Did I pique your interest with that provocative title? Are you primed to splutter indignantly? Have I sold out and written deliberate clickbait? Am I desperate? Or am I blindly, insensitively universalising my own tastes? (But then, don’t we all?) I expect all of the above are true, but so is my genuine and longlasting love of the Harold. I sometimes joke that every class I teach is a Harold class in disguise. And then I wonder if I am joking. Let me share some of that love with you. 

For those who do not know, the ‘Harold’ is a 20-30 minute improvisation format composed of scenes and ‘games’ created fresh each time it is played. Its three-part structure gives a sense of coherence and unity to a show, but it is also flexible enough to change with the team, the night and content created. It can contain anything. It is a sandpit to expand and improve your improvisational instincts. And once you know it, you will see elements of it everywhere in TV and film. Central Perk is a group game.

When you first learn it, the Harold seems both complex and difficult (which are different things). There are three distinct elements combined in a specific order. Making the thing work involves not just remembering that order, but remembering the scenes that happened today and what can be taken from them. I have stood in front of enough confused faces to know that, while it is now simple instinct to me, that instinct was a learned one. I can even just about remember being that confused face, staring at Tara DeFranciso and wondering (not asking aloud), ‘But why?’

Because there is no getting round the fact that the first time you encounter it, the Harold is a wriggling bear, a greased hydra that will elude you over and over when you think you have it. But few worthwhile things are easy. 

So let me tell you why I think every improviser should do the Harold until they are at least pretty good at it. 

Often, as you start to improvise, there is a desire to create stopries. After all, humans see narrative (and its sister, morality) as automatically and quickly as we see colour and shape. “What did we do?”, we say as it rains, searching both for a reason and who is to blame. Stories are a version of causality, a proto-science that binds and bonds us, creates cultures and shared meaning. 

Now I love improvising stories (more on that, I am sure, in other blogs), but my advice to any improviser would be to wait as long as you possibly can before you start making them up, and be prepared for a rocky ride when you do. Improvised stories are like helicopters: extraordinary when they work, but prone to flipping and exploding at the first malfunction.

The Harold, on the other hand, remains flexible to the end. If we want to send a character on a quest where they face their demons and emerge a better and stronger person, we can. And if we just want to have them do the same thing over and over because it’s fun to do, we can do that too. And if an idea seems ‘done’, we can just drop it. In fact, if a scene seems janky and unredeemable, it might just disappear. No such flexibility in a story! The Harold a very forgiving form, a plane able to land with two engines on fire.

The different elements of the Harold mean it needs different skills and therefore different styles of players. A good team has the comedy nerd, the emotional player and the space cadet. It needs its editing wizard and genre technician. But it never restricts anyoine to their lane. In a Harold, you can find the bit that works as your mind does and gradually expand into the bits that seem as unfamiliar as your in-laws’ cooking. You relax into it all over time, and it too becomes part of home. 

Because for me, the point of a Harold is the answer the worst question in improvisation: ‘What the hell do I do next?’ Once you get the flow of the structure, the suggestion leads to the opening, the opening leads to the first few scenes, that first beat to later ones and the scenes combine and cross-fertilise to make the ending feel inevitable and satisfying. The Harold leads you to see multiple opportunities in every scene, to always be inspired, to make connections. It gives you not just the thing to do next, but (which is better) options. It helps you build an attitude of flexibility and abundance. You shift from ‘What on earth do i do next?’ to ‘Which one of these ideas do I choose?’ And that you can take anywhere.

We are pretty sure that Heather got COVID the week before the first lockdown in the UK. It was before tests were available, but she was unable to taste anything, so in retrospect, it seems likely. Being responsible people, and with a lack of clear information, we locked ourselves down. Then sat in our (very small) flat in North London watching months of work be slowly, inevitably cancelled.

So taking improv online was, for us, first and foremost, a necessity. Working in the arts is a hardscrabble existence at the best of times. Artists rarely have savings or safety nets, and arts companies mostly exist two bad weeks from bankruptcy. In order to eat, we had to make improv work online. So we did. We improvised.

I have written before about the surprising joy of making it up on a screen, the gradual realisation that across distance and in a tiny square box, human connection and shared creativity is remarkably possible. Brains are plastic like that. Sure, online improv isn’t easy to make into a saleable product for audiences, but the opportunity to open a laptop and be in communion with people across time zones and continents is kind of addictive. When I have a week between classes (as I did last week), I miss people that I have actually never met in real life. 

Now of course, there are things you can’t do online. You operate at the speed of the internet and the caprice of the hardware, so rhythm is nigh impossible. It is hard in our bedrooms and kitchens to be very physical. Lighting and sound suffer. Eye contact is an approximation. But we have put the work in and let me tell you that it works. It’s not for everyone, but it works. I have learnt and taught as much in online improv as I ever have offline. 

Because of, not despite. Let me tell you why. 

When you start a class with a Los Angelina living in Texas, a Berliner (not the doughnut), a Very British Man and a Pakistani, you can’t just slide into it. Identity is complex and smashing together so many of them means we have to be careful and explicit about our differences. It becomes an essential part of the class to find your way onto the same page. How do we share something together when we are not even really together? 

Sure, when I was teaching in London at the Nursery (I now live a little outside), our classes were mostly non-Londoners. We had a lot of folks from outside the UK and for whom English was not their native language. But they were all in London. The journey to the city and to the class had brought them together and established a degree of shared culture, or at least an awareness of one. This is not the case in online improv. Each improviser is simultaneously in their very own home (or sometimes work) context, and in a fluid, neutral one which is no more English than it is Spanish, Canadian or Indian. In this space, everything has to be noticed and negotiated. It’s what has made me more nervous teaching online than I have ever been off. At 3 pm, a explosion of difference will happen on my screen and it is my job to help us find a way to be together, without imposing myself on them. I have not always been successful, but I have improved. 

And this is I think the biggest thing that I have learnt from online improv. How to be specific and explicit, more often and more helpfully. Knowing how to bridge gaps in knowledge and understanding, or at least that they are there. They might not need bridging at all, just acknowledging. Brains are plastic like that.

So as long as the people are there, I plan to continue teaching improv online. It focuses the mind, helps you not to take things for granted. It makes the world seems smaller and my little office seems a little bigger. I’ll keep that.

Last week, I wrote about improv myths and how they get in our way. I gleefully swiped at strawmen too absent to respond. I enjoyed it, and it seemed to strike a chord with some people. (Thanks for the emails – I actually love getting emails.) It’s both easy and satisfying to grizzle, to say everything is terrible, and everybody else’s fault. But. But but but. It doesn’t often get you very far. Because you know who Gets Thing Done? You know who Makes Things Happen? It is not the critic who counts. It’s the man in the arena. There are no prizes for finding the most problems.

So do you want to know the secret? The key to improvising (and possibly to life itself, but that’s beyond my remit). Draw closer, pull up a chair and let me tell you the sum total of a decade and a half doing this (not that long really, but enough time to have picked up a few things). Ready? Here it is: Turn up. As simple as that. Be there, doing the thing. Make things up, laugh it off and do it again. Then come back the next week. Turn up. If you want to get good at something as ephemeral and fluid as improv: Turn up. If you want to learn from others: Turn up. If your last show felt terrible: Turn up anyway, wondering why. If someone pisses you off: Talk to them about it, but Turn up. 

For those who dislike gnomic pronouncements, I am sorry this is not more complex. Simple is not the same as easy. There are myriad fractal, nesting micro-skills involved in improv, but you can’t practise any of them if you are absent. Complexity can lead from simplicity. So: Turn up.

And when I say Turn Up, I don’t just mean turn up, I mean Turn Up: be there and nowhere else. Have your whole brain in the room. Be curious about what is happening. Don’t look for ways in which it is similar to what you did before, look for the ways in which this single simple thing which you are doing is different, new and impossible to simplify. Turn Up. A mystery solved is the end of the book. Turn Up, be There and stay There. Turn up to the complexity and lack of conclusions. Turn Up to being changed and surprised. 

Maybe you’re a bit tired, unsure of yourself, dont’ know what is happening. Where do you begin? In improv, you can’t look at what you drew last time. Or the scoreline. Or listen back to what you recorded. You are always starting from zero. From the fact that you bothered to turn up. That is the thing we can agree on, and then do. That is the thing without which there is nothing. 

But wait. You started improvising because it’s fun (and wow is it fun), and then suddenly parts of it are hard. They require attention, take longer to grasp. People ask you to Turn up. To what? Maybe the goal is unclear because it is new. It’ll get clearer. Turn up. Maybe you are not working on something that has yet been solved. R&D doesn’t have specific goals. You trust something will come and you just (say it with me): Turn up.

Enthusiasm builds like a muscle, as does curiosity, persistence and joy. Decide to turn up not for your current self, but the future one. That’s it. When you can’t be bothered: turn up. When you are tired: turn up. When you think there’s no point: turn up. Sometimes there will be no point. Turn up anyway. Creativity is spectacularly inefficient, and there are a million ways you can spend your time if you turn up, but if you don’t turn up, then you were never there. Turn Up.

It was my birthday this week, so I have decided to allow myself a rant. Partly, because as a friend of mine observed, I have no humble opinions, and partly because now that I am in my forties, I am expected to develop a suite of tedious, repetitive opinions. There are times for subtle and complex ideas with nuance and exception, but this (the birthday boy decides) is not that: let’s employ the blunt instrument of true and false.

So here are ten myths about improv that hate. None of these things are true, and thinking them makes improvising harder. I suggest you avoid them.

1 – ‘Yes And’ is useless

The big YA has been knocking around for a while now. Long enough to enter both popular culture and >management speak>. Long enough to be misused and abused (it can for example, be easily used to coerce). And sure, you don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everything, but as an analytical tool and even (god help us) a verb, it is a solid, foundational element of our craft. Neglect it at your peril.

2 – ‘Yes and’ is everything

Of course you don’t always say ‘yes’! What if a character threatens to kill you? Of course you can say no. Aha! (Says the Yes-And dogmatist) if you say no in that situation, you are saying yes to the offer. But what if an improiser offers you a phone and you say it’s a flapjack. Aha! (Says the same dogmatist) Then you are saying ‘yes’ to the glint of fun in her eye. Maybe, but maybe not. Sometimes, the gymnastics necessary to make something delightful fit into ‘Yes and’ is just not worth it.

3 – Improv is natural, but gets crushed out of us by parents/school/our first marriage

Humans are slow, soft, weak and don’t have any natural weapons. We are vulnerable to cold, and heat. And groupthink, arrogance and prejudice. We take almost twenty years to leave the nest and even then we need our parents’ help to get a mortgage. We suck at most things. So it is right and natural for us to be cautious. Often, and about many things. ‘No’ can be the safest word in the world. Saying ‘yes’ is a strategy that can only be conducted in agreed, safe contexts with people that we have worked out whether and how to trust. Like love, trust is a thing we have to learn how to do.

(This goes along with a myth that gets an honourable mention: ‘Kids are great improvisers’. They are not. That doesn’t mean they are not hella fun, but they suck at anything we would recognise as improv. Try getting one to say yes.)

4 – Improv should always be fun

Nothing that you are trying to improve at is always fun. There are points where you hurt, and where you sweat and you don’t know if you’ll make it. Often, there is the satisfaction the other side of having done something, but sometimes it’s just a bad day and you don’t know why you’re bothering. Why should improv be any different? Creating something from empty air is hard cognitive labour and while sometimes it does have the easy freewheeling momentum of running downhill, often you have to run up the hill as well.

5 – Thinking doesn’t help

Anything which you are trying to improve at needs cognitive thought. It needs the reflection after to see what helped you and what didn’t, it needs the tiny sting of failure and feedback that makes you incrementally, but inevitably better. And it also needs those moments during when you take a second to asses and decide what might help. So don’t demonise thinking; work out how to do it well and quickly and when you need to.

6 – Agreement is the highest aim

You know the word ‘Yes-man’? It’s not exactly a compliment. It means a sycophantic waste of space. And of there is one skill that we could all do with improving, it’s productive disagreement. No mud-slinging or cheap shots, but an honest attempt to hear and respect not just both sides, but all sides. If everyone is agreeing, something is probably off.

7 – Planning is bad

Brains plan. They see connections and possible futures. That is not bad. It’s possible to see those things and not bully the other improvisers, to have ideas of where something might go and guide it if that’s fun. After all, improv is not something that happens to you. It’s something you do. As long as you can discard a plan without ego (not a bad skill to practise), those plans are just versions of possible worlds. You are not a bad person for having them. Some of them might even happen.

8 – Improv is simple

Just listen, say yes and commit, right? Just be there with your partner, right? Just find the game, right? Just say whatever comes into your head, right? No. If you say improv is simple, or start a sentence with ‘All you have to do is’, you are likely erasing experience and expertise. Don’t do that. Apart from anything else, it is inefficient.

9 – Jokes are bad

But humans spend an extraordinary amount of time seeking out and creating humour. We do it when we’re nervous, when we’re flirting and just to have fun together. Some of the humour of improv comes from the moments of discovery and radiant extraordinary coincendece. But sometimes, an improviser puts a really good joke in a show and we laugh and that’s good. It doesn’t mean you can’t be heartfelt, profound or surreal just after. It just means a thing was funny. (Like many improv prejudices, I think accusing someone of making jokes is often a way of universalising your own taste: I didn’t like what you did, so you must be breaking a rule.)

10 – If you don’t <insert thing you hate here>, it isn’t improv

Because here is the heart of it: Improv isn’t a thing! It’s not one unified system which we are discovering. It’s a breathing, expanding contradictory mass of overlapping systems, ideas and techniques. Not discovered and logged carefully in a laboratory, but pieced together on the fly. It’s what works today and for this thing, and with these people here. Nothing works for everybody, so we should be very very careful with generalisations. They have the tendency to become dogma, half understood but still rigid. Worse, they end up guarded by the chosen few. That’s not my artform.

(Takes breath.)

That feels good to get off my chest. I feel much lighter, so thanks for listening. Lighter enough to be a little more balanced. Lighter enough to see the reasons why many of these myths exist. They can sometimes be useful without being true. Improv operates in a froth of discrete bubbles which, though they touch and roll over each other, must work to communicate. This and the fact that talking too much in class has a tendency to reduce even the best teaching to quotable aphorisms mean we have to be very very careful. Myths creep in without us noticing. And they feel good. Which deosn’t mean they are.