What is Harold Night?
Harold Night is two hours of entertainment each week featuring The Harold, a 30-minute non-stop piece of improvised comedy based on a single audience suggestion. Each night features four of our Harold teams each presenting their own unique take on the format. If other improv acts are pop music, the Harold is 100% jazz.
What is a Harold team?
Harold is a structure used in longform improvisational theatre that is performed by improv troupes and teams across the world. In the Harold structure, characters and themes are introduced and then recur in a series of connected scenes.
Why is the Harold called the Harold?
Allaudin (Bill) Mathieu called out “Harold.” It was a joking reference to a line from A Hard Days Night in which a reporter asked George Harrison what he called his haircut; he answered “Arthur.” Close later remarked that he wished he had chosen a better name.
How does a Harold work?
The Harold is a longform improvised format which emphasises patterns, themes and group discoveries instead of a traditional plot or story. In a traditional Harold performance, 6-8 players take the stage and receive a single suggestion from the audience.
Who created the Harold?
The Harold is a long-form improv format originally invented by Del Close in the 1960s and then further developed by Del Close and Charna Halpern at iO Theatre in Chicago in the 1980s.
What does a Harold look like?
A Harold typically consists of an opening followed by three beats. (Note: Some teams eschew an opening and launch directly into the first beat from an audience suggestion.) The first two beats contain three scenes apiece, and each beat is followed by a group game.
Where does Harold come from?
Harold is an English personal name. The modern name Harold ultimately derives from the Proto-Germanic *harja-waldaz, meaning ‘military-power’ or ‘army-ruler’. The name entered Modern English via the Old English form Hereweald, which retained the same meaning and was prevalent in Anglo-Saxon England.
Why did UCB close?
The coronavirus pandemic was in its relative infancy when UCB’s New York theater and improv training center were shut down in April; the organization had previously closed its Chelsea theater in 2017 when moving to the larger theater space in Hell’s Kitchen, and had shuttered UCB East in February 2019 due to “the long- …
How do you perform a Harold?
Is Harold a Viking name?
English: from the Old English personal name Hereweald, its Old Norse equivalent Haraldr, or the Continental form Herold introduced to Britain by the Normans.