The story behind Del Close’s bequeathing his skull to iO Chicago, to be used in theatrical productions, has always been the subject controversy. The New Yorker has finally unconverted the truth behind Del Close’s skull at the Improv Olympic.
She [Charna Halpern] now pleads guilty” with an explanation. “After Del died, I asked the hospital people if they would help me by taking off the head, and they just laughed,” she said recently. “They suggested I call the Illinois Society of Pathologists. I told the pathologists, “I will give you Del’s body, and it’s a great body, because you can study the effects of smoking, alcohol, cocaine, and heroin on the brain. All I need is the skull.’ They thought about it, and then said, “There’s a fine line between research and art, and we’re concerned about our funding.’ I called labs, researchers, anatomy shops, and it was “No, no, no.’ ”
While it saddens me to know that I shall never be able to manhandle Del’s noggin, I have to say, that I think Charna’s attempt to give Del what he wanted was ambitious. I certainly wouldn’t know who to approach for the skull of a loved one and god knows I couldn’t cut a straight line with a handsaw.
25 Years of Improv Comedy
:2 stars:
2006
90 minutes
Filmed at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of iO (formerly the Improve Olympic), this movie basically tries to document the evenings shenanigans.
While I appreciate the idea of this documentary, the actual film making is really lacking. Not only do the improvisors have to hold a microphone if they want to be heard, destroying any illusion of character, but the cabled mics get wrapped around improvisors legs and makes for bad scene-work. The 90 minute running time means that almost every improv scene got edited for time and basically defeated the point of Long-form improvisation.
Unfortunately this disc is a very bad representation of iO’s excellent talent. I would suggest instead of renting this film, to check out the iO to Go podcast instead as you will get a far better overview of their work.
Highlights: Tim Meadows playing a spelling bee contestant and the UCB4 creating mischief.
The Bastion has an interesting article with Charna Halpern, the co-creator of the Harold and founder of i.O. Chicago. She goes into some detail about why Chicago is the best place for improv (sputter, cough, cough). And makes lots of refferences to her new book Art by Committee. I just finished it and will be sure to write a review of shortly, but until then, why not read up on Charna.
Many advanced people would come to I.O. from Second City and think that agreement meant they had to say YES to everything. They didn’t understand that agreement was between the actors — not the characters. Whenever I would explain away the confusion, they were always amazed and relieved because they were continually sacrificing their integrity on stage. I thought it would be a good idea to expound on some of these ideas and help to strengthen the concepts we built long ago regarding team work.
I wonder how Charna got her name?