The Raw Harold (Explosion)
.
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.