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.

Wilco’s response to Metallica’s two-night no-repeat weekend in August: Hold our dad-brand IPA beers. Chicago’s experimental Americana rockers are making the same pledge to play entirely different set lists over three nights, and they’re promising to go long each night, too. No opener is scheduled for any of the shows. This is the latest in a long tradition of Jeff Tweedy and his tastefully jammy band having fun with their longtime Twin Cities base, 30 years after their 7th St. Entry coming-out gig. They’ve issued 13 albums and lots more in the interim to pull from, including a vibrant new EP, “Hot Sun Cool Shroud.” (8 p.m. Fri.-Sun., Palace Theatre, 17 W. 7th Place, St. Paul, $65 & up, axs.com)

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

After more than 50 years together, the brassy Oakland R&B band has issued its first holiday album, “It’s Christmas.” The group has a one-two punch of vocalists, with high-tenor newcomer Jordan John and gravelly voiced co-founder Emilio Castillo. TOP starts with a jazzy instrumental take on “The Christmas Song” before getting into the gospelly “O Holy Night,” the funky “Silver Bells,” the gritty “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” the Hanukkah number sung in Hebrew “Maoz Tzur” and the original “It’s Christmas (A Long Way From Home),” which sounds like a classic Tower of Power ballad with a hint of Mel Tormé. (8 p.m. Sat. Mystic Lake Casino showroom, 2400 Mystic Lake Blvd., Prior Lake, $39 and up, ticketmaster.com)

JON BREAM

The hip-hop-embracing jazz crooner is once again coming home for the holidays. The Minneapolis native, who now lives in Los Angeles, invariably arrives with a standout pianist. On recent visits, he was accompanied by Julius Rodriguez and Christian Sands. This time, James has tapped Chicago-born Jahari Stampley, who last year won the Herbie Hancock International Jazz Institute Piano Competition, to join him for some Christmas nuggets as well as his own should-be-a-classic “Christmas in New York” with its Nat King Cole/Mel Tormé vibe. (7 p.m. Fri. & Sat. the Dakota, 1010 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., $40-$55, dakotacooks.com)

J.B.

Like Wilco, Los Angeles’ culturally rich and musically electrifying Mexi-Cali rock legends have gone from playing 7th St. Entry their first time in town (1983) to hitting a long list of other Twin Cities venues since then. About time they gave Minneapolis’ renowned jazz club a try — a nice, intimate contrast to the large outdoor setting of their heated and thrilling gig this past summer at St. Louis Park’s ROC. Still boasting all four original members, plus longtime utility player and producer Steve Berlin, the “La Bamba” hitmakers just marked the 40th anniversary of “How Will the Wolf Survive?,” widely ranked as one of the best albums of the 1980s and just the beginning of what’s now a large canon of classic songs. (7 p.m. Sun., the Dakota, 1010 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., $100-$135, dakotacooks.com)

C.R.

After another bustling summer filled with rowdy outdoor gigs — including well-paired opening sets with Lucinda Williams and Joan Jett — Meghan Kreidler and her hard-charging throwback Twin Cities rock band are getting down to business gearing up for a 2025 album and trying out new songs, including their just-released blaster of a new single “This Night Is Killing You.” Their last album, “Vicious Kid,” came out back in 2021 and landed the local hit “I Miss You” on the Current. They’re playing four Thursdays in a row with different kindred openers each week, continuing this week the Controversial New Skinny Pill, followed by Ahem on Dec. 19 and Laamar on Dec. 26. (8 p.m. every Thursday in December, Icehouse, 2528 Nicollet Av. S., Mpls., $15-$22, icehousempls.com)

C.R.

Each year, Abbie Betinis combs through the recent output of her fellow Minnesota-based composers for the best new Christmas carols and songs of winter, adding new arrangements of old ones and the words of poets from across the state. Then, courtesy of the Schubert Club, she curates this day-night doubleheader of concerts in the resonant multistory center of St. Paul’s best imitation of a German castle, the Landmark Center. Performing the carols this year are a vocal foursome, the Kaleidoscope Quartet, and the instrumental duo OboeBass! (Noon & 6 p.m. Thu., Musser Cortile, Landmark Center, 75 W. 5th St., St. Paul. Free. 651-292-3268, schubert.org)

ROB HUBBARD

Founded with the focus of performing large-scale masterpieces for vocal soloists, choir and orchestra, this Twin Cities-based group does much of its best work with the music of J.S. Bach. So much so that it’s been invited to perform in June 2025 at the world’s largest Bach festival — the International Bachfest in Leipzig, Germany. This year’s Christmas concerts blend Bach with contemporary carols. (7 p.m. Fri., Normandale Lutheran Church, 6100 Normandale Road, Edina; 7 p.m. Sat., St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, 900 Summit Av., St. Paul; 3 p.m. Sun., Lake Nokomis Lutheran Church, 5011 31st Av. S., Mpls. $10-$35. exultate.org)

R.H.

Think of it as a Hallmark movie with a lot of laughs. This play version, based on Barbara Robinson’s bestselling young adult novel, has a sweet story mixed in with gags. It follows six siblings with poor behavior who become the unwitting stars of a hostile town’s holiday programming. They and the town learn the true meaning of Christmas. Ellen Fenster-Gharib stages it for Park Square with a cast of more than a dozen youngsters. (7 p.m. Fri. & Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends Dec. 22. Park Square Theatre, 20 W. 7th Place, St. Paul. $25-$60. 651-291-7005, parksquaretheatre.org)

ROHAN PRESTON

If Penumbra Theatre’s holiday classic “Black Nativity” is the liturgical standard for that show, then a new collaboration promises to give the story some contemporary sparkle. Co-MingL, the Twin Cities-based 10-piece band, is teaming up with powerhouse actor and singer Nubia Monks for a concert take on the story of Jesus’ birth. This version underscores the power of love and the partners promise a festive experience. (7 p.m. Sat., 3 & 6 p.m. Sun., Capri Theater, 2027 W. Broadway, Mpls. $30. thecapri.org)

R.P.

Miss Richfield has freshened up her long-running holiday show to mark Illusion Theater’s 50th anniversary. This year’s theme is artificial intelligence. Here’s how Miss Richfield, created by Russ King, explains it: “Many things around us are not real! So, in my new show, I explore all things artificial, like flowers, toupees and mayonnaise.” Michael Robins directs. (7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 7 p.m. Sun. Ends Dec. 22, $45-$75. Center for Performing Arts, 3754 Pleasant Av. S., Mpls. 612-339-4944, www.illusiontheater.org)

R.P.

Dancer and choreographer Margaret Ogas presents her first evening-length performance in a piece that explores the concept of Nepantla, a word that comes from the Uto-Aztecan’s Nahuatl language that means in-between-ness. With an ensemble of five dancers including herself, Ogas unpacks what it means to exist between worlds through movement, humor, dreams and heartbreak. Dameun Strange has created the sound design, and a dance segment follows the last performance with DJ Maracuya. (7:30 p.m. Fri. & Sat., Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Av. S., Mpls., $15-$35, southerntheater.org.)

SHEILA REGAN

Pakistan-born cqSyed Hosain selected 35 artists out of 236 submissions for this year’s annual juried exhibition at Rosalux Gallery. He noted that the works he picked show “collective evidence that holds the power to heal, inspire or simply provide a welcome diversion from the unpredictability of our world.” (Noon-4 p.m. Sat. & Sun. Ends Dec. 29. 315 W. 48th St., Mpls. Free. rosaluxgallery.com)

ALICIA ELER

In her practice, the Turkish-born artist considers the collection and circulation of data, images and information, drawing connections between personal memory and historical narrative. In one work, she compiles her entire visual archive from 2006-18, sifting through imagery from cellphones, computers, cameras and hard drives, distilling it into “intro-spective,” a play on the word “introspective.” In other works, she documents the deaths of more than 60,620 migrants who have sought refuge in Europe since 1993. (10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed., Fri.-Sun., 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thu. Opens Dec. 12 and ends May 25. Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Mpls., $2-$18. Free 5-9 p.m. Thu. walkerart.org, 612-375-7600)

A.E.

Sci-fi fans of all things robots, droids and intergalactic characters can participate in a day of discovery. The Bakken Museum has partnered with community organizations to help science lovers build small robots, test sound effects and explore exhibits. The Science Museum of Minnesota shows how to play with Ozobots and invites guests to learn about how computers think and interact with the world. Kids looking to avoid chores can learn how to program a robot and have it complete tasks. (10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. $9-$13. Bakken Museum, 3537 Zenith Av. S., Mpls. thebakken.org)

MELISSA WALKER