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.

Richard Davis was the chief operating officer of U.S. Bank in May 2005 when news broke that a little-known real estate family from New Jersey might lead the purchase of the Vikings from Red McCombs, after questions about Reggie Fowler’s worth threatened to scuttle the deal.

Since U.S. Bank handled the Vikings’ business, Davis had more information than most about the situation. He had lived in the Twin Cities long enough to know Minnesotans would react with suspicion. He had worked enough with the Wilfs not to share those concerns.

“I knew they were good businesspeople. I assumed they would be smart owners if they were going to get into something like this,” Davis said. “They would be a family ownership. They wouldn’t dilute it down to five million other people.”

Davis, who retired as U.S. Bank’s CEO in 2017 and co-chaired the host committee for Super Bowl LII, still watches every Vikings game from his home in Arizona with the nervous hope he learned in Minnesota.

“I have my T-shirt that says, ‘Optimistic since 1961,’ ” he said.

He looks at the Vikings now and knows his 19-year-old hunch was right.

“If the Minnesotans and the Wilfs stay as close as they seem to be,” he said, “this franchise can be owned and located in Minnesota for as long as you can see.”

On Sunday night, the Vikings will play the final game of their 20th regular season since the Wilfs bought the team, with a chance to earn the NFC’s No. 1 seed for the first time since 1998. It concludes a second decade of the Wilfs’ ownership marked by major investments designed to put the franchise on solid footing.

The Vikings are 34-16 in the regular season since 2022, when the Wilfs hired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell in the biggest set of changes they had overseen. The team went 7-1 in its ninth season at U.S. Bank Stadium, the $1.06 billion facility that has played host to a Super Bowl and a men’s Final Four and is still celebrated as one of the NFL’s best, while the state paid off construction bonds for the stadium two decades ahead of schedule. The TCO Performance Center, the team headquarters on 185 acres of the former Northwest Airlines campus in Eagan, was a major reason the Vikings finished first and second in the NFL Players Association’s first two organization report cards in 2023 and ′24. The 2024 survey was the first to rank NFL owners; the Wilfs finished first, as players praised their willingness to invest in the team.

Safety Harrison Smith, in his 13th year with the Vikings, said he has yet to meet a free agent who signs in Minnesota and isn’t impressed.

“As a player, you can’t ask for a better environment,” Smith said. “And they’re in it to win, which is important. They’re invested, just like us. Playing for a group of owners like that, it permeates throughout the organization.”

It has helped Vikings fans warm to the owners. who bought the team promising to keep it in Minnesota but knowing it would take action to win the state’s trust.

“Being somebody new from outside the community, we had to prove ourselves, both from the stadium perspective and keeping to our commitments,” Zygi Wilf said. “But we also found it to be a great community to invest in, and we did that in downtown and other parts of the Twin Cities. I think it goes a long way to show not only our commitment to the football team but to the community, through the foundations and our charitable work. We’re very proud of that.”

Said linebacker Chad Greenway, the Vikings’ first draft pick after the Wilfs bought the team: “They’ve done a nice job of really embracing what it is to be a Minnesotan and how important the Vikings are to this state.”

With the Twins for sale and the ownership of the Timberwolves currently in arbitration, the Wilfs could soon be the longest-tenured owners of a Minnesota sports team, about 2½ years ahead of Wild owner Craig Leipold. The Wilf family needs only to hold the Vikings until December 2030 to surpass founding partner Max Winter for the longest ownership in team history. That seems likely given the increased involvement of Zygi, Mark and Leonard Wilf’s children in team matters and the family’s stated succession plans. That’s critical, Davis said, given how frequently family businesses fracture when they reach a third generation.

The Vikings, purchased by a group that took after multi-generational flagship franchises like the Giants and Steelers, are a source of pride for a family that’s grown closer as it’s run the team.

“It’s the greatest honor,” Mark Wilf said, “and I know we’re going to try our best to make sure it stays within our family. The values that we’re trying to set about a first-class franchise, I know the future generations in our family will carry those on.”

While the Wilfs are praised for their financial commitment, those who work closest with them say their investment is paired with an incisive business intellect, built through decades in the family’s commercial real estate business, that sharpens the people they support.

They hold between four and six strategy meetings per year with senior football officials such as Adofo-Mensah, O’Connell and Executive Vice President of Football Operations Rob Brzezinski, to talk through plans for free agency, the draft or the upcoming season. The owners press in with questions about process and alignment, asking if the football department had considered a certain alternative and checking if key decisionmakers have enough consensus to move forward. No line item in a proposal is too small for follow-up questions; the Wilfs occasionally inquire about moves bold enough to surprise Vikings officials.

“They want to know why we arrive at the conclusions and directions we want to go, and they’re not afraid at all to challenge us,” Brzezinski said. “[It’s], ‘Have you thought about this perspective?’ or, ‘If we went this direction, how would that impact these other paths?’ They’re really good at looking ahead and anticipating things we might not see.”

The Wilfs talk with the football staff every Monday and hold a call with the football and business departments on Wednesdays; the owners are in frequent contact with O’Connell, Adofo-Mensah and Brzezinski about possible moves and review every contract before it’s offered, even if it means stepping out of a charity board meeting to respond to Adofo-Mensah’s text with a phone call.

The questions they ask before a move is made, Mark Wilf said, are the same ones a reporter or fan might ask afterward. “We really probe to make sure they’re looking at all the perspectives, understand their logic, and then we’ll bless it,” he said.

Often, they will do so with cash that exceeds the NFL’s salary cap, enabling the Vikings to acquire more talent by using signing bonuses amortized over multiple years.

“It’s a competitive advantage. There’s no question,” Brzezinski said. “We take a lot of pride in our budget and the way we plan, so we’re not surprising them. But there are times when unique opportunities present themselves. If we think it’s a good decision and it gives us a chance to win, they always support it.”

The facilities, and the reputation they have earned the Vikings, helped thaw perceptions of Minnesota as a frozen outpost that might harm the Vikings’ ability to attract free agents, Hall of Fame receiver Cris Carter said.

“Everyone wants to know what it’s going to be like at work. How do they treat you?” Carter said. “Because everyone says they care about you. But when you get into these facilities, you can tell who cares more about the bottom line compared to what they’re doing for players. You can’t hide that.”

And, players say, the Wilfs demonstrate they care by showing up.

Zygi Wilf said the owners have learned how much it means for them to be at the facility the day after a difficult defeat. Those visits, Smith said, communicate “they’re right there in it with us. You can tell they understand the length of the season. All is not lost.”

Greenway remembered owners providing flights to Iowa City for a United Way flood relief project and flying “almost the entire staff” to South Dakota for his father Alan’s funeral after he died of leukemia in 2015. “Those little touches, it may not be the cost, it may just be the effort to do it,” Greenway said. “And that changes everything.”

They have continued to support Greenway’s Lead the Way Foundation eight years after he retired, and Hall of Famer Alan Page said the Wilfs continue support of his Page Education Foundation, while making the former Minnesota Supreme Court justice a key voice in their social justice committee. After George Floyd was murdered in 2020, players recalled being moved by the Wilfs’ presence in team meetings, recounting their own story as children of Holocaust survivors to empathize with the pain players were feeling.

Afterward, the Wilfs and the Vikings donated $5 million to social justice causes, while establishing a $125,000 endowment for a scholarship in Floyd’s name.

“My sense is, it’s a discussion among equals,” Page said of the Wilfs’ involvement in the team’s social justice efforts. “They are not dictating what’s going on, but being participants in the way things are done. When you sit down, allow people to express themselves and hear what they have to say, the end result will be better for that.”

Before one of the Vikings’ first games in 2016, a woman approached Mark Wilf in the U.S. Bank Stadium concourse with tears in her eyes. She hugged him, telling him how much Vikings games meant to her family and how grateful she was to bring them to the new stadium.

“It touched me very much,” Mark Wilf said. “We sit in a lot of rooms with architects and political people and CEOs. It can get very technical sometimes. But the North Star was the fans. It is a dollars-and-cents business. But when you see that, you know this is not just a run-of-the-mill business.”

When discussing the team’s stability, the Wilfs invariably start with the stadium. The facility, celebrated as both a stage for the major events that returned to the Twin Cities and a source of acoustic fury for Vikings opponents, was also the franchise’s exit from an uncertain existence in Minnesota.

The Wilfs never threatened to move the team, Davis emphasized, and they kept a low profile at the Legislature during arduous stadium funding talks that lasted nearly seven years. Advocates debated the optics of bringing NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to St. Paul for a key April 2012 meeting with legislators to revive negotiations. When the bill passed, it prompted mixed reaction due to concerns about the size of the public contribution. But a Vikings move, possibly to Los Angeles, seemed inevitable without a new facility.

The Wilfs ”managed it the same way they manage their business: thoughtful, patient, not overreacting or over-indexing on anything,” Davis said.

The May 2012 stadium bill spurred a building boom for the Vikings, with the team signing Eagan purchase agreements in 2015 and opening its new headquarters weeks after Super Bowl LII. The practice facility now hosts the Minnesota Aurora women’s soccer team, high school football games, summer movie nights and winter activities, while serving as the locus of an ongoing development that includes a hotel, park space, restaurants, residential areas and office and medical space.

Former Vikings receiver Martin Nance is now the team’s chief marketing officer, while longtime Vikings PR man Tom West joined Tracy McDonald in overseeing a robust alumni network, which includes annual gatherings and a suite at U.S. Bank Stadium where former players can get two tickets for any game.

“When you build a culture, part of that culture is built around history,” former Vikings running back Robert Smith said. “They want to make sure the players that built that history get a chance to be part of the present.”

They are also making sure more of their fans can be part of it all this weekend. The team spent almost $2 million to acquire around 1,900 tickets for Sunday night’s NFC North title game at Ford Field in Detroit, giving fans an opportunity to purchase them for as little as $200 apiece.

The Wilfs' NFL experience helped their’ forays into soccer, where their Orlando City FC club reached the MLS Eastern Conference final and the Orlando Pride won the National Women’s Soccer League title this year. And in perhaps the most profound indicator of how their reputation among Minnesotans has changed, some Twins fans clamored for them to buy the team after the Pohlads said in October they planned to sell the club.

Mark Wilf indicated the family isn’t considering it.

“We always discuss those things,” he said. “But right now, our focus is on the Minnesota Vikings, and of course the Orlando franchise. We have our hands full with the Vikings, in a good way.”

After 20 years, it appears they have the Vikings as healthy as ever.

“They run the team like it’s a family business. They invest in their best players. They’re trying to build up the Minnesota Vikings,” Carter said. “Every dancer needs a stage; U.S. Bank Stadium is it. I mean, they built a little city [around the practice facility]. The more we watch, the more we find out we have one of the best [head coaches] in the league. They’re doing an amazing job.”