Life With Harold
The Upright Citizens Brigade is a school. It is a theatre, a training center, a community...and yet, it is merely the salad bar at the vast homestyle buffet of improvisational comedy that exists today.
This is a conclusion I came to this weekend during the Del Close Marathon, a weekend-long celebration of the eponymous improv guru Del Close, and his teachings...most prominently the Harold.
What is the Harold, exactly? It is what the UCB teachers impart on their students. It's the style of Chicago longform improvisation developed by Close and Charna Halpern at ImprovOlympic and, to a lesser extent, Second City. By Level 3, you learn how to do a full Harold, and, in Level 4, you refine it. There's a common perspective shared by UCB students that after Level 2/3/4, everything gets much easier. Then again, everyone has different teachers at different Levels, and different people in different classes. For me, with every subsequent class, there has been another seemingly insurmountable hurdle to overcome. To quote the great Gilda Radner, it's always something.
For the most part, I spent the weekend packed in a dirty, crowded Chelsea basement with many sweaty underground comedy fans - predominantly white heterosexual men - who hadn't showered all weekend, with no air conditioning, so the vibe I got from the marathon was, "The white guys...so many white guys..."
I mean, that's what comedy is: A fraternity? Maybe this is some Dubya-style fuzzy logic creeping in (darn ultra-liberals have gotten to me this weekend), or some good old-fashioned physics, but, to the best of my understanding, if improv is the fraternity, than musical theatre has to be the sorority, as far as the creative arts are concerned.
Growing up in Kansas, there were too many ingenues. And, to me, one of the big inherent turn-offs of musical theatre is the constant categorization. In the worst cases, you're almost stripped of your individuality and pulled right into the chorus: Then you work your way up to a lead, and thus involuntarily forced to decide whether you are an ingenue or a character woman. "Ingenue" meaning "pretty blonde girl in a pink flowered dress," "Character" meaning "fat ethnic." Once I dropped the extra weight (Thank you, Fat Flush and Jenny Craig!), things just got even harder.
This does not apply to comedy. In comedy, there are people - all types, shapes and sizes, from literally all walks of life - who have "it," and people who don't. I have not yet really answered the core question of whether you can learn to actually be funny or not: It's all in the eye of the beholder, and, if it wasn't, the UCB wouldn't be making any money. You can defy type in improv, and the scene and circumstance guides you into becoming whoever or whatever it needs to be. Too often, some white male fratboy who was very popular, somewhere else or in his own mind, will feel this need to constantly make himself the center of attention and basically shoot the Group Mind to Hell.
The Group Mind is another key component of both the Harold and improv in general. It is exactly what it sounds like, and, if you've got some jackass who won't stop putting penis jokes or some bad Paul Lynde impression into the mix, you have to go with it. This is always completely unpredictable, and, in the best improvs, you're flying without a net.
If you're incredibly lucky, improv can become a career. You can make money teaching, coaching, and being gainfully employed in theatre, film, television, or the Internet, but, that rarely happens - least of all to women. It is a nice structure: You train, go through all the levels, and we are made to believe from our teachers that coming out of it builds this amazing confidence and overwhelming clarity that enables you to give near-perfect advice. In retrospect, it seems to make sense; it sounds like upward mobility.
The thing about upward mobility is that it doesn't exist in the creative arts. Coming from a family of Ivy League doctors and lawyers, they seem to believe that the Ideal Career involves moving up. As a doctor, you graduate college, go to medical school, do a residency, and get assigned to your future. Of course, fate throws a wrench into your life, one convention leads to another, which leads to a conversation with an associate who finds out that you're unemployed and need hospital placement, and somehow you find yourself raising a conservative Jewish family right in the middle of Kansas. It's the same thing with law school...you go in for three years, apply for jobs, take the BAR, work for a firm or in the government...and maybe feel compelled to give it up some years down the road, when you have kids and decide to raise a family instead.
At this point, the best thing I can do is keep dreaming and feeling inspired by those performers and writers who can give good advice and just take what they've learned from the Harold, in order to boldly go out into the mainstream and keep doing my own thing. I know it sounds a little corny, but there are some incredibly talented improvisers and groups I got to see this weekend that helped answer a lot of confusion I had just by setting an example.
First up: Baby Wants Candy, probably the best musical improv group out there - or at least the vanguard example for what our still-untitled musical improv practice group aims to accomplish. What BWC does is improvise a Harold-style musical, except they break down the conventional 1st, 2nd, 3rd, et al beats into musical theater terminology. The fact that one of their alumni is going straight from the group to an actual Broadway musical speaks volumes!
The group, led by the inflexibly awesome and rubber-faced Peter Gwinn, who takes the suggestion of a funny title of a musical from the audience, in this case, "George Bush: A User's Manual" (see what I mean about ultra-liberal?) and the resultant songs essentially tell a story that manifests itself through the scene and character work that happens through this initiation. The fact that BWC has a house band, the Yes Band, backing them up, instead of an upright piano, is a huge advantage in and of itself. I'm a huge rock geek, and I tend to look out and see if they're using dual pickups, or what kinds of guitars the guys are playing, or if the bass player uses a pick or his fingers, or if they've got foot pedals connected to the amps.
But I digress...it was much different seeing these guys for the second time, because, around the first time I saw them at the UCB theatre, I was only thinking about taking a musical improv class for shits 'n giggles, knowing I was really scared to death about singing in public for all my improv buddies. Cut to some months later: This changed all that. Now, I was able to watch it with an understanding of what goes into a longform musical. They sort of had a structure, given the patter song, the big opening number, the medley, the big chase scene...And they sure took that one and ran; at one point, Gwinn, as Dubya, ducked behind the piano, played a riff, peeked out from under the bench, and went, "That was me!"
Of course, this was on a Thursday, and we just walked over to the Abingdon to catch the show after musical improv practice. The inarguable highlight of the marathon, for me, was hanging out with Jeff Hiller and John Flynn. I think I spent about an hour talking to them about Gypsy, because no one else would get my June Havoc references.
I've never met Flynn before, so I just blurted out, "I'm such a huge fan of yours!" I think I scared him a bit with that. I told him I loved Dances with Pitchforks, and that he shouldn't worry, because our non-Equity Farmboy #5 went on to do great things, too.
I saw I Eat Pandas (sans friends), and those bitches were on fire! I'm still reeling from how simple it seemed, and, yet, how amazing their musical improv skills were. Considering that BWC had an entire set, while the Pandas got a marathon-mandated half-hour to show their stuff.
What they did was improvise a longform musical based on a single suggestion, as opposed to a title. The suggestion, "cupcake," had the ladies, mmes. Glennis and Eliza, and their gifted male accompanist Travis, doing a series of two-person scenes revolving around the simple story of a girl in love with a guy. The songs mostly erred toward "I Want" songs, and "Philosopy" songs, like one about how cracking an egg and adding flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda makes a cupcake - and that is a metaphor for love.
You know what the Pandas should do? A Back Line. Call me crazy, but I really feel like there should be an improv version of A Chorus Line. Have it take place at Harold Team auditions, with various improvisers doing "I Want" songs about how they got into improv, or why they started taking it in the first place. Mine would probably be "I Can Do that." Maybe "Nothing." And I reached right down to the bottom of my soul...
This is a conclusion I came to this weekend during the Del Close Marathon, a weekend-long celebration of the eponymous improv guru Del Close, and his teachings...most prominently the Harold.
What is the Harold, exactly? It is what the UCB teachers impart on their students. It's the style of Chicago longform improvisation developed by Close and Charna Halpern at ImprovOlympic and, to a lesser extent, Second City. By Level 3, you learn how to do a full Harold, and, in Level 4, you refine it. There's a common perspective shared by UCB students that after Level 2/3/4, everything gets much easier. Then again, everyone has different teachers at different Levels, and different people in different classes. For me, with every subsequent class, there has been another seemingly insurmountable hurdle to overcome. To quote the great Gilda Radner, it's always something.
For the most part, I spent the weekend packed in a dirty, crowded Chelsea basement with many sweaty underground comedy fans - predominantly white heterosexual men - who hadn't showered all weekend, with no air conditioning, so the vibe I got from the marathon was, "The white guys...so many white guys..."
I mean, that's what comedy is: A fraternity? Maybe this is some Dubya-style fuzzy logic creeping in (darn ultra-liberals have gotten to me this weekend), or some good old-fashioned physics, but, to the best of my understanding, if improv is the fraternity, than musical theatre has to be the sorority, as far as the creative arts are concerned.
Growing up in Kansas, there were too many ingenues. And, to me, one of the big inherent turn-offs of musical theatre is the constant categorization. In the worst cases, you're almost stripped of your individuality and pulled right into the chorus: Then you work your way up to a lead, and thus involuntarily forced to decide whether you are an ingenue or a character woman. "Ingenue" meaning "pretty blonde girl in a pink flowered dress," "Character" meaning "fat ethnic." Once I dropped the extra weight (Thank you, Fat Flush and Jenny Craig!), things just got even harder.
This does not apply to comedy. In comedy, there are people - all types, shapes and sizes, from literally all walks of life - who have "it," and people who don't. I have not yet really answered the core question of whether you can learn to actually be funny or not: It's all in the eye of the beholder, and, if it wasn't, the UCB wouldn't be making any money. You can defy type in improv, and the scene and circumstance guides you into becoming whoever or whatever it needs to be. Too often, some white male fratboy who was very popular, somewhere else or in his own mind, will feel this need to constantly make himself the center of attention and basically shoot the Group Mind to Hell.
The Group Mind is another key component of both the Harold and improv in general. It is exactly what it sounds like, and, if you've got some jackass who won't stop putting penis jokes or some bad Paul Lynde impression into the mix, you have to go with it. This is always completely unpredictable, and, in the best improvs, you're flying without a net.
If you're incredibly lucky, improv can become a career. You can make money teaching, coaching, and being gainfully employed in theatre, film, television, or the Internet, but, that rarely happens - least of all to women. It is a nice structure: You train, go through all the levels, and we are made to believe from our teachers that coming out of it builds this amazing confidence and overwhelming clarity that enables you to give near-perfect advice. In retrospect, it seems to make sense; it sounds like upward mobility.
The thing about upward mobility is that it doesn't exist in the creative arts. Coming from a family of Ivy League doctors and lawyers, they seem to believe that the Ideal Career involves moving up. As a doctor, you graduate college, go to medical school, do a residency, and get assigned to your future. Of course, fate throws a wrench into your life, one convention leads to another, which leads to a conversation with an associate who finds out that you're unemployed and need hospital placement, and somehow you find yourself raising a conservative Jewish family right in the middle of Kansas. It's the same thing with law school...you go in for three years, apply for jobs, take the BAR, work for a firm or in the government...and maybe feel compelled to give it up some years down the road, when you have kids and decide to raise a family instead.
At this point, the best thing I can do is keep dreaming and feeling inspired by those performers and writers who can give good advice and just take what they've learned from the Harold, in order to boldly go out into the mainstream and keep doing my own thing. I know it sounds a little corny, but there are some incredibly talented improvisers and groups I got to see this weekend that helped answer a lot of confusion I had just by setting an example.
First up: Baby Wants Candy, probably the best musical improv group out there - or at least the vanguard example for what our still-untitled musical improv practice group aims to accomplish. What BWC does is improvise a Harold-style musical, except they break down the conventional 1st, 2nd, 3rd, et al beats into musical theater terminology. The fact that one of their alumni is going straight from the group to an actual Broadway musical speaks volumes!
The group, led by the inflexibly awesome and rubber-faced Peter Gwinn, who takes the suggestion of a funny title of a musical from the audience, in this case, "George Bush: A User's Manual" (see what I mean about ultra-liberal?) and the resultant songs essentially tell a story that manifests itself through the scene and character work that happens through this initiation. The fact that BWC has a house band, the Yes Band, backing them up, instead of an upright piano, is a huge advantage in and of itself. I'm a huge rock geek, and I tend to look out and see if they're using dual pickups, or what kinds of guitars the guys are playing, or if the bass player uses a pick or his fingers, or if they've got foot pedals connected to the amps.
But I digress...it was much different seeing these guys for the second time, because, around the first time I saw them at the UCB theatre, I was only thinking about taking a musical improv class for shits 'n giggles, knowing I was really scared to death about singing in public for all my improv buddies. Cut to some months later: This changed all that. Now, I was able to watch it with an understanding of what goes into a longform musical. They sort of had a structure, given the patter song, the big opening number, the medley, the big chase scene...And they sure took that one and ran; at one point, Gwinn, as Dubya, ducked behind the piano, played a riff, peeked out from under the bench, and went, "That was me!"
Of course, this was on a Thursday, and we just walked over to the Abingdon to catch the show after musical improv practice. The inarguable highlight of the marathon, for me, was hanging out with Jeff Hiller and John Flynn. I think I spent about an hour talking to them about Gypsy, because no one else would get my June Havoc references.
I've never met Flynn before, so I just blurted out, "I'm such a huge fan of yours!" I think I scared him a bit with that. I told him I loved Dances with Pitchforks, and that he shouldn't worry, because our non-Equity Farmboy #5 went on to do great things, too.
I saw I Eat Pandas (sans friends), and those bitches were on fire! I'm still reeling from how simple it seemed, and, yet, how amazing their musical improv skills were. Considering that BWC had an entire set, while the Pandas got a marathon-mandated half-hour to show their stuff.
What they did was improvise a longform musical based on a single suggestion, as opposed to a title. The suggestion, "cupcake," had the ladies, mmes. Glennis and Eliza, and their gifted male accompanist Travis, doing a series of two-person scenes revolving around the simple story of a girl in love with a guy. The songs mostly erred toward "I Want" songs, and "Philosopy" songs, like one about how cracking an egg and adding flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda makes a cupcake - and that is a metaphor for love.
You know what the Pandas should do? A Back Line. Call me crazy, but I really feel like there should be an improv version of A Chorus Line. Have it take place at Harold Team auditions, with various improvisers doing "I Want" songs about how they got into improv, or why they started taking it in the first place. Mine would probably be "I Can Do that." Maybe "Nothing." And I reached right down to the bottom of my soul...
posted by Gypsy at 10:54 AM
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