Pretty intersting discussion going on here.

[Roy Janik]

i would say that harold is by definition not open to variation. if you're doing anything that isn't three scenes, three times, it's something else, right?

I'd say that's not true, necessarily. I've drowned myself in improv interviews, podcasts and articles over the past year, and opinions differ greatly, from the "Everything is a Harold" school of thought to the "if you're not doing an organic opening, you're not doing a Harold" line of reasoning.

[arthursimone]

i would say that harold is by definition not open to variation.

I'm always amazed at the amount of debate that comes out of "ok, we're doing a Harold, what kind of opening should we have?"

I think that's where the variation exists, the energy and mindset of the opening and group games. Opening with word association or monologues or something like the invocation create very distinct, very different expectations in the audience and players to explore.

[ratliff]

Joe Bill: "Del said a Harold is anything over twenty minutes."

One of the greatest things about the Harold is that it was invented (or not) by a deranged, irascible, alcoholic pagan who never told the truth the same way twice, so there's no reliable authority to appeal to. Tom Booker is teaching us the version of the Harold that he learned from Del right after it was first developed, but people who came along later learned something completely different, and they too learned that directly from Del.

I also think that it's just as much a matter of sensibilty as format. A gaggy, unrealistic, crudely played Harold that follows the form exactly is probably less representative of what Del was shooting for than a thoughtful, imaginative, surprising piece that violates all the structural rules.

I'm sticking by my definition of the Harold as an improv essay until I hear from Charna's lawyers.

[ratliff]

i would say that harold is by definition not open to variation.

I'm always amazed at the amount of debate that comes out of "ok, we're doing a Harold, what kind of opening should we have?"

Oh, yeah, Arthur, I keep meaning to mention this to you: We're trying to get Justin more comfortable with the idea of organic openings, and YOU ARE NOT HELPING.

[shando]

Joe Bill: "Del said a Harold is anything over twenty minutes."

Well, I'll just let one lie there for a while.

Cooking dinner. More thoughtful stuff in a while.

[mcnichol]

i would say that harold is by definition not open to variation. if you're doing anything that isn't three scenes, three times, it's something else, right?

My understanding is that Del and others in The Committee (circa mid 1960s, San Francisco) developed this thing called the Harold as a framework so they could teach others what they had already been doing on stage. What they had been performing was a somewhat amorphous and on-going thing, which might be somewhat different from performance to performance. In order to define what they were doing -- as a means to communicate it clearly -- they wrangled it into this basic formula that everyone now gets hung up on.

So the three beats, etc. thing is the basic framework, from which it is expected you can move past and make your own once you have the basics down. That whole "once you understand the rules/boundaries, then you can break them" thing.

This is why I think some people refer to it as a training wheels Harold. You start riding a bike with the helpers on, which keep you upright while you are figuring out pedals and steering and brakes and whatnot. Then when the training wheels are taken off, some people coast along, some get into racing, some get into BMX and jumps, maybe others do tricks and reverse wheelies and shit.

A group who I watched a lot (and was eventually coached by various members of) when I was starting out years ago was People of Earth. If you watched one of their shows after they'd been at it for a few years, it would usually be hard to point out where the opening ended, or where the second game began or ended, at what point we were in the second or third beats, etc. ...but it was a Harold. And I think what made it such was the heavy focus on theme, as well as the incorporation of the elements of that basic Harold, albeit in a sometimes jumbled, inverted, skewed way.

Joe Bill: "Del said a Harold is anything over twenty minutes."

Well, I'll just let one lie there for a while.

Cooking dinner. More thoughtful stuff in a while.

Del said a lot of things, but then Del was also someone who seemed to say things just to provoke. Also, he liked drugs alot. Please don't try to invalidate this thing because this old guy on drugs once said something that doesn't make sense.

[ratliff]

I'm with Bob. Theme (and sensibility) define the Harold far more than the structure. The structure is just a way to explore thematic connections rather than linear narrative connections.

[shando]

Joe Bill: "Del said a Harold is anything over twenty minutes."

Well, I'll just let one lie there for a while.

Cooking dinner. More thoughtful stuff in a while.

Del said a lot of things, but then Del was also someone who seemed to say things just to provoke. Also, he liked drugs alot. Please don't try to invalidate this thing because this old guy on drugs once said something that doesn't make sense.

Wha? How am I invalidating anything? I'm interested in the conversation. John purposefully inserted a provocative quote which obviously isn't true. I mean tons of people do shows over 20 minutes and they sure as hell ain't Harolds, me included. So I just shined a little flash light on the absurdity of it.

My more thoughtful stuff in a while comment was just that. Ratliff asked me a question a while back which I haven't answered. I'm not sure whence you think I'm invalidating anything?

[mcnichol]

No, no, you didn't do anything man. It's just that everytime we all discuss this stuff, it seems to become a tangential discussion and I didn't want to see it head that way because of some silly quote Del once said.

I thought, because you quoted it, that that's where you were headed with this discussion (after making dinner). My bad.

Let's not talk about one comment he once said and talk instead about an improv form.

[ratliff]

Oops, here we go.

I didn't really put that comment in to be provocative. My larger point is that the Harold evolved while Del was alive and continues to after he's dead, so trying to say definitively what it is or isn't is a chump's game.

I don't know in what spirit he made that comment, but I can think of several:

(a) "Because I have taught you improv, anything you do is probably going to be a Harold."

(b) "I am the creator and destroyer of improv, and I own everything over twenty minutes long."

(c) "If I answer the question in a way that cannot possibly leave any room for interpretation, do you promise to never ask me that again?"

(d) "Jesus, my head hurts."

It doesn't matter. What matters to me is what I do right now and what my teachers taught me, which for the sake of convenience they referred to as a Harold.

Music again!

If I teach you jazz, I can't possibly teach you some abstract objective version of jazz. I have to teach you my version, because that's the only one I really know. Same with improv. You can claim that you're teaching someone else's version, but you're really teaching (and performing) your version, Harold or no Harold. It's passed hand to hand, like Zen enlightenment, and like yoga used to be taught back in the day.

[Mo Daviau]

I have to say, I admire very much the passion and loyalty that Del and his teachings have inspired. It seems that everyone that has studied at iO under Del himself or those who learned directly from the man hold the Harold in great reverence or at least great sentimentality. At least this is the sense that I have gotten from today's messages from Messrs Ratliff and McNichol.

I saw Elliott Smith play at the Knitting Factory in '96. Whenever I hear (rarely, I must add) someone call him a whiny crybaby or whatever, I think of that beautiful soul behind a guitar and how he plunged a knife into his heart exactly four years ago, and those words break my heart. But I guess you had to be there.

Is that what it's like, gentleman, to hear the Harold being spoken of so carelessly? Or is it purely form/function/education/ignorance that's being debated here?

[shando]

Last bit on the silly quote, which in all serious I was just pointing out, because, der, not true. No further offense intended.

My larger point is that the Harold evolved while Del was alive and continues to after he's dead, so trying to say definitively what it is or isn't is a chump's game.

It's definitely not what I do. So there are some limits to how it can be defined. Or if it is what I do, you cats are doing stories, too, an assertion that always goes over like the proverbial lead dipped party favor.

I don't know in what spirit he made that comment, but I can think of several:

But you know what spirit Joe Bill made that comment to you, and elucidating that would have helped your larger point. Unless you were quoting Joe from another source, in which case you bring your own intentions to it, which seemed opaque.

Music again!

If I teach you jazz, I can't possibly teach you some abstract objective version of jazz. I have to teach you my version, because that's the only one I really know. Same with improv. You can claim that you're teaching someone else's version, but you're really teaching (and performing) your version, Harold or no Harold. It's passed hand to hand, like Zen enlightenment, and like yoga used to be taught back in the day.

But that's not how the quote operates. A musical analog of the quote would be "Every piece of music with a saxophone is jazz." Which again, der, silly.

Seriously, I linked to that thread because I found it interesting how similar that conversation had turned into this

everytime we all discuss this stuff, it seems to become a tangential discussion and I didn't want to see it head that way because of some silly quote Del once said.

in ways very much like we always seem to do. With the addition of some points made by other people (again see Jill Bernard's posts and a couple others) that I hadn't seen before. But somehow, doodely doodely doo, here we are back to usual flapdoodle just like them chumps over on Yes And getting mad at a digestive condition.

OK, well not anymore because we're not talking about that dingy quote anymore *right*?! right*!? and will focus on serious things. Namely the question that John raised about an urge to break the rules in narrative shows and how that might operate. Which is a sweet question. Or other things related to Harold or Del or whatever.

Which, by the way, I still have that Believer article about Del which I talked about a while back if you'd like to read it. In the end it proved to be pretty sweet when talking about Del and not so sweet when the dude talked about the process that lead to the crafting of the article. Still, an ok read for improv nerds like all of us. It even influenced the LSD show Shana and I did a while back if any of you guys saw that.

Onward and upward.

[shando]

I have to say, I admire very much the passion and loyalty that Del and his teachings have inspired. It seems that everyone that has studied at iO under Del himself or those who learned directly from the man hold the Harold in great reverence or at least great sentimentality. At least this is the sense that I have gotten from today's messages from Messrs Ratliff and McNichol.

Although that dude Stomach Ache who started the hullabaloo over on Yes And once studied with Del apparently if you can read through all the posts. He is Julian the Apostate.

Also, Mo, welcome to the boys shouting (sometimes) club. Glad to see you setting a challenge for yourself.

[shando]

My understanding is that Del and others in The Committee (circa mid 1960s, San Francisco) developed this thing called the Harold as a framework so they could teach others what they had already been doing on stage. What they had been performing was a somewhat amorphous and on-going thing, which might be somewhat different from performance to performance. In order to define what they were doing -- as a means to communicate it clearly -- they wrangled it into this basic formula that everyone now gets hung up on.

You guys know Latifah from ACoT was one of the "others in The Committee" Bob's talking about here, right? Right, OK, just checking.

[ratliff]

I have to say, I admire very much the passion and loyalty that Del and his teachings have inspired. It seems that everyone that has studied at iO under Del himself or those who learned directly from the man hold the Harold in great reverence or at least great sentimentality. At least this is the sense that I have gotten from today's messages from Messrs Ratliff and McNichol.

I saw Elliott Smith play at the Knitting Factory in '96. Whenever I hear (rarely, I must add) someone call him a whiny crybaby or whatever, I think of that beautiful soul behind a guitar and how he plunged a knife into his heart exactly four years ago, and those words break my heart. But I guess you had to be there.

Is that what it's like, gentleman, to hear the Harold being spoken of so carelessly? Or is it purely form/function/education/ignorance that's being debated here?

Joe Bill didn't say that to me; he said it to Bill Stern. I included because I think it's hilarious (possibly intentionally) in its vagueness, and to demonstrate the pointlessness of appealing to a higher authority when defining the Harold, since there is no higher authority than its creator, who is no help whatsoever. Then I explained that's what I was doing. Now I am explaining it again.

I don't hold the Harold in reverence. I hold my experience of being taught the Harold in reverence. When that many brilliant and inspiring teachers with completely different playing and teaching styles line up in a row from Austin to Chicago and back again and tell me that the reason they're all there is the Harold, I pay attention.

I think I would have had an equally awesome experience if those teachers had been teaching me narrative or standup. But they weren't. They were teaching me the Harold, and they all cared a lot about it, and it came through in their teaching.

I don't mind anyone not liking the Harold, or thinking Del Close was a pretentious asshole, or whatever. Let a million flowers bloom.

But I'm now officially tired of defending it or defining it or arguing about it with people who don't care about it and/or have no interest in performing it. I'm not trying to be a jerk; it's just not a good use of my time. It's not like anything's going to be resolved, and at this point I find it hard to believe that anyone's going to learn anything.

The Harold, like improv, is experiential: you figure out what it is by doing it, not by talking about it. It's about a style of play more than any structure, and I've been fortunate enough to see it done well, so I have an idea -- not the idea, but my idea -- of what it is, even if I can't explain it fully. I like it and I want to do it well.

I have found the kind of improv I want to do and am doing it. To return to the original point of this thread, if Stomach Ache doesn't like that, it's his problem. I have made it my problem for the last 12 hours. I now return it to its rightful owner.