Organic Openings and A League of Their Own
“Are you the Cris without an H?” “Yeah, that’s me.” “Okay, great.” Coming in late to the first day is the cool kid’s way to always being remembered.
Acting as if I had any time left to rest after everything that happened to me last week, we barreled on through to week four with Jeff Griggs. We’re stationed in the Del Close Theater this time around, a stage that was only a vague legend seen on YouTube a few short weeks ago but now feels like a comfortable chair at home. This new, immediate and shocking familiarity reminded me of the first time I stepped into the New Movement Theater in East Austin and how small it seemed, only to become the place as large and immense as my mind could make it when I was in it for the final time.
“This level is all about the Harold,” Jeff said as he introduced himself to the class. “The past few weeks you’ve been doing scenes and working on yourself and I must warn you that we won’t be doing a lot of that here. We’ll just be working on understanding Harold.”
And away we went to work. The day was devoted entirely to wrapping our heads around the organic opening. We played some intense pattern games that cooked our brains as a warm-up and then began doing openings in rapid-fire succession. We first worked out only doing physical action, moved to action with sound, then we were allowed to move around the space, then we were allowed to use words and statements.
Like in previous weeks that we’ve touched on it, I’m beginning to pinpoint the thing that makes the organic opening worthwhile. The idea of transformation, of taking a suggestion and extrapolating it to the cosmos, to turn potato into a commentary on the widening gap between the 1% and the 99% or goofy cultural differences or whatever, to cast the net wide and then rein in a theme that perhaps says something about the human condition, is an intriguing and powerful notion that should be brought to all of improv. However, I’m still not convinced that the organic opening is perfect as it is.
The Harold needs to evolve again. It’s been fairly the same since Del died and though I see flashes of brilliance in people like Jet Eveleth who are pushing the boundaries of what it is (when they do it), nobody is really focusing on what it could be. That’s not anybody’s fault, really. Charna and the Harold Commission have a business model they’re working on, as does UCB. Most people seem to have left any idea of creating art with the Harold far behind. Two-person groups are (rightly so) where the glory is these days. The Harold is a brand and nothing more. It’s used to weed out the lesser improvisers and find the talented ones. It’s mostly done by people who aren’t doing this for art, and because of that I see even the most talented people tripping in it.
This isn’t the first time I’ve thought of this, actually. When I first joined Rogue and was trying to understand Harold beyond Ryan Heine’s broken explanations I looked at plenty of tape about it and was not convinced. I’ve looked everywhere at teams that people say make good Harolds. I’ve done a fair amount of them myself by this point. I’ve seen some amazing work from people, but it’s usually shimmering through a lot of dirt. The brilliance of the Harold is there, but it’s not fully formed. Perhaps it was once. Perhaps, when it was first invented, it was perfect. However, this is an art form crafted by a madman and I think he designed it to evolve beyond him. At this point, I’m not sure it will ever be evolved to its perfect state. It may just be one of those things that needs redefining every ten years or so. All I know is that it needs to change now.
I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Even Shakespeare gets a new “definitive” interpretation once a generation. That’s probably what Del wanted, even if he didn’t know it himself. I’m going to need some time to process this, though. The greatest heights in our art form are locked inside this puzzle. I just have to crack the safe.
Dave mentioned going to see the Hancock Tower in the evening and I told him to text me. About an hour later he texted saying he wasn’t really feeling like it. I contemplated walking up to catch the Armando but then realized that it was Monday and my friends back home were doing FilmInstant, a sort of RiffTrax/Mystery Science Theater 3000 via Twitter that was created by Dan Woods, Drew Platt, and Cyrus Cooper. At 10pm CST (the Central Stranded Time Zone) you select the film of the week on your Netflix Instant Queue and follow a hashtag with people giving their commentary on it. I did one with them before I left (Robocop) and it ended up being the 2nd highest trending topic worldwide after Anderson Cooper being gay. I told Drew I’d do it from Chicago if I had the chance, but the intensive has been rather, well, intense. However, with last week’s Armando being so weak and already having writing to catch up on, I decided to do it.
The film for this week was A League of Their Own. It’s one of my sister’s favorite movies ever and I honestly like it a lot as well. As I was tweeting and watching I grew a deep nostalgia for 90’s films. It was the time I grew wonder for the power of cinema. Before the onslaught of digital cameras and CGI but at the pinnacle of analog filmmaking. It’s all so grounded. Nobody’s photoshopped, sets were fully built. There’s substance to everything. I miss the attitude as well. The Cold War had ended and it was a full ten years before the War on Terror began. If I’d known that the world would become such a darker place by the time I graduated high school, maybe I would’ve cherished the era more. Well, at least it was fun.
