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.

NEW YORK — Used to leading off, Ichiro Suzuki got antsy when he had to wait.

Considered a no-doubt pick for baseball's Hall of Fame and possibly the second unanimous selection, he waited by the phone for the expected call Tuesday. Fifteen minutes passed without a ring.

''I actually started getting kind of nervous,'' he said through a translator. ''I was actually relieved when I first got the call.''

Suzuki became the first Japanese player chosen for the Hall, falling one vote shy of unanimous when he was elected along with CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner.

Quite the journey for a 27-year-old who left the Pacific League's Orix BlueWave in November 2000 to sign with Seattle as the first Japanese position player in Major League Baseball.

''I don't think anybody in this whole world thought that I would be a Hall of Famer,'' he said. ''As a baseball player, this is definitely the top of the top.''

Suzuki received 393 of 394 votes (99.7%) from the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Sabathia was on 342 ballots (86.8%) and Wagner on 325 (82.5%), which was 29 votes more than the 296 needed for the required 75%.

Sabathia and Suzuki were elected in their first appearance on the ballot, while Wagner made it on his 10th and final try. The trio will be inducted into the Hall at Cooperstown on July 27 along with Dave Parker and Dick Allen, voted in last month by the classic era committee.

Mariano Rivera remained the only player to get 100% of the vote from the BBWAA, appearing on all 425 ballots in 2019. Derek Jeter was chosen on 395 of 396 in 2020.

Seattle's Space Needle was lit blue in honor of Suzuki, who joined Fred Lynn in 1975 as the only players to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season. The Mariners announced plans to retire Suzuki's No. 51 on Aug. 9.

Suzuki was a two-time AL batting champion and 10-time All-Star and Gold Glove outfielder, hitting .311 with 117 homers, 780 RBIs and 509 stolen bases with Seattle (2001-12, 2018-19), the New York Yankees (2012-14) and Miami (2015-17).

He is perhaps the best contact hitter ever, with 1,278 hits in Nippon Professional Baseball and 3,089 in MLB, including a season-record 262 in 2004. His combined total of 4,367 exceeds Pete Rose's MLB record of 4,256.

In his role as a Mariners special assistant, he still gets dressed in baseball clothes for home workouts as an example for today's players.

''I want to be able to show the players how I did it," he said. ''Also in the offseason I go to a few high schools in Japan and I want to be able to show them what a professional baseball player looks like.''

Sabathia, second to Suzuki in 2001 AL Rookie of the Year voting, was a six-time All-Star who won the 2007 AL Cy Young Award and a World Series title in 2009. He went 251-161 with a 3.74 ERA and 3,093 strikeouts, third among left-handers behind Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton, during 19 seasons with Cleveland (2001-08), Milwaukee (2008) and the New York Yankees (2009-19).

Sabathia prefers to have a Yankees cap on his Cooperstown plaque — the decision is made by the Hall.

''The Yankees is the place that wanted me,'' he said. ''I found a home in the Bronx and I don't think I'll ever leave this city.''

Sabathia almost retired after the Game 7 loss to Houston in the 2017 AL Championship Series but was persuaded to keep playing when MLB Network's Harold Reynolds explained how close his statistics were to Hall level.

After adopting a cutter to compensate for diminished velocity, Sabathia won 37 games in his final four seasons.

"I turned myself into my version of Jamie Moyer, is what I felt like: backdoor sliders, changeups, cutters on your hands, two-seamers off the plate," he said. ''I fought it for a long time. When you're a guy that is throwing 94, 95 (mph) your whole life, it's hard to buy in.''

Wagner was five votes shy last year. He got only 10.5% support in his first appearance in 2016, and 10.2% the following year.

''It's not been an easy 10 years to sit here and swallow a lot of things that you have to swallow,'' Wagner said. ''I didn't blow a save for 10 years, so I felt that might have had an input on being able to get in."

A natural right-hander, Wagner switched to throwing left-handed after breaking his right arm playing football as a 7-year-old, then breaking it again. His son Will, a 26-year-old infielder, made his big league debut with Toronto last August.

Wagner became the ninth pitcher in the Hall who was primarily a reliever after Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley, Bruce Sutter, Goose Gossage, Trevor Hoffman, Lee Smith and Rivera. Wagner is the only left-hander among them.

''It means a lot,'' he said.

A seven-time All-Star, Wagner was 47-40 with a 2.31 ERA and 422 saves for Houston (1995-2003), Philadelphia (2004-05), the New York Mets (2006-09), Boston (2009) and Atlanta (2010). His 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings are the most among pitchers with at least 900 innings, though his 903 career innings are the fewest among Hall of Famers.

Carlos Beltrán fell 19 votes short at 70.3%, up from 57.1% last year and 46.5% in 2023 in his first ballot appearance. He was followed by Andruw Jones with 261 for 66.2%, an increase from 61.6% last year and 7.3% when he first appeared in 2018.

Jones has two more chances on the BBWAA ballot.

Chase Utley was sixth with 157 votes for 39.8%, an increase from 28.8% in his first appearance.

Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramírez have lagged in voting, hurt by suspensions for performance-enhancing drugs. Rodriguez received 37.1% in his fourth appearance, up from 34.8%, and Ramírez got 34.3% in his ninth, an increase from 32.5%.

Andy Pettitte got 110 votes and 27.9% in his seventh appearance, doubling from 13.5% last year. Félix Hernández received 81 votes and 20.6% in his first ballot.

Players comprise 278 of 351 elected Hall of Famers, including 142 on the BBWAA ballot, of which 62 were elected in their first year of eligibility.

Carlos González, Curtis Granderson, Adam Jones, Ian Kinsler, Russell Martin, Brian McCann, Hanley Ramírez, Fernando Rodney, Troy Tulowitzki and Ben Zobrist will be dropped from future ballots after receiving less than 5%.

Cole Hamels, Ryan Braun and Matt Kemp join the ballot next year.

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