Austin Improv

I have seen w/ interest the clip of Del Close dicussing the origin of Harold posted by'jose'. As I was a member of the Committee at the time {1967] Iwould like to give another perspective on the early days of Harold,and it's invention First,bless his heart and all,at the time I knew,helped carry,and gave money to Del Close, he was a raving methedrine addict. He had practically nothing to do w/ the creation of Harold and often was a harsh critic of the entire idea. [Did I mention methedrine] Usually he would show up in various states of disarray, hold forth pompously on what would reveal itself as utter nonsense and then disappear[maybe into your apartment if you weren't carefull!!] I'm sure his vision must have coalesced [sp] into something more intelligible in later yrs or this reverence for him would make no sense at all. He was at no time ever nofucking way the Director of the Committee. In fact we became skillful at keeping his crazy ass off stage so he wouldn't barge in and fuck everbody up no end. Not To say He didn't have some brilliant ideas.and he was likable in sort of a freaky way. I can say that Harold was not meant to be a performance piece, and never, never a vehicle for imposed comedy. I could go on and on and probably will,but enough for now mpm

This is awesome, thank you Michael. I'd love to hear more whenever you have the time/inclination.

Holy cow. This is fascinating. I'm all eyes for this thread!

I did not mean to trash Del in my last post,he was a fiend of mine,and I certainly thought he was a genius,of what Iwas not real certain. Please note that these events took place in a time and place very,very different than the present,[ the fact that this work exists at all in Texas is astounding.] Del is only prtly right when he says the purpose of Harold was to get as many people improviising at once as possible. At the time the Committee was doing topical sketch comedy and improv was considered to be developing a scene from scratch then scripting and performing it pretty much the same way exept for the 'plug ins' [what town,what name,what place etc.] Like many artists then we felt bound and limited by resident mores and felt it all had to go down the loo.
There were also several different wacky strains of psychotherapy going around at the time and the air was positiviley bleu with the new psycho-babble which at that time actually seemed to make sense. just think of any of those old hippy maxims like free love free food down with the 'man' everybody just do your own thing money is for the pigs,and then add in a bunch of stoned wild eyed radical actors, well Harold is the bastard child of that union! and all this with no computers or cell phones.!! I shall rant of this later my children,the weight of these memories sores my feeble mind and the desire for smoke is strong in my breast, You have only to plead for more wisdom or tell me to shut me fookin' pie hole,,I am thy serpent mpm

Wow.

Aside from what Del did at IO, in what ways was the committee's work carried on?

TexasImprovMassacre wrote:Aside from what Del did at IO, in what ways was the committee's work carried on?

Yes, and in what ways was Harold never meant to be a performance piece?

I am diggin' this.

Yeah, I am deeply interested to know:
A) More about the history of the evolution of Chicago improv, and
B) what you think about the current state of the art of improvised theater.

wowowo

Michael, thanks for posting this. Your take on those days is pretty much the angle on Del and the birth of the Harold I get from when I've talked to Latifah as well. Do you guys know that you're both here in Austin? Latifah Taormina is the head of the Greater Austin Creative Alliance and the former Jessica Myerson, the former Irene Riordan and your colleague in the Committee. Did you know you were both here in Austin? Maybe you do and I'm being a dummy, but I think it's super cool that we have two of you guys living here.

I love this. Keep it coming.

Incredible. Please keep posting.

I will try to answer the questions youall have posted. why harold was not intended as a performance piece in the beginning is that it was too fookin weird and wild by it's nature to be ,in the end ,enjoyable enough to trot out to the public. Oh sure you can trot it out to the weird public but they don't have any money and they have a tendency to climb on stage an shit So while the Committee wanted to explore this and tried to introduce it into their act, the actors themselves were totally self interested. On one level the Committee gig was a pay check [we talking dat good aftra bread,babayy] it was also mostly a chance to be seen by Francis fookin ford Coppola but usually the guy fom pepsodent or revlon. these guys were not ready to risk looking stupid, Which Is The NUMBER FUCKIN ONE REQUIREMENT in a real improvisor. So we created a laboratoy and through workshops with the public and many many hour and days of thinking and talking and living this shit we had a group of folks wanting to explore the games and tie them into modern theater.Remember now this is the 60s we felt like revolutionaries of the modern stage and Harold was a religious ceremony to us . And don't forget all this is fueled by variuos herbs and lab products. WELLL.....Enter Del Close the original Space Cadet.. this was a perfect way for the"commercial" Committee to get him out of their hair and still keep the cutting edge image .We had a nice theatre A NICE theatre and total use of it free xept show nites. Like I said before I counted Del among my friends but he was super weird super wired and in all my xperience he was a shitty actor. And he would opine that we should always be ready to rescue an actor in distress "FUCK THE PIECE,SAVE THE ACTOR !" To demonstrate this he loved to like, grab the stage ladder{on wheels} roll it right into your scene or group excersise swiftly climb 3-4 steps and hurl himself off backwards expecting to be caught by whothefuckever. two broken collar bones and an arm and a shoulder and that's just him! Man people got Hurt dealing with this bozo but by our code which he taught us rigorously we couldn't just let him fall an bust his bozo ass,now could we? Shit! So,enuf ranting, it was all beautiful in it's own weird way. mpm
P.S. I don't know many people in the impov bag here and I would love to see some shows and see how it's done nowadays.If anybody could get me in to see any shows as a 'professional courtesy' I'd be much grateful!

michaelmcgeary wrote:If anybody could get me in to see any shows as a 'professional courtesy' I'd be much grateful!

Come by ColdTowne Theater anytime, introduce yourself and you get admission no problem