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.

Gophers coach Ben Johnson faced the worst-case scenario with his team’s first Big Ten win this season on the line Monday night against Ohio State.

A two-point lead and leading scorer Dawson Garcia were gone in an instant after he fouled out with 5.4 seconds left in the second half.

Even with that dire situation, the Gophers had chances to pull out the win, but missed free throws and poor late-game decisions led to a tough-to-swallow 89-88 double overtime loss Monday against the Buckeyes in front of an announced crowd of 7,611 at Williams Arena.

The Gophers (8-7, 0-4) saw Parker Fox, Lu’Cye Patterson and Isaac Asuma post career highs in maroon and gold to combine for 59 points. But Johnson said going 12-for-27 on free throws was a big reason why they remain the only winless team left in conference play. Ohio State shot 29-for-32 at the foul line.

“That’s a hurt locker room,” Johnson said. “You’ve got an opportunity right there to just kind of back everything you’ve been preaching and talking. Everything that those guys have been listening to and trying to apply. It’s just hard when you don’t reap the rewards of all of that.”

The Buckeyes (10-5, 2-2), who beat No. 4 Kentucky at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 21, avenged an 88-79 loss last year in Minneapolis after an 8-0 run to start the second overtime gave them enough cushion to escape. Devin Royal and Bruce Thornton led five Ohio State players in double figures with 19 and 18 points, respectively.

Garcia, who didn’t score his first points of the game until a three-pointer around the 14-minute mark in the second half, was held to five points in 29 minutes. Another starter, Femi Odukale also ended up sidelined but with bruised ribs. He fell awkwardly off the raised floor and behind the basket on a missed layup three minutes into the second half.

With their biggest offensive threat watching from the sideline, the Gophers relied on big plays from Fox and Patterson, who combined for 16 points in the two overtimes.

Fox’s baseline runner sent the crowd into an uproar to give the Gophers a 72-68 lead with under a minute left in the first overtime. That might have been enough on any other night, but this was a game that included 24 lead changes.

“You take it on the chin,” said Fox, who had a team-high 21 points. “You take it as a group of men, and you got to find a way to get a solution from it. I hate saying that over and over again, but it’s the truth. There’s no other way around it. We don’t have a locker room that wants to fall over and quit.”

After Ohio State’s Micah Parrish was called for a travel late in the first overtime, Asuma made the second of two free throws to extend it to a 73-70 advantage with 9.4 seconds left.

BOXSCORE: Ohio State 89, Gophers 88 (2OT)

Big Ten standings

Mike Mitchell Jr., who had 18 points, missed two free throws with a chance to extend it to a four-point advantage with six seconds left for the Gophers.

Johnson’s frustration grew when Kadyn Betts mistakenly fouled Ohio State’s John Mobley after the Buckeyes grabbed the second missed free throw, which led to the tying free throws to force a second OT.

In the second half, Asuma’s third three-pointer gave the Gophers their largest lead at 59-52 with just under six minutes left, but Ohio State went on a 10-3 run to tie it.

With the score 62-62 in regulation, Garcia missed two free throws with less than two minutes to play, but his teammates seemingly bailed him out. Fox’s steal on the ensuing possession led to an uncontested dunk for Garcia for a two-point lead.

That seemed to end it until a late turnover gave the Buckeyes the chance to steal the victory with the botched defensive rotation that led to Garcia fouling out.

Johnson was hoping to see the Gophers get what he called a “breakthrough win” soon. They lost to Michigan State, Indiana and Purdue by an average of nearly 18 points per game to open the conference slate, but they never had a chance like they did Monday.

“It just comes down to making plays down the stretch, which we weren’t able to do to secure the victory,” Asuma said. “We just have to learn from it and just push through and breakthrough to figure it out for the rest of the season.”