Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation (3 page)

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Giving up control may be disastrous for a stand-up comic, but an improviser has to put his
trust into the hands of the ensemble, and be prepared for those inevitable, frightening mystery
laughs —
no matter how embarrassing they may be. As Steve Martin says, "Comedy is not
pretty." Just let it happen.

When an improviser lets go and trusts his fellow performers, it's a wonderful, liberating
experience that stems from group support.

A truly funny scene is not the result of someone trying to steal laughs at the expense of his
partner, but of generosity —
of trying to make the other person (and his ideas) look as good as
possible.

Real humor does not come from sacrificing the reality of a moment in order to crack a
cheap joke, but in finding the joke in the reality of the moment.

Simply put, in comedy, honesty is the best policy.

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

Following the rules of a game and remaining true to a premise generally results in much
bigger laughs than inventing witty statements.

When Del was directing a Second City company in Toronto that included Dan Ackroyd,
Dave Thomas, and Gilda Radner, they began playing an improv game called "Happily

Ever After." The premise is a simple one: an improv group presents a popular fairy tale,
beginning with the moment the tale traditionally ends ("They lived happily ever after.").

This company picked "Hansel and Gretel," beginning just after the children push the
Wicked Witch into the oven. A simple premise to go on. The performers were wise enough to
use the characters and situations that were established in the original fairy tale, rather than
invent new ones in hopes of laughs. They were savvy enough to trust that there was enough
material in the real "Hansel and Gretel" to make their follow-
up highly entertaining —
and
they were right.

As the narrator, Dan Ackroyd picked up on the rather grisly ending of the story and
merely extrapolated from the situation. The story presented by the company began with people
—
including a number of woodcutters —
disappearing from the Black Forest, never to be
heard from again. A search party eventually discovered two cannibal children —
Hansel and
Gretel (Dave Thomas and Gilda Radner) —
in the woods. As explained by Ackroyd, after the
children had pushed the Witch in the oven, they ate her. Subsequently, they acquired a taste for
human flesh, and the two young cannibals began preying on victims in the woods. The children
were then put on trial in Germany during World War II, and the company staged a parody of
the Nuremberg War Trials.

Even though the scene took some very peculiar twists, it was all rooted in the premise put
forth in the original fairy tale, instead of inventing situations and lines for cheap jokes.
Ackroyd simply hypothesized —
from the original ending of pushing the Witch in the oven —
that the children then decided to taste her. Everything else in the scene stems directly from
there!

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HAROLD WHO?

If honesty is the best road to comedic improvisation, the best vehicle to get us there is
Harold.

Simply put, it is the ultimate in improvisation.

The Harold is like the space shuttle, incorporating all of the developments and discoveries
that have gone before it into one new, superior design.

All of the discoveries made about creating scenes, all of the games that have been
developed, all of the principles regarding truth in comedy, can become part of the cohesive,
unified whole that is the Harold.

Skilled Harold players take all of these disparate ingredients and build something much
greater than the sum of its parts.

Uninitiated audiences watching a Harold for the first time seldom know what to expect.
What they see is a full company of improvisers on stage who do nothing
but
improvise from
start to finish, something quite rare in the world of comedy.

The first rule in Harold is that there are no rules. Still, a basic Harold usually takes on a
general structure described as follows.

Harold begins with a group of players —
six or seven is usually ideal (although successful
Harolds have been performed with fewer than five persons and as many as 10 or 12). When the
group steps onto the stage, they may want to check out the performing space, looking for
aspects of it that can be incorporated into the Harold. The team solicits a suggestion for a
theme from the audience, and begins a warm-up game to share their ideas and attitudes about
the theme. The warm-
up can be very physical, or it can be as simple as a game of word
association.

Eventually, a couple
of players usually start a scene. Normally, it's unrelated to the theme,
although it can be inspired by elements of the warm-up game. Once the scene is established, it
will be cut off by a second scene, one which has as little to do with the first scene as it has to do
with the theme. After a third scene is similarly presented, the ensemble will then participate in
what is generally referred to as a "game” although the event may bear little resemblance to the
audience's notion of a game.

The initial three scenes usually return again. This time, they may have some bearing on
the theme. Or, maybe not. After a second group game, the scenes return for one last time, often
tying into each other and the theme, culminating in a finale that incorporates the theme
and as
many elements from the scenes and games as possible.

It may sound complicated to the uninitiated, but its structure is similar to a three-act play.
When it's performed by a group of trained improvisers, the results can be spectacular.

To put it another way, a Harold is a
lot like sex. When it is good, it's very good. When it is
bad, it's still pretty good.

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Del tells about seeing Jim Belushi run off stage after a particularly inspired

improvisation, shouting, "This is better than sex!" In fact, anyone who has participated in a
really good Harold knows the indescribable rush that accompanies it.

Earlier Harolds were not as refined as they became during the
ImprovOlympia, though
they were still very useful, says Tim
Kazurinski, who studied with Del at Second City in the
late
1970s.

"When we did the Harold back then, we'd take an audience suggestion and line up against
the back wall. Alternately, we would begin coming forward in groups of two, starting
scenes
that really weren't going anywhere yet. Another couple Would cut you off or you would fade to
the back wall when you were tiring. You would keep this up for 15 or 20 minutes, until •11
these little vignettes began to tie up or interweave," explains Kazurinski.

"What seemed like a dopey little scenario early in the piece now started to take shape, as
other people started joining that scene, and it became a recurring scene or 'runner.' When was
really humming, they would all mesh, and make a statement
that was more of a tableau.
Everything that you had up to that point was synthesized in that final scene or
conglomeration
of scenes. What had washed over the audience was a really fascinating 20-
or 30-scene barrage
about this topic, more than you ever knew —
or possibly wanted to know
—
about the selected
topic.

"When it works, it's an amazing thing. And when it doesn't, the audience thinks you're
insane," he laughs. "But something good always comes from it. Even if we missed the mark,
there were usually enough interesting events happening to make people
think about that topic."

Saturday Night Live's
Chris Farley, an ImprovOlympic alumnus, loves the

unpredictability of the Harold.

"Anything can happen," says Farley. "It is something that is created slowly, out of the
moment. It's spontaneous and magic."

Another of Del's illustrious alumni is George Wendt of Cheers
fame, who Del directed at
Second City. Wendt agrees the Harold is terrific, both for performance and for developing new
comedic material.

"We never did quite enough Harolds at Second City," remarks Wendt. "I always felt that
when done correctly, the Harold is the most magical, wonderful improvisational experience
you can have, both for the audience and for the company. Very satisfying. But even if it wasn't
entirely clicking as a performance piece, it was invaluable. I thought it was the best way to
create material.

"To me, taking a theme and working on your feet —
without discussions, qualifications,
setups, blackouts, and the like —
is a much purer and easier way to find kernels of scenes that
could be expanded and written," explains Wendt.

"The exact opposite would be the Second City approach, which is to take a bunch of
suggestions and write them on a piece of paper, stand backstage in the Green Room, and stare
at a blackboard with a bunch of suggestions on it —
basically stare at words. I got nothing from
that. Second City was a constant struggle for me in terms of it being fun to improvise,
and in
terms of creating material."

In contrast, he describes the Harold as a completely emancipating experience.

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"Harold is like jumping out of an airplane! It's like being thrown into the water —
you've
got to sink or swim," exclaims Wendt. "The very intensity of the pressure to create is
liberating.

According to Wendt, a good Harold is not only fun for the performers and their audience,
it's also a great way to come up with ideas for future material.

"It's a wonderful thing in and of itself, and as a means to an end —
creating material —
it's
equally wonderful. If you do a half-hour Harold, and you don't
come out of that thing with at
least a blackout, you've had a pretty lame night," says Wendt. "Conversely, if you do a
half-hour Harold and you come out of it with a killer blackout, it's been well worth it!"

Like so many successful performers, George Wendt values his Harold training. These
skills, which have proven so useful to others, are presented in these pages. This book is
designed to provide training which, when practiced with like-
minded souls, will let you "see
Harold."

KEY POINTS FOR CHAPTER ONE
*Be honest.

*Don't go for the jokes.

*There's nothing funnier than the truth.

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CHAPTER TWO

But Seriously, Folks ...

One of the biggest mistakes an improviser can make is attempting to be funny.

In fact, if an audience senses that any performer is deliberately trying to be funny, that
performer may have made his task more difficult (this isn't always the case for an established
comedian playing before a sympathetic crowd —
comics like Jack Benny and Red Skelton
were notorious for breaking up during their sketches, and their audiences didn't seem to mind it
a bit. A novice performer isn't usually as lucky, unless he's managed to win the crowd over to
his side).

When an actor gives the unspoken message "Watch this, folks, it's really going to be
funny," the audience often reads this as "This is going to be so funny, I'm going to make you
laugh whether you want to or not." Human nature being what it is, many audience members
respond to this challenge with "Oh, yeah? Just go ahead and try, because I'm not laughing," to
the performer's horror.

A much easier approach for improvisers is to be sincere and honest, drawing the audience
into the scene rather than reaching out and trying to pull them along.

Improvisers can be relaxed and natural, knowing that if they are sincere, the audience will
be more receptive to them. Audience members laugh at things they can relate to, but they
cannot empathize if the performers are insincere.