Harold teams are groups of improvisers, setup by the Impatient Theatre Co., that perform the company’s signature improv form, the Harold. The Harold is a longform improv format developed by Del Close and Charna Halpern at the iO Theater in Chicago.

We like to think of our Harold teams as the equivalent to indie garage rock bands; they work hard to produce some of the most cutting edge improv being seen and performed in the country.

Harold teams are made up of students and graduates of the Impatient Theatre Co. and sometimes people who have also studied longform, Harold-based improv at the iO Theater in Chicago or Los Angeles or with one of the many theatres in New York City that teaches the form, such as the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre or the Magnet Theatre or The People's Improv Theatre.

Impatient Theatre Co. teams are coached by qualified players, provided with rehearsal time and are given stage time and shows in order to perform and demonstrate the skills they have been taught in our classes.

In Toronto, the Impatient Theatre Co. is the only improv training centre that teaches Harold will the full diligence that the form requires. It is our specialty. It is what we know.

Harold is the most widely performed improv format in Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles. Harold has spawned numerous other longform shows. A number of these forms are taught at the Impatient Theatre Co.

While we teach a cetrain structured form of the Harold at the ITC, we also teach our students how to abandon the structure and let Harold form organically from the suggestion given at the top of each show. For example, if the suggestion is “palindrome,” the Harold that the team performs might itself resemble the structure of a palindrome, ending in a very similar manner to which it began.

If you want to learn how to understand and perform Harold, and eventually end up on an ITC Harold team, your best option is to take classes with the Impatient Theatre Co.

Our Approach to the Harold

Chicago. 1996. Jeanny’s Chinese Restaurant.

Del Close explains in an interview how he had a vision for Harold to be organic, with the structure stemming from the suggestion, rather than just a mere form or structure underlying it. He can say it better than I can:

“It’s the order that is imposed on it — nay, not imposed, discovered within it. There is no art without order. There is no art without structure. Art is not the moment of free expression — anybody can do that. That’s just masturbation and free association and therapeutic purging. There’s no art in that. Where the art comes in is in the control, in taking this material that could spew off in any direction and imposing on it, or discovering within it or revealing, the inner order of this seemingly random, disordered, or unordered behavior. I remember trying to get people to improvise something in a checkerboard pattern, and they’re like ‘What the fuck do you mean?’ It was clear to me. I think I could have done a light scene and then a dark scene and then an oblique scene that was neither light nor dark, but they were still hung up on some other level.”

Del Close in The Art of Madness (Langer, Adam), University of Chicago Press, p. 197

The iO Theater in Chicago, formerly known as ImprovOlympic, is where the Harold was brought to the forefront of modern improvisation, and Del Close was the artistic leader of this movement. Del had created the Harold in the late 1960s — though he has been quoted as saying he “saw it into being” — at the Committee Workshop in San Francisco and continued his work with Charna Halpern at iO. In 1994, Truth In Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation, a book on Harold and longform improv, was penned by Kim Johnson, with Charna and Del. Many improvisers believe Harold ought to closely resemble what you read in Truth In Comedy. Our approach very closely represents what Del spoke about in that Chinese diner.

Harold is more than just a format, a structure, it is a philosophical approach to performing improvisation that is rooted in the gestalt, the group mind, and the ability for improvisational theatre and art, above and beyond a mere show, to say and mean something. The approach is thematic, rather than narrative, because without theme we are saying nothing. The basic Harold framework is a great instrument that teaches many of the underlying concepts of longform improv that, without proper scenic preparation for the concepts, are rendered flat and pedestrian.

It is hazardous to go into Harold thinking it is merely a form to be learned, and that it can be done so easily. Thinking you can come out of the other end okay — that, if you tie things together and make connections between characters — you have done your job as a Harold player. This kind of approach is treating Harold as nothing more than a form, a structure, a long version of a theatre or comedy game, which it is far from actually being, or was ever meant to be.

Every element, from scene initiations to types and styles of edits, must be taught and practiced with an eye towards performing Harold, and longform improv in general, with consideration for what the ultimate goal is. It is a mistake to think that just because you have been improvising for a number of years in one style, does not mean that that style will translate into great Harold or longform performance. Scenework must be taught/retaught, practiced and performed with a focus on character development and relationship building so that we have a clear understanding of who each character is, what their deal is.

Here at the ITC, you have to take four classes of scenework before you even start learning Harold. IMPROV 101 focuses on scenework that emphasizes developing character and building relationships in the two-person scene. IMPROV 201 focuses on a scenic technique called "the game of the scene" that is a formative approach to scenework, character and relationship that better feeds a longform show than the narrative approach to scenework that has historically been the predominant approach to improv in Toronto. IMPROV 202 further examines the game of the scene and uses advanced techniques to make two-person scenes strong and interesting. In IMPROV 301, you learn the inner workings of large group scenes and ensemble games.

In IMPROV 401 you learn the foundation of Harold and the basic framework, with a heavy focus on organic openings, organic group games, and the development and understanding of the group mind. IMPROV 501 and 601 open up the Harold to become more organic and shaped by the suggestion, as I will explain below.

Through the years they just hit it, then Del and I decided “Ok, that’s the training wheels Harold. Now we can get it to the point where we don’t worry about the form anymore.” We know that now we do a bunch of different scenes. They can take place at different times. It doesn’t have to be in order. You can intersperes it with other games. You get it to be different levels of meaning. It was like free-falling now. It wasn’t 1, 2, 3, scene, 1, 2, 3, game, 1, 2, 3.

Charna Halpern, Improv Interviews

The style of Harold outlined in Truth In Comedy is commonly referred to as a the “training wheels Harold”, even at the theatre where the form was developed. In 2006, Charna Halpern authored a new book, Art by Committee: A Guide to Advanced Improvisation, in which she writes about how much the Harold has changed since Truth In Comedy was released. The first chapter of the book is called “The New Harold.”

Once we have a solid understanding of the concepts that the basic framework teaches — the deconstruction of the suggestion, character development, heightening the game, time dashes, group games, connections — we can begin to move into a world of organic exploration. As Del said: “imposing on it, or discovering within it or revealing, the inner order of this seemingly random, disordered, or unordered behavior.” This can only be done through the organic development of the group mind.

We refer to a non-organic Harold as static. You can see the parts, you can discern which scene was the 2A scene, what the name of the first and second group games are called. It is clear to the players and it is clear to the audience. An organic approach looks to derive everything in the Harold from the suggestion and the opening deconstruction of that suggestion. If a Harold team gets the suggestion of “palindrome,” we might see a set that, halfway through, starts to revers itself and ends in the exact same way in which it began.

An example: On Monday, April 23, 2007, Big In Japan received the suggestion of “anarchy.” They did an incredibly chaotic opening in which the fourth wall was broken, a table card holder was broken, and seemingly random, chaotic actions took over the group mind. The opening ended with one player stating “I’m done with this opening” and walking off stage. All the scenes were choppy, constantly interrupted by other players and hilarious. No one judged any moves.

A group game ended by the same player yelling “I’m done with this game.” No one felt that what was happening wasn’t exactly what was supposed to be happening at that time. A plastic plant was tagged out by another player who just became the plant. At one point a player went to the booth and pulled the lights down and said “Let’s do a Bat,” and they did a horribly chaotic sound scape and two really short scenes in complete darkness. At another time, they closed the curtains and did a scene in pantomime just for themselves. Everyone wanted to see what was going on behind the curtain but no one but the team could. An audience member was brought on stage and forced to sit quitely while the group performed; he loved it.

At the end, that same player yelled out “I’m done with this set” and walked off stage and the other players joined him, leaving the stage empty, lights up. The audience applauded and some gave a standing ovation. It was an amazing set in which the Harold was shaped completely by the suggestion and the team's organic, whole-group deconstruction of that suggestion. A former Chicago improviser in the audience said the set reminded them of long-running iO Chicago house team Deep Schwa. It is an honourable comparison.

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“I was a part of the Big In Japan set that night. To me, that was the first time I’ve performed the Harold what I believe to be ‘right.’ I’ve done numerous shows where we’ve followed the framework, and every element was present, but the Anarchy show had the spirit of Harold in it.”

— Sean Tabares

This is the position from which the Impatient Theatre Co. approaches the work, not from a prescribed structure written in a book that even the original author and leading artistic figurehead of this style of improv acknowledges as outdated.

Our knowledge and experience in this area of improv, and this rather modern approach to Harold is our calling card, our specialty. Our focus on organic creation and having the suggestion shape the order that is “discovered within it,” is the direction in which we strive to take the work, our chosen art form, built on the back of the body of work that Del Close committed his life to, peppered with influence by modern thinkers on improv such as Mick Napier and the Annoyance Thatre in Chicago and Todd Stashwick and the Hothouse STC in Los Angeles.