Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation (18 page)

Fortunately, as improvisers, we seldom have more to worry about on stage than the chairs
and our fellow players, though that wasn't the case when Del was directing the Committee in
San Francisco in the late 1960s.

"I decided to do a gag with the stage left door, which was normally hinged at
the left and
openedon stage. I had the door rehinged on the bottom for the Mummy's entrance in The Curse
of the Tomb —
Aieeee!' In this kind of minimalist theatre, a door that opens in a surprising
way qualifies as a 'special effect!' On cue, Larry Hankin as the Mummy would unlatch the two
bolts and drop the door, entering not so much through
it, buton
it," says Del.

"Of course, the inevitable happened. One night during the improv set, a former company
member, back for a guest appearance, noticed the new
bolts on the back of the door and said,
'What's this?' She unlocked the bolts, and dropped the door on the head of Jessica Meyerson,
the producer's wife!"

THE QUESTION GAME

This is a game for more experienced players —
unless an actor is capable of improvising
a decent scene without a handicap, he shouldn't try it in public. Any time a performer does a
scene under a handicap, it requires plenty of concentration, whether they are improvising a
scene in verse, in different literary or cinematic styles, or performing when the first and last
lines of dialog have already been selected (all of which are valuable games, as well).

In the Question Game, the idea of question-asking is fully embraced. During this
exercise, only questions are allowed! A scene is built
with no declarative statements at all. This
can be surprisingly difficult. Only true questions are allowed, not statements bent into
interrogatives by adding "don't you?" or "isn't it?" at the end. And to increase the pressure, the
audience is encouraged to boo mistakes!

KEY POINTS FOR CHAPTER TEN
*Find your function or role in every game.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

How to Do a Harold

A Harold utilizes anything and everything included in this book. Harolds can be made up
of a limitless number of formats, although most of them are based on the structure described in
this chapter.

Harolds are composed of three basic elements: scenes (involving two to four players),
games (usually involving the full company) and one-person monologs.

Teams begin by asking for a suggestion from the audience. They then personalize the
suggestion and develop an attitude, which is expressed through the opening game (which can
take many different forms).

After the opening, the players begin the first round by improvising scenes (three seems
to
be the standard number). These are followed by a game, and then the scenes return for further
development. Another game follows, and the scenes are brought back for a third time, though
not all scenes will return. The Harold can end with any one of the
scenes, or with another game.

That's Harold in a nutshell —
the details are a little more extensive.

TAKING SUGGESTIONS FOR A HAROLD

When players ask an audience for a theme, it's best to ask for a simple, mundane subject,
so the actors can elevate it into something vastly profound. It's always exciting to watch a team
take a topic as trivial as "wet cardboard" and discover the meaning of life while exploring it.
The subject can be a simple object, an issue, or even a question, such as "Why do we fight?" Of
course, if the players take a question, they should not try to answer it in the opening. They
aren't concerned with answering questions, only exploring the possibilities.

Players should try to take the first suggestion given by the audience, for two reasons. If
the players hesitate, the audience members will probably shout out dozens of suggestions,
drowning each other out and making it hard to choose. More importantly, if the players hesitate
very long, the audience will think they aren't capable of improvising about any given topic
(which of course they are). Sometimes a drunken audience member will shout out
"hemorrhoids" or some equally inspired thought. A player is certainly within his rights to
explain to the audience that while they are perfectly capable of doing such a Harold, do they
really want to watch hemorrhoids on stage for the next half hour? A more appropriate
suggestion usually follows.

It is also important to remember that the Harold is
not about the theme. It is onlyinspired
by the theme. The Harold is about the ideas extracted from the theme by each individual
player, starting with the opening exercise. These ideas are used for the scenes and games that
the team is about to improvise.

When the players receive their suggestion and begin
to extrapolate their ideas, they
should always avoid making obvious statements. Instead, they should raise the suggestion
to a
higher level. For example, if the theme was "color," it would be a waste of time to name every

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color in the spectrum during the
opening exercise. It's important to get as many different ideas
as there are players, so that the theme is incorporated on plenty of levels.

The theme of "color" could inspire ideas about art, racism, exploitation in journalism,
sports commentating, and a
host of others. When this is added to personal experiences and
memories triggered in the players' minds, the list is unlimited. A theme like "color" can even
inspire ideas for emotional states ("green with envy," "purple with rage"). All of the
possibilities can be used on different levels in the work. And, all possible ideas are shared in
the opening, which occurs immediately after the suggestion is taken.

PERSONALIZING THE SUGGESTION

Everyone has a personal experience or feeling that can be related to any suggestion, so
there is no reason for a player's mind to go blank when the group is given a suggestion.

When the Baron's Barracudas were performing one night, they were given "futon" for a
suggestion. However, Howard did not know what a futon was. Therefore, his opening
monolog started off with this confession: he went on to say that the word reminded him of
some sub-atomic particle, and went on speculating until his teammates politely explained that
a futon was a type of folding couch or mattress, and the group continued onward. In this case,
Howard didn't even have to know what the suggestion meant in order to personalize the
subject. On those rare occasions when a player doesn't know what a suggestion means, all he
has to do is ask his teammates on stage!

Personalizing a suggestion —
drawing on past experiences or feelings —
brings ideas to
the player's mind.

In a recent workshop, the topic suggested for the Harold was "pets." During the opening,
which in this case was a series of monologs, one of the students became stuck and stopped the
game. He felt he could not play the game because he had absolutely
nothing to say about pets.
Charna asked him if he owned a pet; he replied that he did not, and would never want one
(certainly an impulse strong enough
to inspire a monolog!). He said that pets were as big a
responsibility as having a child. "Who wants that responsibility?" he asked.

He clearly had a personal feeling on the subject, and as soon as he realized it, the rest was
all downhill. His idea of comparing pets to raising children became stronger, and began to
include ideas from other monologs, as well. When a teammate mentioned that she had just had
her 16-year-old dog put to sleep, he ended the monolog game with, "Try doing
that to a kid!"

THE OPENING

The opening is the most important part of the Harold, since it is the foundation of the
entire piece. You can't build a house starting from the roof down, and an improviser has to use
the elements introduced in the opening to build scenes and games.

Every bit of information shared by the players in the opening will be remembered and
used. Harold is very economical —
nothing is lost.

Because the laughs in a Harold come from the connections made in the work, the
audience has to see where the information originated. In other words, they are involved with
the development of the piece right from the very start. The audience feels they are "in" on the

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jokes, since they have witnessed their creation, and they are (hopefully) encouraged to laugh
even more.

For the actors, the opening is the information sharing process. It is where the players
discover each other's points of view on the theme, and the place where the group mind must
begin to develop. The attitudes and emotions displayed in the opening give helpful hints on
relationships among the group members —
information that will provide inspiration for the
future scenes.

This information sharing process can begin in many ways. The theme itself may inspire
the team to create an original, never-before-done opening. Most of the time, however, a Harold
will begin with commonly used openings like monologs, pattern games, songs, or
combinations of the above. The Pattern Game is discussed in an early chapter, but monologs
are just as useful in a Harold.

MONOLOGS

A monolog in a Harold is an opportunity to remember and then share a past experience.
Players mustremember,
not invent.
This book was titled
Truth in Comedy
because there is

nothing funnier than the truth, so players must keep their monologs honest. Audiences
relate to someone who is telling the truth, and usually know when a performer is inventing.

When a theme is given, each player tells a personal story that is inspired by that theme. It
is important for the monolog ideas to be different from each other, so the team has more ideas
to draw from. The more chaos existing in the pot of information, the easier it is to tie things
together.
Out of chaos comes order
is a law of physics that also applies to improv.

If the group only discussed one idea, then there is nothing to pull together. If the theme
was "dog," it would not be a good idea for everyone to talk about how much they miss their
dogs.

Monologs should also be kept short, certainly less than a minute. When monologs are
used in between a Pattern Game
for a little variation during the opening, there should be no
more than three of them, or the opening will take much too long. Lengthy openings cause the
game to lose energy, and usually provide too much information for the players
and
the
audience.

A series of monologs doesn't have to be limited to the opening in a Harold, however.
Three back-to-back monologs can be used between scenes —
in place of a group game —
in
most Harolds. A player may even "freeze" a scene (usually by such unsubtle means as saying
"Freeze!" and stepping forward) to deliver a monolog inspired by that very scene. When he is
finished, he "unfreezes" the scene, which is hopefully affected by the monolog as it resumes.

One example of this type of monolog was done by Ian Gomez. Two players were
portraying high school students challenging each other to a fight. The scene slowed down
when the two of them didn't want to enact a fight on stage (even in slow motion), and so Ian
froze the scene and said, "In high school, some people were afraid of me because I'm half
Puerto Rican, but there were others who weren't threatened by me at all, because I'm also half
Jewish."

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When he finished, the scene continued where it left off. Randy Hassan said in a tough
Puerto Rican accent, "I'd punch your lights out, but I have to get dressed for Seder."

Ian's monolog.helped the scene to find a direction, and Randy astutely picked up the gift
and made it work.

There are different variations to the monolog as an opening game, each used for different
reasons. One of these games, called the Rant, is terrific for building energy.