes frequently veered into weirdness, they remained grounded in a way that drew laughs of recognition from the crowd.

The Speficicity team, on the other hand, dove deeper into surreality right off the bat with a scene about two buddies literally riding each other's good vibes like a surfboard. That story line soon intertwined with two bird-watchers who misplaced a baby, and a home brewer crafting a hugely popular beer that smelled of cat urine, all of it building into a crescendo of absurdity that had the audience roaring for very different reasons.

As much reverence as the local improv community has for the Harold, the form represents something different in the Twin Cities than it does in improv hotbeds such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, where making it onto a high-profile Harold team can be a major career steppingstone. Many performers move to those cities for that reason.

"In Minnesota it's a strong part of the tradition, but at Huge Theater, Harold is only one of the forms that gets done," Kersten said.

While Close did some work with Minnesota comedy godfather Dudley Riggs and his Brave New Workshop, Huge encourages experimentation and focuses more on building strong teams of performers, regardless of form.

"Team first, format second: That's what differentiates us from the coasts," Gebretatose said. "We're better anyway," he added with a laugh.

Ira Brooker is a St. Paul-based freelance writer and editor.

DETROIT – On Thursday, Anthony Edwards had a lot to say following a 15-point night against the Celtics, when the Timberwolves star held court after the game to talk about how double teams were affecting his ability to score and the amount of fun he was having playing basketball.

On Saturday, Edwards scored a career-high 53 points, but his team lost 119-105 to an improving but still middling Pistons team. Edwards had nothing to say after this game, as he declined to speak with reporters.

But the Wolves’ defeated body language and lack of energy at various points said more than anyone could say verbally. After 34 games, the Wolves are back to .500 at 17-17 and have lost three games in a row.

Their starting lineup is a mess, and it has been for a good chunk of the season. They weren’t the only reason the Wolves lost — their blended second unit didn’t score a point for nearly five minutes while Edwards rested in the second quarter — but after the game, coach Chris Finch said the Wolves were “doomed by a poor start” in which the Wolves came out flat defensively and were only in the game early because of Edwards’ shotmaking.

When the Minnesota Star Tribune asked him for the second time in three weeks if he was considering a change to the starting lineup, Finch said he was not.

“You guys ask me this question all the time,” Finch said. “If I felt that the magic bullet was changing the starting lineup, I would’ve done that already. I don’t think I’m being particularly stubborn. There’s a chain reaction to everything you do. There are other combinations and things that go on on the floor that are just as important if not more so than the starting lineup.”

The start of the game wasn’t the only problem with the starting unit. They also started the third quarter by allowing a 12-point deficit to balloon to 21 by the time Finch made his first substitution. Cade Cunningham had 40 points for Detroit while former Wolves guard Malik Beasley had 23 off the bench.

Finch sat veterans Mike Conley and Rudy Gobert for long stretches of the second half as he turned to the bench and Edwards for a comeback that never came. Because Edwards declined to speak, it left Conley and Gobert to answer questions about the state of the team and their individual play. Conley didn’t score while Gobert opened with three turnovers in the first quarter and finished with six points and six rebounds. There was concern and urgency in their words.

“Right now, it’s just like an off timing with the way we’ve been playing,” Conley said. “We are inconsistent with the approach to the game. When we come out there, there’s one game we have a lot of energy. Other games we don’t. One game we compete a bit more than others. We have to find a balance for that starting unit that allows us to start these games off the way we’re capable of starting them off. … A lot of it has to do quite frankly, our willingness, to run for each other, space for each other and commit on the offensive end.”

Gobert emphasized that point multiple times, saying the starting unit wasn’t trusting each other, making the easy plays.

“When it gets bad is if you lose trust in the team, if you lose trust in who we are that’s when it gets bad,” Gobert said. “You got to keep putting in the work, keep trusting who we are and don’t let any type of panic or any type of doubt affect who we are. That’s what I’ve been doing my whole career.”

As for their individual struggles, Gobert gave his usual answer of recommitting to the work; Finch said it was “all about his defense” for Gobert.

“He has to be a great presence in anchoring our defense at the rim,” Finch said. “Mike we need him to be aggressive at the start of games. I’m going to have to call plays to direct the ball back into his hands. That’s on me there.”

BOXSCORE: Detroit 119, Wolves 105

Conley said he was focusing his efforts more on trying to get teammates kickstarted than he was himself. “Trying to pour everything into these guys right now as far as helping each individual guy getting through whatever they’re getting through,” he said. “Trying to get this team headed down the right path and not letting us fall into some really bad habits that could lead us to a tough season. I’m still focused on myself here and there, but for the most part, I feel like I’ll be fine. … I’ve played long enough to figure that out.”

Will the team, and specifically, the starting lineup, ever figure it out? This far into the season, there are more reasons to think it won’t than it will. Their inconsistent body language and effort suggest they think so, too.

“We can be a lot better with our body language,” Conley said. “Our effort is just too hit-or-miss. When things are good, you get a little bit more. When things go south a little bit, you find guys hold their head a little more, we don’t get back as quickly or we complain about a call or whatever it may be. All those things are habits that we have to find ways to break, find ways to get through to get to the next play and just be better.”