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.
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.
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.
I know this may seem a little cockeyed, posting a quick review of a Tuesday show after a show I saw the following Sunday, but I got bogged down with procrastinating and just couldn’t get my proverbial shit together.
This last Tuesday at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater, premiered the new Harold Night schedule, featuring returning, revised, and new teams. New players have been added to the line ups, aside from Kill your Darlings, which is still remains the original cast. The most notable change, to my mind, is the departure and re-formation of the Mailer-Daemon team as fwänd.Read on…
Sorry for not getting this out earlier, but I didn’t see the announcement on the UCB:NY website until Sunday afternoon, and just managed to get tickets myself. Hopefully this will reach folks before the show, if not, I’ll be sure to have a review of the show for those of yall who missed it. Sorry about that.
When I see a Harold (long form improv), part of me just sits back and enjoys the action with a cold PBR in hand, but the other half studies each scene, trying to discover what works, and what doesn’t. I try to keep track of highlights, and write down, in a notebook, a quick review of the troupe’s performance. These notes not only help me remember a performance months later, but also allow me to put together a good overview of who’s who in the New York improv scene. The purpose of this list isn’t to create a good aor bad list of groups, but rather to serve as a teaching tool for myself.
So, how do I look at Harolds? Here’s a constantly evolving list of a few things. Read on…
