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.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A huge swath of the U.S. was blasted with ice, snow and wind on Monday as the polar vortex that dipped south over the weekend kept much of the country east of the Rockies in its frigid grip, making many roads treacherous, forcing school closures, and causing widespread power outages and flight cancellations.

The immense storm system brought disruption to areas of the country that usually escape winter's wrath, downing trees in some Southern states, threatening a freeze in Florida and causing people in Dallas to dip deep into their wardrobes for hats and gloves.

Washington, D.C., received heavy snow as President-elect Donald Trump's victory was certified. Taking advantage of the rare snowstorm in the nation's capital, revelers engaged in a snowball fight in front of the Washington Monument as flags flew at half-staff in memory of former President Jimmy Carter.

In Kentucky's biggest city, Louisville, Hugh Ross used his shovel Monday to break sheets of ice that were covering his driveway. Frozen rain fell atop snow that arrived Sunday, which he said ''couldn't have been worse.''

''You've got to break it up first," Ross explained. "If you don't do that, you're wasting your time. I did a couple of layers yesterday, so I had to make sure I wasn't in too bad of shape today.''

Ice and snow blanketed major roads in Kansas, western Nebraska and parts of Indiana, where the National Guard was activated to help stranded motorists. The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings for Kansas and Missouri, where blizzard conditions brought wind gusts of up to 45 mph (72 kph). The warnings extended to New Jersey into early Tuesday.

At the storied Calumet Farm in central Kentucky, the thoroughbreds were led to their stalls Sunday afternoon before freezing rain turned their pastures into a slick glaze of snow and ice.

''The ice is the worst part,'' Eddie Kane, the farm manager, said Monday. ''I still haven't turned them out because it's still a little bit too dangerous. It's like an ice skating rink out there in the fields.''

The polar vortex of ultra-cold air usually spins around the North Pole, but it sometimes plunges southward into the U.S., Europe and Asia. Studies show that a fast-warming Arctic is partly to blame for the increasing frequency of the polar vortex extending its grip.

Temperatures plunge

Starting Monday, the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. dealt with bone-chilling cold and wind chills, forecasters said, predicting temperatures ranging from 12 to 25 degrees (7 to 14 degrees Celsius) below normal in many areas.

The Northeast was expected to get several cold days, said Jon Palmer, a weather service meteorologist based in Gray, Maine.

The cold was expected to grip the Eastern Seaboard as far south as Georgia, with temperatures dropping into the low single digits (minus 15 to minus 17 Celsius) in some coastal areas, Palmer said.

Classes canceled

School closings were widespread, with districts in Indiana, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas canceling or delaying the start of classes Monday. Among them was Kentucky's Jefferson County Public Schools, which canceled classes and other school activities for its nearly 100,000 students.

Classes were also canceled in Maryland, where Gov. Wes Moore declared a state of emergency Sunday and announced that state government offices would also be closed Monday.

Car wrecks abound

At least 600 motorists were stranded in Missouri over the weekend, authorities said. Hundreds of car accidents were reported in Virginia, Indiana, Kansas and Kentucky, where a state trooper was treated for non-life-threatening injuries after his patrol car was hit.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who declared a state emergency, said government buildings would be closed Monday.

''We see far too many wrecks out there for people that do not have to be on the roads,'' Beshear said.

Kansas saw two deadly crashes over the weekend. Gov. Laura Kelly closed state offices in the Topeka area through Tuesday, as did many school districts.

Virginia State Police responded to at least 430 crashes Sunday and Monday. One man died and more than 20 people were injured. Police said other weather-related fatal accidents occurred Sunday near Charleston, West Virginia, and Monday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

By midday Monday, state troopers in Maryland had responded to at least 475 calls for service, including 123 reported crashes and 156 unattended vehicles since 1 a.m., Maryland State Police said on social media.

More snow and ice are expected

In Indiana, snow covered stretches of Interstate 64, Interstate 69 and U.S. Route 41, leading authorities to plead with people to stay home.

''It's snowing so hard, the snow plows go through and then within a half hour the roadways are completely covered again,'' State Police Sgt. Todd Ringle said.

Topeka, Kansas, reported 14.5 inches (nearly 37 centimeters) by about 8 p.m. Sunday, according to the weather service.

Kansas City International Airport received 11 inches (28 centimeters) of snow on Sunday, breaking the previous record for the day of 10.1 inches (26 centimeters) set in 1962, according to the weather service's office in Kansas City, Missouri. In Kentucky, Louisville recorded 7.7 inches (nearly 20 centimeters) of snow on Sunday, shattering the date's previous record of 3 inches (nearly 8 centimeters) set in 1910.

The Mid-Atlantic region was expected to get another 6 inches to 12 inches (15 to 30 centimeters) of snow on Monday, the weather service's Weather Prediction Center warned. Dangerously cold temperatures were expected to follow, with nighttime lows falling into the single digits through the middle of the week across the Central Plains and into the Mississippi and Ohio valleys.

Thousands without power

Many were in the dark as temperatures plunged. More than 250,000 customers were without power early Monday across Kentucky, Indiana, Virginia, West Virginia, Illinois and Missouri, according to electric utility tracking website PowerOutage.us.

In Virginia's capital city, a power outage caused a temporary malfunction in the water system, officials said Monday afternoon. Richmond officials asked citizens in the city of more than 200,000 people to refrain from drinking tap water or washing dishes without boiling the water first. The city also asked residents to conserve their water, such as by taking shorter showers.

City officials said they were working nonstop to bring the system back online.

Air and rail travel are snarled

More than 2,500 flights were canceled and at least 6,500 more were delayed nationwide as of Monday morning, according to tracking platform FlightAware. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport reported that about 58% of arrivals and 70% of departures had been canceled.

A record 8 inches (more than 20 centimeters) of snow fell Sunday at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, leading to dozens of flight cancellations that lingered into Monday. A few more inches of snow were expected Monday across the Cincinnati area, where car and truck crashes Monday morning shutdown at least two major routes leading into downtown.

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Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Associated Press journalists Bruce Schreiner in Shelbyville, Kentucky; Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Kentucky; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Lea Skene in Baltimore; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Julie Walker in New York; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Zeke Miller in Washington, D.C.; John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; and Summer Ballentine in Columbia, Missouri, contributed.

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Read more of the AP's climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment