Improv Six weeks to run a Harold
For a troupe that already plays scenes and wants a long form. Not for beginners: the Harold given too early puts people off longform for years. You need six to nine players who can commit to all six sessions — a Harold learned by half the group is a Harold nobody can play.
🧭 Running this path
A copy is made. Changing it later changes nothing here — and we will never change your course behind your back.
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The opening
105 minLearn to mine a word — no scenes yet.
A circle to get the eyes up. Not a warm-up for the body — a warm-up for LOOKING at each other, which is the whole Harold in one habit.
🔄 Swap for: warmup · listening, body & energy →
Stand in a circle. A player sends energy to someone with a sharp clap-and-point and "Zip". That person passes it on with "Zap", the next with "Zop", then back to "Zip" — always in that order. The energy flies around the ring, faster and faster. It's the first warm-up for a reason: it asks for nothing but eye contact, a clear gesture, and the nerve to commit out loud. Nobody has to be funny — they just have to be present and awake.
💡 Commitment beats speed. A slow, sharp "Zip" with real eye contact is worth more than a fast mumble — coach volume and clarity before pace. When someone fumbles the order, keep it moving. The point is presence, not perfection. Add rules once it flows: reverse the direction, or a "Boing" that bounces the energy back to the sender.
Read more →The opening is association out loud. Here the association has no stakes and no scene to serve — that is the point: they learn the reflex before it has to carry anything.
🔄 Swap for: warmup · words & language, listening →
Around the circle, each player instantly says the first word the previous word triggers. "Ocean" — "blue" — "sky" — "bird". No judging, no planning, no cleverness. Just the honest next thought, out loud, on the beat. It trains the single most important reflex in improv: saying the first thing without editing it. Players who learn to trust their instinct here stop censoring themselves in scenes — which is where all the freezing and over-thinking comes from.
💡 First thought, out loud. If someone pauses to find a "good" word, that's the exact habit to break — coach speed and honesty over quality. There are no wrong answers, only late ones. Reassure the group early so nobody plays it safe. Variation to deepen it: "and that makes me think of…" spoken as a full phrase, which loosens the tongue further.
Read more →The first real opening. Expect it to be bad. What matters is that they hear themes appear without anyone deciding them — the moment a group believes that, the Harold becomes possible.
🔄 Swap for: longform · group mind, listening →
A word-association opening for a Harold or montage. The group starts from the suggestion and riffs in waves — a word, an image, an opinion, a short heightened run — finding the themes, viewpoints and games that will fuel the scenes to come. It's not a scene and not a story: it's a collective brainstorm performed out loud, mined for material. Taught on its own, it's the single most useful longform skill. Players learn to free-associate without judging, to spot when a run is heating up and heighten it, and to leave the opening carrying a handful of clear themes rather than a blank mind. A strong pattern game makes the whole show that follows possible.
💡 Associate freely, don't try to be clever. Coach the first honest link — the opening feeds on volume and truth, not wit. Heighten the hot runs. Teach players to notice when the group leans into an idea and to build it into a peak, not drop it after one line. Leave with themes, not a plot. The goal is a shared handful of ideas to draw on — debrief afterwards on what themes the group actually surfaced.
Read more →A second opening, on purpose. One opening is an accident; two is a skill. Invocation is more physical — it catches the players that Pattern Game leaves behind.
🔄 Swap for: longform · group mind, body & energy →
A ritual opening. The players 'invoke' the suggestion as an object of worship, building in intensity: 'It is…', 'You are…', 'Thou art…', moving from plain literal description up through metaphor to mythic, poetic exaltation. Voices overlap and answer each other, and the word is turned over, praised and mythologised until its themes glow. It's a high-commitment, high-poetry opening that mines a suggestion for deep associations rather than jokes. It teaches escalation, group listening and the courage to be earnest and lyrical on stage. Because it climbs from the literal to the mythic, it surfaces themes a jokier opening would skip — perfect fuel for a rich, resonant show.
💡 Build in stages, don't start at the top. Coach the climb from literal ("it is red") through metaphor to myth — the escalation is the form. Earnestness over jokes. The invocation only works if players commit to genuine, lyrical praise — undercutting it with a gag collapses the ritual. Listen and answer, don't just take turns. Teach players to build on the previous line's image, so the group ascends together rather than in parallel.
Read more →- 20 minDebrief: what three themes did we hear?
💡 Resist playing scenes tonight. A group that cannot open cannot Harold, and everyone wants to skip this week.
Two-person scenes that go somewhere
110 minEstablish fast, then heighten. The beat, not the story.
Follow the Follower teaches a group to agree without a leader. That is what a group game is, and it starts here — in a warm-up, where failing costs nothing.
🔄 Swap for: warmup · group mind, body & energy →
Start in a circle mirroring one visible leader's slow movements. Then the leadership passes silently from person to person — no one announces it. Finally, nobody leads at all: everyone mirrors everyone, and the group moves as a single organism, changes rippling out with no source. It is the deepest group-mind builder there is. Players stop asking "whose turn is it" and start feeling the collective impulse — the same sense that lets an ensemble share focus and shift a scene together without a word.
💡 Move slowly, especially in the leaderless phase. Speed forces someone to "decide", which breaks the shared impulse. Use soft, wide focus, not a stare at one person. The group is felt with the whole gaze, not tracked with the eyes. Work through the three stages in order. The magic of the final phase only lands once the group trusts the first two.
Read more →Three lines to establish. Brutal on purpose: a Harold beat has no time to warm up, and a troupe that needs two minutes to say who they are will never fit three beats in a form.
🔄 Swap for: exercise · character, story →
Rapid-fire two-handers. Player A initiates, B responds, A responds again — and the scene is over. Next pair, go. In three lines you must establish who you are to each other, where you are, and what's going on, then blackout. Drill dozens back to back. It trains the strong initiation and the ability to establish a scene fast — the skill that beats the deadly "vague first ninety seconds". Because there's no time to discover slowly, players learn to make a bold, specific offer immediately and to give their partner something real to play. It's the single best cure for weak, wandering scene openings, and the reps make it instinct.
💡 The first line must do work — a relationship, an emotion, a place. Coach against "Hi." "Hi." — a strong initiation is the whole exercise. Three lines then blackout, strictly. The constraint forces boldness — don't let scenes run on, the pressure is the point. Quantity builds instinct. Drill many pairs fast — the goal is that strong, specific openings become automatic, not laboured.
Read more →Advance/Expand is the vocabulary they will need in session 4 to tell heightening from continuing. Teach the word now, use it for four weeks.
🔄 Swap for: exercise · story →
A coach watches a scene and calls one of two words. "Advance" means push the plot forward — introduce the next event, make a decision, move time. "Expand" means stay in this moment and deepen it — explore the feeling, the detail, the relationship right here. The players obey instantly, and the coach steers the scene between its two gears. It teaches the two engines of storytelling and, crucially, the difference between them. Improvisers tend to be stuck in one gear — either racing through plot with no depth, or wallowing in a moment that never moves. Feeling both on command, and hearing when a scene needs which, builds the pacing instinct that separates a scene that breathes from one that stalls or sprints.
💡 Make the two gears distinct. "Expand" is not stalling and "advance" is not rushing — coach real deepening versus real forward motion. Call against the players' default. If they race, call expand — if they wallow, call advance — the growth is in the uncomfortable gear. Debrief on when each was needed. The goal isn't to obey a coach forever but to internalise the instinct for which gear a scene wants.
Read more →If This Is True is the engine of every second beat. Playing it here, on standalone scenes, means that in session 4 they only have to apply it — not discover it.
🔄 Swap for: exercise · story, character →
Start from one unusual fact — "the boss naps in a coffin", "gravity is weaker on Fridays". Before playing anything, the group lists what else must therefore be true in that world, chaining implications. Then they play scenes that explore those consequences rather than restating the premise. It trains "if-then" logic and world-building — the engine of grounded absurdity. Players learn that one strong unusual thing, followed honestly, generates a whole coherent world, and that the comedy lives in the consequences, not in piling on more weirdness. It's the exact skill that makes second and third beats of a Harold pay off.
💡 Follow one premise, don't add new ones. The discipline is exploring consequences of a single unusual fact — coach against stacking extra weirdness. Make it logical, not random. "If this is true, then…" must genuinely follow — teach real cause and effect within the odd world. Play the consequences, don't restate the premise. Scenes should live in the world's knock-on effects, where the real comedy waits.
Read more →- 20 minFree play: two-handers, ninety seconds each
💡 Cut every scene at ninety seconds, even the good ones. Especially the good ones.
Group games
105 minThe connective tissue between beats — and where the themes come back.
Sound and movement: the body before the idea. Group games die when everyone waits for a clever thought — this makes the first offer physical.
🔄 Swap for: warmup · body & energy, group mind →
In a circle, one player crosses toward another with a repeated sound-and-movement — a gesture and a noise fused together. The receiver takes it on exactly, mirrors it back for a moment, then gradually transforms it into a new sound-and-movement of their own and carries that across to someone else. The impulse travels and mutates around the circle. It frees the body and voice together and trains committed transformation. Players learn to fully receive an offer before changing it, and to let a new impulse grow out of the old rather than being manufactured from the head. It's a superb loosener that kills self-consciousness and builds the accept-then-transform reflex at the heart of "yes, and".
💡 Receive fully before transforming. Coach players to copy the incoming sound-and-movement exactly first — the transformation grows from it, not from a fresh idea. Commit the whole body and voice. Half-hearted, small offers teach nothing — push for full physical and vocal commitment. Let it mutate gradually. A jarring jump to something unrelated breaks the chain — teach smooth evolution from what was received.
Read more →Give and Take is the difference between a group game and a crowd. Eight people all offering is noise; eight people passing focus is a scene.
🔄 Swap for: exercise · group mind, listening →
The group moves around the space with one rule: only one person may move (or speak) at a time. To move, you must take focus boldly — to let someone else move, you give it generously. The focus passes around the room like a ball nobody can hold too long, and the group practises seeing it and sharing it. It's a pure stagecraft and awareness drill. Players learn to feel where an audience's attention is, to take it with commitment when it's their moment, and to yield it without sulking when it isn't — the invisible traffic control that keeps a group scene from becoming a pile-up. Applied to a real scene afterwards, it instantly cleans up messy, everyone-talking chaos.
💡 One mover at a time, truly. If two move at once, the focus is muddy — coach players to notice and yield the instant someone else takes it. Taking must be bold, giving must be genuine. A timid take stalls the room, a grudging give creates a fight — teach clear, committed handovers. Apply it to a scene straight after. The drill only matters if it transfers — coach a group scene where focus visibly passes with the same clarity.
Read more →Emotional Symphony gives a group game a shape it cannot fake: it has to build and it has to end. Most first group games have neither.
🔄 Swap for: longform · emotion, group mind →
A conductor assigns each player an emotion expressed as a sound and movement — sobbing grief, giddy joy, seething rage. Then they conduct the group like an orchestra: raising and lowering the volume, cueing solos, swelling everyone at once, cutting to silence. The room becomes a living instrument of feeling. It's pure permission to be big, loud and emotional with zero pressure to be clever or make sense. Shy players discover their volume, everyone practises committing to a single strong emotion on cue, and the group tunes into a conductor's shared control. It's a joyful warm-up that dissolves inhibition and reminds a room that emotion, fully expressed, is already compelling.
💡 Full commitment on every cue. A timid emotion defeats the exercise — coach players to hit their feeling at full size the instant they're conducted. Use dynamics, not just volume. Solos, swells and sudden silence teach control and listening — a flat wall of noise teaches little. Great for unlocking shy players. The conductor's frame gives permission to be huge — celebrate the loudest, least self-conscious offers.
Read more →The opening returns — third week running. Repetition is the method, not laziness: the opening is the only part of a Harold that cannot be rescued once it starts badly.
🔄 Swap for: longform · group mind, listening →
A word-association opening for a Harold or montage. The group starts from the suggestion and riffs in waves — a word, an image, an opinion, a short heightened run — finding the themes, viewpoints and games that will fuel the scenes to come. It's not a scene and not a story: it's a collective brainstorm performed out loud, mined for material. Taught on its own, it's the single most useful longform skill. Players learn to free-associate without judging, to spot when a run is heating up and heighten it, and to leave the opening carrying a handful of clear themes rather than a blank mind. A strong pattern game makes the whole show that follows possible.
💡 Associate freely, don't try to be clever. Coach the first honest link — the opening feeds on volume and truth, not wit. Heighten the hot runs. Teach players to notice when the group leans into an idea and to build it into a peak, not drop it after one line. Leave with themes, not a plot. The goal is a shared handful of ideas to draw on — debrief afterwards on what themes the group actually surfaced.
Read more →- 30 minOpenings, group game, openings — on repeat
💡 Group games are not filler. A Harold with weak group games is three unrelated two-handers.
Second beats
115 minReturn to a scene and make it worse — deliberately.
A gentle circle: today is the hardest session, and a group that arrives tense hears nothing. Do not skip the warm-up on the heavy week.
🔄 Swap for: warmup · listening, group mind →
In pairs or a circle, build a shared plan one line at a time, each sentence beginning with "Yes, and…": "Let's throw a party." "Yes, and we'll invite the whole street." "Yes, and we'll hire a brass band." Then run the same plan again with "Yes, but…" and feel it wither. The contrast is the lesson. It's the most direct drill of the core improv reflex: accept the offer, then add to it. Players feel in their body how "and" builds momentum and "but" strangles it — and they carry that felt difference into every scene, where blocking is almost always a quiet "yes, but" in disguise.
💡 Run the "yes, but" version too — the failure is the teacher. Feeling the plan collapse makes the point better than any explanation. The "and" must genuinely add, not just agree. "Yes, and it's nice" stalls — coach a real new offer on every line. Keep it fast and light. This is a warm reflex-builder, not a scene — pace keeps players out of their heads.
Read more →Back to If This Is True — but now it has a job. Same game as session 2, different meaning: this is the tool they will use in ten minutes on their own scenes.
🔄 Swap for: exercise · story, character →
Start from one unusual fact — "the boss naps in a coffin", "gravity is weaker on Fridays". Before playing anything, the group lists what else must therefore be true in that world, chaining implications. Then they play scenes that explore those consequences rather than restating the premise. It trains "if-then" logic and world-building — the engine of grounded absurdity. Players learn that one strong unusual thing, followed honestly, generates a whole coherent world, and that the comedy lives in the consequences, not in piling on more weirdness. It's the exact skill that makes second and third beats of a Harold pay off.
💡 Follow one premise, don't add new ones. The discipline is exploring consequences of a single unusual fact — coach against stacking extra weirdness. Make it logical, not random. "If this is true, then…" must genuinely follow — teach real cause and effect within the odd world. Play the consequences, don't restate the premise. Scenes should live in the world's knock-on effects, where the real comedy waits.
Read more →Repetition sharpens the ear for what was already said. A second beat is built entirely from what the first beat left behind — you cannot heighten what you did not hear.
🔄 Swap for: exercise · listening, character →
The Meisner drill. A pair repeats a single observation back and forth — "You're smiling." "I'm smiling." "You're smiling." — letting nothing change but the emotional colour, which shifts naturally with each pass as the players simply respond to what they see and feel in each other. The words stay, the meaning moves. It trains pure presence and reacting off your partner rather than your own head. With the content locked, there's nothing to invent — only to notice, and to let the other person genuinely affect you. It's a deep antidote to pre-planning and heady playing, and it builds the honest, moment-to-moment connection that carries any grounded scene.
💡 Nothing changes but the truth between them. Coach players to respond to what they actually see and feel, not to "perform" a rising emotion. Stay out of the head. The whole point is to react off the partner — if a player is planning the next line, they've left the exercise. Let it be slow and repetitive. The magic comes from genuine noticing over many passes — resist the urge to rescue it with new words.
Read more →- 45 minFirst beats, then second beats of the same scenes
- 15 minDebrief: did the second beat heighten, or just continue?
💡 The second beat is the whole test. If it merely continues, it fails; it must escalate what was already unusual.
Callbacks and the third act
120 minBring the threads together without forcing them.
Mind Meld is the whole Harold in thirty seconds: two minds, one idea, no discussion. If this is hard tonight, the group game later will be hard too — you have been warned early.
🔄 Swap for: warmup · listening, words & language →
Two players count "1, 2, 3" and, on three, blurt a word at the same time — any two words, unrelated. Then they count again and each tries to say the word that sits "between" the two. Repeat, and the words drift together until, magically, both say the same one. Celebrate, and start fresh. It's the clearest drill there is for building a shared brain. Players learn to abandon their own clever idea and reach for the obvious common ground — which is exactly what makes two people agree on a scene.
💡 Chase the obvious, not the clever. The game converges when players give the first honest link between two words, not a witty swerve. Say it truly together on "three" — no peeking, no delaying to match the other. The point is to think alike, not to cheat alike. Celebrate the meld out loud. The little shared win is what bonds the pair — don't skip past it.
Read more →A to C thinking is what stops a Harold from being three unrelated plays. The connection between beats is not found — it is thought, and this is where they learn to think it.
🔄 Swap for: exercise · words & language, story →
Given a word (A), don't voice your first, obvious association (B) — voice the association of that association (C). "Beach" → your first thought is "sand" (B) → skip it → say "sunburnt tourists" (C). Go around a circle at pace, always jumping to the second link. It trains originality by breaking the reflex toward the obvious, shared answer. Because everyone's B is roughly the same, always reaching for C pulls players toward fresher, more personal, more surprising choices — without abandoning logic, since C still connects. It's a targeted cure for predictable, on-the-nose improv, and it sharpens the instinct to find the choice nobody saw coming but everyone believes.
💡 Skip B, but keep the logic. C must still connect through B — coach a genuine second-step association, not a random unrelated word. Speed forces honesty. Going fast around the circle stops players over-curating — the instinct for the fresh link is what you're building. Watch for players stuck on B. If answers feel obvious, they're giving first thoughts — gently push them one link further.
Read more →Start from one unusual fact — "the boss naps in a coffin", "gravity is weaker on Fridays". Before playing anything, the group lists what else must therefore be true in that world, chaining implications. Then they play scenes that explore those consequences rather than restating the premise. It trains "if-then" logic and world-building — the engine of grounded absurdity. Players learn that one strong unusual thing, followed honestly, generates a whole coherent world, and that the comedy lives in the consequences, not in piling on more weirdness. It's the exact skill that makes second and third beats of a Harold pay off.
💡 Follow one premise, don't add new ones. The discipline is exploring consequences of a single unusual fact — coach against stacking extra weirdness. Make it logical, not random. "If this is true, then…" must genuinely follow — teach real cause and effect within the odd world. Play the consequences, don't restate the premise. Scenes should live in the world's knock-on effects, where the real comedy waits.
Read more →- 50 minTwo-thirds of a Harold: opening, three beats, group game, three second beats
- 15 minDebrief: name every thread still hanging
💡 Callbacks are not references. A reference makes people say ha, the tomato; a callback makes the show mean something.
The whole thing
120 minPlay a full Harold, badly, all the way to the end.
The group counts to twenty-one, one number per person, in no fixed order and with no signals — no nods, no glances, no going round the circle. If two people say a number at the same time, the whole group starts again from one. Eyes down or closed makes it harder and purer. There is no trick, only attention. It trains a group to sense each other without looking — the shared awareness that lets a team edit a scene, start together, and end together. It's quiet, humbling, and unites a room fast.
💡 Ban all systems. Going in order or signalling defeats the exercise — insist on genuine listening, not clever workarounds. A restart is not a failure, it's a rep. Keep the mood calm and patient — frustration makes people rush and clash more. Silence between numbers is good. Coach the group to be comfortable waiting rather than filling the gap nervously.
Read more →A word-association opening for a Harold or montage. The group starts from the suggestion and riffs in waves — a word, an image, an opinion, a short heightened run — finding the themes, viewpoints and games that will fuel the scenes to come. It's not a scene and not a story: it's a collective brainstorm performed out loud, mined for material. Taught on its own, it's the single most useful longform skill. Players learn to free-associate without judging, to spot when a run is heating up and heighten it, and to leave the opening carrying a handful of clear themes rather than a blank mind. A strong pattern game makes the whole show that follows possible.
💡 Associate freely, don't try to be clever. Coach the first honest link — the opening feeds on volume and truth, not wit. Heighten the hot runs. Teach players to notice when the group leans into an idea and to build it into a peak, not drop it after one line. Leave with themes, not a plot. The goal is a shared handful of ideas to draw on — debrief afterwards on what themes the group actually surfaced.
Read more →The founding longform, built by Del Close. One audience suggestion feeds a group opening, then three unrelated scenes (1A, 1B, 1C). A group game follows, then the second beats of each scene, another group game, and finally the third beats — where the separate threads, themes and characters collide and connect. Thirty minutes, roughly nine scenes, one shape. You don't learn the Harold by performing it — you learn it by drilling what it demands: fast openings, clean two-person scenes, thematic listening, and callbacks with consequences. The form is a container, not a trick. What fills it is a group that hears the same themes and trusts them.
💡 The opening is everything. If the group doesn't mine real themes and opinions there, the beats have nothing to connect to — spend most of your teaching time here. Scenes must be short and clean. A Harold beat is often three good lines and a blackout — coach getting in, establishing, and getting out. Third beats are callbacks with consequences, not repetition. The reward is seeing threads collide — teach players to heighten and connect, not just revisit. Don't teach the whole form at once. Drill the pieces (openings, two-person scenes, group games) for weeks before stacking them.
Read more →- 35 minSecond Harold — the one that teaches
- 15 minDebrief: what came back, and what we invented instead of listening
💡 Do not stop it. A Harold interrupted to be fixed teaches nothing — the lesson is in the last five minutes.