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 ORLEANS — New Orleans mourned, wept and danced at a vigil Saturday evening along the famous thoroughfare where a man rammed a pickup truck into a crowd, killing and injuring revelers who were there to celebrate the new year.

A makeshift memorial of crosses and pictures of the 14 deceased victims included candles, flowers and teddy bears. Victims' relatives held each other, some crying. But as a brass band began playing, the sorrow transformed into a celebration of life as the crowd snapped fingers, swayed and followed the music down Bourbon Street.

The coroner's office listed the cause of death for all 14 victims as ''blunt force injuries.'' About 30 other people suffered injuries. University Medical Center New Orleans spokesperson Carolina Giepert said 13 people remained hospitalized, with eight people in intensive care.

The attack early Wednesday was carried out by Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a former U.S. Army soldier. Police fatally shot Jabbar, 42, during a firefight at the scene of the deadly crash on Bourbon Street, famous worldwide for its festive vibes in New Orleans' historic French Quarter.

Street vigil honors victims and connects city

Cathy Tenedorio, who lost her 25-year-old son Matthew, said she was moved by the flood of condolences and kindness at Saturday's vigil. ''This is the most overwhelming response of love, an outpouring of love. I'm floating through it all,'' she said.

New Orleans native Autrele Felix, 28, left a handwritten card beside a memorial for his friend Nicole Perez, a single mother who was killed. ''It means a lot, to see that our city comes together when there's a real tragedy,'' Felix said. ''We all become one.''

Others who crowded around the brass band said the best way to honor the victims was with a party.

''Because that's what they were down here to do, they were having a good time,'' life-long New Orleans resident Kari Mitten said.

President Joe Biden planned to travel to New Orleans with first lady Jill Biden on Monday to ''grieve with the families and community members impacted by the tragic attack.''

Investigation continues

Authorities on Friday continued investigating the attack, including Jabbar's motives. The FBI concluded he acted alone.

Jabbar proclaimed his support for the Islamic State militant group in online videos posted hours before he struck. It was the deadliest IS-inspired assault on U.S. soil in years, laying bare what federal officials have warned is a resurgent international terrorism threat.

He reserved the vehicle used in the attack more than six weeks earlier, on Nov. 14, according to law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Jabbar had suspected bomb-making materials at his Houston home, which contained a workbench in the garage and hazardous materials believed to have been used to make explosive devices, officials familiar with a search conducted there said.

Authorities found crude bombs in the neighborhood of the attack in an apparent attempt to cause more carnage. Two improvised explosive devices left in coolers several blocks apart were rendered safe at the scene. Other devices were determined to be nonfunctional. Jabbar purchased a cooler in Vidor, Texas, hours before the attack and gun oil from a store in Sulphur, Louisiana, investigators said.

Investigators searching Jabbar's rental truck found a transmitter intended to trigger the two bombs, the FBI said in a statement Friday, adding that there were bomb-making materials at the New Orleans home he rented. Jabbar tried to burn down the house by setting a small fire in a hallway with accelerants but the flames burned out before firefighters arrived.

Jabbar exited the crashed truck wearing a ballistic vest and helmet and fired at police, wounding at least two officers before he was fatally shot by police. New Orleans police declined to say Friday how many shots were fired by Jabbar and the officers or whether any bystanders may have been hit, citing the active investigation.

Stella Cziment, who heads the city's civilian-run Office of the Independent Police Monitor, said investigators are working to account for ''every single bullet that was fired'' and whether any of them struck bystanders.

Enhanced security planned

Police have used multiple vehicles and barricades to block traffic at Bourbon and Canal streets since the attack. Other law enforcement agencies helped city officers provide extra security, said Reese Harper, a New Orleans police spokesperson.

The first parade of the Carnival season leading up to Mardi Gras was scheduled to take place Monday. New Orleans also will host the Super Bowl on Feb. 9.

''This enhanced safety effort will continue daily, not just during large events,'' Harper said in a statement.

In a previous effort to protect the French Quarter, the city installed steel columns known as bollards to restrict vehicle access to Bourbon Street. The posts retracted to allow deliveries to bars and restaurants. They stopped working reliably after being gummed up by Mardi Gras beads, beer and other detritus.

When New Year's Eve arrived, the bollards were gone. They will be replaced ahead of the Super Bowl, officials said.

Victims identified

The attack killed an 18-year-old aspiring nurse, a single mother, a father of two and a former Princeton University football star, among others.

The New Orleans coroner's office has identified 13 of the 14 victims, with the youngest listed as 18 and the oldest 63. Most of the victims were in their 20s. One was a British citizen, 31-year-old Edward Pettifer of west London, according to London's Metropolitan Police.

British media reported Pettifer was the stepson of Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who was the nanny for Prince William and Prince Harry between 1993 and 1999, which included the time after the death of their mother, Princess Diana.

At the vigil on Saturday, family members identified Tasha Polk, a mother and nursing assistant in her 40s, as the final victim of the attack.

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Mustian reported from Black Mountain, North Carolina, and Cline reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. AP reporters Eric Tucker and Tara Copp in Washington, D.C., Sharon Lurye in New Orleans, Jeff Martin in Atlanta, Martha Bellisle in Seattle, Darlene Superville in New Castle, Delaware, and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.