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.

Nonalcoholic beverages used to be the butt of jokes. Now, they’re the fastest-growing sector of the alcohol market. Sales of nonalcoholic beer, wine and liquor increased by 32 percent from 2022 to 2023, while total alcohol sales grew by just 1 percent. As of early 2024, the top-selling beer at Whole Foods was nonalcoholic.

This growth likely stems from increasing awareness of the health harms of alcohol and a rising interest in sobriety and moderation. One recent study found that health consciousness, curiosity and a desire to avoid the negative effects of alcohol (like hangovers) were among people’s top reasons for consuming nonalcoholic beverages. There are also many more — and better — nonalcoholic options on the market today.

So, how much healthier are nonalcoholic (or “NA”) beverages than the real deal? Are they safe for everyone? And do they contain other ingredients people should watch out for?

To qualify as nonalcoholic, a beverage must have less than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume (A.B.V.). Traditionally, brands use methods like filtration or distillation to remove the alcohol from their products. Newer techniques alter the fermentation process, so the sugar in the beverage isn’t turned into alcohol. Other drinks marketed as alcohol alternatives don’t try to mimic beer, wine or liquor and are made with juice or botanicals.

The main harmful ingredient in alcoholic beverages — the one that damages the liver and contributes to cancer — is the alcohol, so once that’s been almost entirely removed, the health risks associated with booze pretty much disappear.

“From a health perspective, very small amounts of alcohol in your drink probably don’t make a huge deal of difference,” said John Holmes, a professor of alcohol policy at the University of Sheffield in England.

It’s possible you could consume a substantial amount of alcohol by drinking NA beverages, “but it would be a lot of work,” said Dr. Tim Naimi, the director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. “You’d have to drink 20 cans of 0.5 percent A.B.V. beer to get even up to two drinks a day.”

However, the experts cautioned that a drink with less than 0.5 percent alcohol could still cause problems in some cases. For people with an alcohol use disorder, substituting nonalcoholic beer, wine or liquor could help them cut down on their drinking or stop completely, said Molly Bowdring, a postdoctoral scholar in clinical psychology at Stanford University. But these beverages could also serve as a trigger for relapse.

“They’re so similar in taste and flavor,” she said. “That can make it a helpful substitute, but it also includes all of those cues that might activate craving.”

For pregnant women, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists hasn’t weighed in on NA beverages specifically, but its website states: “There is no safe amount or type of alcohol use during pregnancy.”

For people with other conditions that can be negatively affected by alcohol, like liver disease, the experts recommended asking a doctor if nonalcoholic beverages were OK to drink.

Alcohol alternatives made with juice or botanicals don’t come with the concerns around alcoholic content, but they can have other problematic ingredients, so it’s important to read labels closely. For example, some drinks contain CBD or THC, or plants like ashwagandha, which has been linked to liver injury and could be harmful during pregnancy.

Data suggest that over 80 percent of people who purchase nonalcoholic beverages also buy alcoholic ones. And as of 2022, NA products made up less than 1 percent of total alcohol sales. But if people are replacing some of their beer, wine or liquor with nonalcoholic versions, that can have a positive impact on health.

“The more you drink, the more any reduction will benefit you,” Dr. Holmes said. “So if you’re drinking ten drinks a week, going down to nine will still benefit your health.”

According to a study Dr. Bowdring conducted, roughly half of people who drink NA beverages reported that they were consuming less alcohol because of them.

Not everyone is convinced that people are substituting nonalcoholic beverages for alcoholic ones: Dr. Naimi said people may be drinking them in addition to the alcohol they already consume. “The impact of no- or low-alcohol beverages might be to displace the consumption of alcoholic beverages,” he said. Or, “it might be to displace the consumption of soda or seltzer water.”

That reflects what Athletic Brewing Company, the leading nonalcoholic beer brand, sees among many of its customers. “Where people maybe only drink on Friday and Saturday nights previously,” now they’re having a nonalcoholic beer “every night of the week with their dinner,” said Bill Shufelt, the company’s co-founder and C.E.O.

The experts stressed there’s no evidence of any harm in doing that — it just raises the question of whether these beverages will have a positive impact on public health.

“The growth of the category is interesting,” Dr. Naimi said. “But what really matters, the eye on the prize, is how it affects the total sale of alcohol. And I think that’s the million dollar question.”