Found this today and have to say, It’s pretty brilliant. Sorry was not the most fun game because it relied too heavily on that big plastic half dome thing. The game itself was boring as shit.
Monopoly is a game.
We use the pattern of moving pieces around the board to play that game.
That pattern in and of itself is not very interesting.
But the pattern serves the game. It moves it forward. It lets us find more fun.
The fun is in what we DO in that game. It’s WHY we’re playing it.
You can play it fast. Or slow. You can spend time in jail. Or you can work as hard as you can to buy up all the railroads.
That’s your choice.
Because monopoly is a game.
Game is what we play.
If something is funny, it has a game.
Pattern is how we play it.
We use patterns to explore and heighten the game.
Choice is up to the individual player.
At UCBT we teach people to make strong choices at the top of their intelligence and then to commit to those choices.
Strong, committed choices show off your sense of play and sense of humor. They bring your ideas to the group mind.
Then everyone gets to play and enjoy and support each others ideas.
You can make a pattern out of anything. But if it’s not a pattern serving a strong game — it’ll be boring.
Just like Sorry.
That’s a terrible game.
– Anthony King
From Del Close’s Notes
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
- You are all supporting actors
- Always check your impulses
- Never enter a scene unless you are needed
- Save your fellow actor, don’t worry about the piece
- Your prime responsibility is to support
- Work at the top of your brains at all times
- Never underestimate or condescend to your audience
- No jokes (unless it is tipped in front that it is a joke.)
- Trust. trust your fellow actors to support you; trust them to come through if you lay something heavy on them; trust yourself
- Avoid judging what is going down in terms of whether it needs help (either by entering or cutting), what can best follow, or how you can support it imaginatively if your support is called for
- LISTEN
- IF THE WHOLE IS TO BE ART, THE PARTS MUST NOT TRY TO BE
- HAROLD IS LIKE A DOCUMENTARY FILM– PART AUTOBIOGRAPHY, PART BIOGRAPHY, PART SIMPLE FACT
- THE TOTAL MAY RESEMBLE A “PLAY” (a dramatic work of fiction) BUT IT ISN’T FICTION ANY MORE THAN A THEORETICAL SCIENCE PAPER IS FICTION
- NOTICE HOW “YOU” ARE A PART OF A HAROLD. HOW YOU FIT. THEN SIMPLY ENTER-JOIN
- HAROLD IS GREATER THAN ALL OF YOUR ABILITIES-OR YOUR INTELLIGENCE
- HAROLD NEEDS ALL OF YOU-YOUR BEHAVIOR, NOT YOUR DESCRIPTION OF YOUR BEHAVIOR
A Friday video treat for you all.
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Photographs by Melissago
Tonight is the final Rawhide Presents: The Raw Harold at UCB and instead of again giving my break down of last weeks’ show (which was hilarious) and urging you not to miss it (there is nothing more I can do), I thought I would look at a few facets of the show I have not mentioned up until now, these are the performers and the director Chris Gethard.
Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?
– MC Escher
One of the reasons I feel so passionately about the Raw Harold is partly because, as a performer, seeing an experimental form such as the Raw Harold inspires me to experiment with my own improvisation and partly because most of the performers on stage are my contemporaries. I have worked with most of these performers, I have seen what they were capable of, and I have seen them fail in the past. This makes watching them excel that much more impressive. These are all talented performers, no doubt, but I have never seen them be so confident on stage.
Read on…
Getting on in my improv age, as well as my actual age, I have become less and less impressed in the cookie-cutter Harold. Del, from what I have read, never intended the Harold to be the end all be all in improv forms. It was a blueprint and it was up to the improvisers to build their Harold as they saw fit. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Harolds I see, day-to-day, class-to-class, Harold night-to-Harold night, are 8 semi-terrified performers performing someone else’s form without a sense of their ownership.
One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.
–Anton Chekhov
Then I took Chris Gethard’s 501 at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade last year and near the end of the class he threw us the keys to the Harold, telling us in no uncertain terms to make it our own. The result was a performance which we, in the class, termed the “Pink Harold”. It was ours, it was passionate, it was inventive, it was unwatchable. But it was during the Pink Harold that our class realized that with enough support, inevitable listening, and a heaping of group mind — you could do just about anything to a Harold or improv and have it work.
Chris Gethard’s Explosion class, performing under the name ‘The Raw Harold’, has perfected the explosion into something which is truly stage worthy. The class, split into two non-permanent teams by Gethard, opens with something which most closely resembles an organic opening. The group then slides into scenes. The scenes themselves look to loosely follow the Harold structure, but they also seem to follow the focus of the whole piece, rather than stay wed to scene centric themes.
Read on…
Although technically not published yet (April 1st), there’s a new book available about the man, The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close ($16.47 from Amazon). I really don’t know much about the book other than that on first appearances it looks like a worthwhile read. I’ll update you when I get my copy and start in.
Order yours and we can be like Opra’s book club… except that I am white and don’t have a problem with Zebra cakes.
Update: Okay, who’s not a writer? Ben isn’t. The writer of The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close is none other than Kim “Howard” Johnson. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s one of the co-writers of Truth in Comedy, the seminal book on longform improv which he co-wrote/edited with Charna Halpern and Del. In other words, the dude knows what he’s talking about.
I got the book today and so far it’s pretty good. I’m a little mystified by mentions of Del Sr. and Del Jr. and which one Kim is talking about from moment to moment, but hopefully that will end once we get past “Young Del” year, otherwise known as the “Pickle” years. Buy the book yo.