The Harold is a multi-scene game that lasts about half an hour. A textbook Harold has a rigid structure. It consists of "Group Games" followed by Three Beats, performed 3 times. That means:
Scene 1A
Scene 1B
Scene 1C
Group Game
Scene 2A
Scene 2B
Scene 2C
Group Game
Scene 3A
Scene 3B
Scene 3C
The Harold is usually performed with 5 to 7 players. More can get chaotic, fewer can strain the players.
When you start, you ask the audience for a word. The players go out and jam off the word and a group. Their goal is to expand on the word and show all connections you can get from it. This information will be used as the starting point for ensuing scenes.
The way the group jams off the word may be determined ahead of time, or arrived at spontaneously. They can deliver monologues, use word associations, or just start doing something and expect the rest of the group to pick up on what you're doing.
Group games should be about flow. Keep monologues short and punchy. One sentence is often excellent. Ten sentences is probably the very upper limit. Since you're mining for inspiration, be 100% concrete: "The first day I showed up for work at McDonald's, my bright blue uniform had a huge spot where my cat had been sucking on it just before I left home," not "My McDonald's days were filled with sadness and humiliation. Many times, I had problems with my uniform..."
In the First Beat, you play three Open Scenes that use elements from the monologues. The scenes should be as far apart and unrelated as possible. This creates the possibility of forming surprising and interesting connections later. The scenes do not need to be in chronological sequence.
Players off-stage (or even on-stage) can end a scene whenever they like by entering and tapping players on the shoulder to indicate that they should leave the stage for a new scene. See Cuts. You can toss a flashback into a scene without it counting as a new scene.
During the First Beat, let your scenes run long enough to establish characters, locations, themes, relationships. The more reality you establish now, the more material you'll have to mix up later. Two minutes for a scene is fine.
Example: playing off the monologues from before, the first scene might be a guy's first day working at a McDonald's. One of the customers wants a Filet-O-Fish without tartar sauce. The new employee fouls up the order and gives him a Big Mac instead. The second scene might be a mad scientist, bent on taking over the world, feeding exotic fish to his cat. The third scene might be a salesman teaching his son how to tie his tie so he'll be "well-liked", and explaining that being well-liked is the most important thing in the world.
What themes can you spot emerging in those scenes?
In the Second Beat, characters from the First Beat come back, in new scenes at new times. Perhaps characters from different scenes meet each other in new circumstances. Perhaps you see a character at a much earlier or later time in his life.
Your objective in the Second Beat is to develop actions and themes that have emerged earlier. Imagine that the seeds that have been planted now sprout tendrils. Whatever has been explored a little, explore more. Scenes in this beat can be much shorter, with lots of cuts back and forth.
Example: developing the ideas from the First Beat, you might have a scene where the mad scientist's father is teaching him how to mix chemicals. "The most important thing to know in life, son, is to never mix acids and bases." Next scene: the McDonald's employee is now the manager. He's getting enraged with new employees who are operating the deep fryer incorrectly, getting grease all over the floor, creating a hazard. Next scene: the exotic fish are in a tank, plotting a rebellion against the mad scientist and his cat.
Now what themes can you spot emerging?
In the Third Beat, you may find a unifying theme and reach a scene that brings that theme out as clearly as possible. Or not. Connections should arrive organically, never forced.
Example: The theme I notice looking over the previous examples is "parents preparing their kids for adulthood". So now perhaps the McDonald's manager and his wife bring their kid to a Montessori school and interview the headmaster to see if the school is good enough for them. The kid is four years old but recites calculus equations whenever he's asked a question. Next scene: The kid is at college, dissecting fish in biology class. He complains to the professor that fish are not put together as efficiently as they could be. The professor warns him that people won't listen to those sorts of ideas unless he dresses them up in a socially appropriate manner. It's all about who you know, how you dress. Better that you learn that now, kid. Next scene: the kid has become the mad scientist, and he's building an underground laboratory. His slaves labor mightily to drill deeply enough into the Earth that he will never have to talk to another person ever again. Final scene: the exotic fish in his aquarium teach their children how to avoid getting caught by mad scientists. The fish parents act as decoys and get caught by the mad scientist so their baby fish can get away and seek a new life in the ocean. The Harold ends as the fish parents get eaten by the cat, happy to have saved their children.
There is no need to tie plotlines together. That might or might not happen, but usually it doesn't. (Notice that the salesman and his son never came back, and that's fine.) The magic happens when the theme that was already there comes out. A better name for Harold might have been "Variations and Theme" (since the theme is clearest at the end).
You don't need to invent a theme, you just discover it in the material that's come so far. All the improv tips and techniques help create the kind of richness where a theme just spontaneously builds without anyone seeing it in advance. The theme and final scene will always be a surprise, and they will always be natural in that amazing and satisfying way.
Ultimately, the Harold is about discovering a truth and seeing it from many angles.
The Harold requires skill, otherwise it can degenerate into incoherency. All the improv tips and techniques apply, but here are some that make an especially big difference:
| • | Listen! Be hyperaware of everything that is going on. The more things that other people have said that you can remember, the more ways you can create connections. |
| • | Be concrete. Concrete things are filled with possibilities of connection, while vague or abstract ideas usually aren't. For example, "I feel bad because my life isn't interesting enough" doesn't give your scene partners a whole lot to connect to. "My cellphone battery is almost out" gives lots: communication devices, the need to communicate, electricity, engineering, time running out. With any of those, you can think of a completely different way to continue it: Captain Kirk's communicator, chat rooms, a prisoner who wants someone to believe that he's innocent, stealing a car battery so you can start your own car in a rainy night, procrastinating before the April 15 tax deadline. |
| • | Continue the Game. The cellphone example illustrates the "continue the game" mentality to have. Whatever theme someone develops, you move it further. For example, if someone follows up the cellphone by bringing in a prisoner who wants someone to believe he's innocent, you can continue that with a Jesus Freak trying to persuade people on the street that they've got to get right with God, and if only they'd listen to God, they'd see the light. And someone could follow that with a mother who wants her daughter to learn that "exciting" men will mistreat you, hopefully sparing the daughter from learning that the hard way. But the daughter disregards her mother's advice and in another scene her boyfriend won't pay any attention to her. With 5-7 people all playing this way off each other, deeply truthful themes will emerge, in ways that no one can predict or control. |
Cocktail Party is a good exercise to practice both the kinds of responses that let themes emerge, and attunement to an emerging theme so you can bring it out even more clearly at the end.
| • | If someone taps you out and you thought your scene had more to explore, you always have the option of continuing your scene as soon as their scene is done. You don't have to exercise this option--you may change your mind after their scene--but it's always an option. When you come back, you can pick up several minutes or an hour later, somewhat like Cocktail Party. |
From Truth in Comedy, pg. 7:
[Del Close's improv troupe The Committee] came up with one of the most sophisticated, rewarding forms of pure improv ever developed.
And then they had to name it.
A few years earlier, in A Hard Day's Night, a reporter asks George Harrison what he called his haircut. "Arthur," he responds.
So when Del asked his group what this exciting new form of improv should be called, one of his actors, Bill Mathieu, answered "Harold."
It has always been a minor annoyance for Del that his life's work has been saddled with such an inane, silly title. But the name stuck.
Version 13 2007-Oct-19 05:21 UTC
Last edit by Paul Oyen
