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.

Two wildly audacious films — Brady Corbet's 215-minute postwar epic ''The Brutalist'' and Jacques Audiard's Spanish language, genre-shifting trans musical ''Emilia Perez'' — won top honors at the 82nd Golden Globes on Sunday.

The Globes, which are still finding their footing after years of scandal and makeover, scattered awards around to a number of films. But the awards group put its strongest support behind a pair of movies that sought to defy easy categorization.

''The Brutalist'' was crowned best film, drama, putting one of 2024's most ambitious films on course to be a major contender at the Academy Awards. The film, shot in VistaVision and released with an intermission, also won best director for Corbet and best actor for Adrien Brody. In his acceptance speech, Corbet spoke about filmmakers needing approval on the final cut.

"I was told that this film was un-distributable," said Corbet. ''No one was asking for a three-and-half-hour film about a mid-century designer in 70mm. But it works.''

''Emilia Pérez'' won best film, comedy or musical, elevating the Oscar chances of Netflix's top contender. It also won best supporting actress for Zoe Saldaña, best song (''El Mal'') and best non-English language film. Audiard, the French director, made way for Karla Sofía Gascón, the film's transgender star who plays a Mexican drug lord who undergoes gender affirming surgery, to speak on behalf of the film.

''The light always wins over darkness," said Gascón, gesturing to her brightly orange dress. ''You can maybe put us in jail. You can beat us up. But you never can take away our soul or existence or identity.''

''I am who I am. Not who you want.''

Demi wins her first Globe

Though the Globes audience was particularly starry, including nominees Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Angelina Jolie and Daniel Craig, most of the winners hailed from smaller, less seen films.

That included some surprises. One was Demi Moore's win for best actress in a comedy or musical. Her comeback performance in ''The Substance," about a Hollywood star who resorts to an experimental process to regain her youth, landed the 62-year-old Moore her first Globe — a victory that came over the heavily favored Mikey Madison of ''Anora.''

"I'm just in shock right now. I've been doing this a long time, like over 45 years, and this is the first thing I've ever won as an actor," said Moore, who was last nominated by the Globes for a film role in 1991 for ''Ghost.'' ''Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress.''

Best actress, in a drama film, was an even bigger surprise. The Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres won for her performance in ''I'm Still Here,'' a based-on-a-true-story drama about a family living through the disappearance of political dissident Rubens Paiva in 1970s Rio de Janeiro. Torres dedicated the award to her mother, the great actor Fernanda Montenegro, who appears in ''I'm Still Here,'' too.

''She was here 25 years ago," said Torres. "And this is like a proof that art can endure through life even through difficult moments.''

Best supporting actor in a musical or comedy went to Sebastian Stan for ''A Different Man,'' in which Stan plays a man with a deformed face who's healed. Stan, who was also nominated for playing Donald Trump in ''The Apprentice," noted that both films were hard to get made.

''These are tough subject maters but these films are real and they're necessary,'' said Stan. ''But we can't be afraid and look away.''

Glaser lightly roasts the Globes

Comedian Nikki Glaser kicked off the Globes, with a promise: ''I'm not here to roast you.''

But Glaser, a stand-up whose breakthrough came in a withering roast of Tom Brady, made her way around the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on Sunday picking out plenty of targets in an opening monologue she had worked out extensively in comedy clubs beforehand.

While Glaser might not have reached Tina Fey and Amy Poehler levels of laughs, the monologue was a winner, and a dramatic improvement over last year's host, Jo Koy. Last year's Globes, following a diversity and ethics scandal that led to the dissolution of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, were widely panned. But they delivered where it counted: Ratings rebounded to about 10 million viewers, according to Nielsen. CBS, who waded in after NBC dumped the Globes, signed up for five more years.

Hosting the Globes two weeks before the inauguration of Donald Trump, Glaser reserved perhaps her most cutting line for the entire room of Hollywood stars.

''You could really do anything ... except tell the country who to vote for,'' said Glaser. ''But it's OK, you'll get 'em next time ... if there is one. I'm scared.''

The Globes are now owned by Todd Boehly's Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions, which acquired the award show from the now defunct Hollywood Foreign Press Association. However, more than a dozen former HFPA members are currently seeking to have the sale to Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions rescinded.

A win for ‘Wicked'

Unlike last year's Oscar race, when ''Oppenheimer'' rolled, this year's season is more uncertain, with a field of contenders. Most of the movies that are seen as having a chance — ''Conclave,'' ''Emilia Perez,'' ''The Brutalist,'' ''Wicked'' and ''Anora'' — came away with at least one award Sunday. The exception was Sean Baker's Palme d'Or-winning ''Anora,'' which went home empty handed despite five nominations.

The Globes' award for cinematic and box-office achievement went to Jon M. Chu's ''Wicked,'' which has nearly collected $700 million in theaters. In a heavily arthouse Oscar field, ''Wicked'' is easily the biggest hit in the best picture mix. Accepting the award, Chu argued for ''a radical act of optimism'' in art.

Though few awards have been predictable this season, Kieran Culkin is emerging has the clear favorite for best supporting actor. Culkin won Sunday for his performance in Jesse Eisenberg's ''A Real Pain,'' his second Globe in the past year following a win for the HBO series ''Succession.'' He called the Globes ''basically the best date night that my wife and I ever have,'' and then thanked her for ''putting up what you call my mania.''

The papal thriller ''Conclave'' took best screenplay, for Peter Straughan's script. ''Flow,'' the wordless Latvian animated parable about a cat in a flooded world, took best animated film, winning over studio blockbusters like ''Inside Out 2'' and ''The Wild Robot.'' Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won best score for their thumping music for ''Challengers.''

TV prizes

Most of the TV winners were oft-awarded series, including the Emmy champ ''Shōgun." It won four awards, including best drama series and acting wins for Hiroyuki Sanada, Anna Sawai and Tadanobu Asano. Other repeat winners were: "Hacks" (best comedy series, actress for Jean Smart), ''The Bear'' (Jeremy Allen White for best actor) and ''Baby Reindeer'' (best limited series).

Ali Wong won for best stand-up performance, Jodie Foster for ''True Detective'' and Colin Farrell for his physical transformation in ''The Penguin.''

''I guess it's prosthetics from here on out," Farrell said.

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For more coverage of the 2025 Golden Globe Awards, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/golden-globe-awards