Charna Halpern - 6/4/07 - Part 1
Charna Halpern is easily one of the people most responsible for the growth of long-form improv community. Along with Del Close, she is the co-founder of iO and its current owner. iO now operates theaters and training centers in Chicago, Los Angeles and North Carolina, and has trained thousands of improvisers. Charna studied at Second City and with Del Close, and has been teaching at iO since its inception. She recently released the book 'Art by Committee,' a follow-up to the classic book 'Truth in Comedy' which she co-authored.
JF: Where were you born?
CH: Chicago.
JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?
CH: My parents were the earliest. They were very funny people. Diner was very fun. My dad was kind of like a Don Rickles. We had to defend ourselves and take it.
JF: Did you look for any of that in the humor that you found fun later on in your life?
CH: I think it was an influence on my sarcasm, then later, watching tv I was influenced by the Smothers Brothers.
JF: When did you know that you wanted to get involved with show business and performing?
CH: Not until I started taking improv classes. It was in college, upper college. Even when I was in college I was studying to be a teacher, and I even taught for a couple years in a school for juvenile deliquents. I had a minor of theater in college. If you were a Speech major, you had to take a second major. I actually had Speech and English as a double major, then I was a minor in theater. So, they made me do a few plays, and my plays always turned into comedies. I would resort to comedy and the directors would tear their hair out. I was in an Ionesco play called 'No Exit.' It's a short play where these two people realize this is their hell, to be together forever in this same room. To prove that the girl is lying to me, I'm supposed to pick up this knife and stab her. So, we're on stage and I picked up the knife. The prop department made the knife. [laughs] And I picked it up and it fell apart. So, I had to strangle her. I guess I had a funny reaction on my face. I was surprised and I started strangling her and the whole audience was in hysterics. There was my first foraye into comedy.
JF: So, how did you get involved with improv comedy?
CH: I was actually at a party and I met Tim Kazarinski. I remember fooling around, doing bits and he said that I should be on stage. He set me up with an audition for Second City, which of course I failed miserably because I didn't even know what it was. They had you do cold readings and I was like 'What the hell is going on here?' Then I wanted to find out what it was that I just lost. Then I started to watch shows. I thought 'You can do this? This is great.' So, I started taking classes at Players Workshop, which is now something totally different, so I don't recommend it. Yeah, I was hooked.
JF: And about what year was that if you don't mind saying?
CH: I'm going to say that was about 80. Maybe 1979.
JF: So, what were those early classes like in Players Workshop?
CH: They were pretty bad now that I look back on it. [laughs] Now that I realize how to do it I realize how much was wrong that I was taught. I was taught that if you give someone what we call now-a-days 'a gift,' like if I say to you 'Bob, I'm so sorry you've become a parapelegic and [inaudible]' you kind of know what I'm expecting from you, they would call that a 'lay-on.' Every time you'd give someone information they'd say 'You're laying-on information. Don't lay-on information.' It wasn't until I met Del that I learned no, you're telling him something, that's a gift. I was totally taught not to give that gift. [laughs] So, now that I look back. I'm like 'Wow, that's terrible.'
JF: So, were people doing actual improv scenes in those classes?
CH: Oh yeah, they were teaching Second City stuff, like the warm-up and [shift [?]]. You know if you do something I do it bigger then bigger. More structured scenes than relationship scenes that were really improvised, that's what I remember doing more.
JF: How did you get involved with the kind of improv that you would come to identify as long-form improv?
CH: Well, that didn't even exist when I was a student. I read about David Shepard coming to town. David, I had read in 'Something Wonderful Right Away,' had created this game competition called Improv Olympic in Canada, but it didn't go over well. I know now that's because David was a little scattered to say the least. So, when he came to town I saw him and thought to myself 'Well, heck, I can do that Improv Olympic thing here if he'll give me a crack at it. I have an improv group. Dan Castellanetta has an improv group.' There were so many of us who graduated the Players Workshop who didn't have a place to play, because there wasn't Improv Olympic. There was only Second City, and if you weren't on the Main Stage of Second City you weren't playing. There wasn't even an ETC.
So, I approached him and he said 'Yeah, if you think you can pull it off, do it.' So, I got my group, Dan Castellanetta's group, a guy named Frank Farrell had a group called 'Free Shakespeare,' and we started to perform. We were doing games and were very successful. I even got a team of improvisers that were Rabbis called 'The God Squad.' [laughs] I started doing things to get press by making identity teams. It was successful. We were packing CrossCurrents, but after a few months the work was really bad. It was game-y and commercial. We were resorting to the same tricks. It was always the same ending. It started to get boring, and I knew something was wrong if we started getting bored.
I had heard about Del Close over the past year and that he hated me, because he hated David Shepard. He hated anyone that worked with David Shepard. I was mad about that. He didn't know me. He hadn't seen my shows. So, I just thought 'This guy's a real asshole.' I met him in an art gallery, and we had a very bad first meeting because he was doing something called the Innovacation and I thought he was invoking demons. I went up to him and told him he had a lot of nerve to invoke demons. He was like 'Um, I protected the building.' I was like 'You can't do that,' and walked away. Now if he didn't hate me before, he definitely hated me now, but I figured he didn't know who I was.
So, at the time again, back when I'm bored at CrossCurrents, I saw him sitting in the cafe one day at CrossCurrents, which was a bar and a lobby and a theater. So, I went up to him and asked him if he wanted to teach a class for Improv Olympic. He goes 'Can I do anything I want?' I was like 'Yeah.' He goes 'Can I invoke demons?' I was like 'Yeah.'
He taught an amazing class. He showed what the Innvocation really was. Afterwards I took him for coffee and I said 'There has to be something more to improvisation than these games.' He said 'Oh, you're not a twit after all.' I said 'Thanks, I guess.' He said 'Well, I've been working on something in the 60's called the Harold, which will change the face of improvisational comedy, but Ruby won't let me work on it, because he's making no ends and he doesn't want to change anything.' He said 'If you want to close down your little game theater and work with me we can change the face of improvisational comedy together.' I was like 'Yes, please.' That's what we did and after long-form was born.
He taught me everything he knew and together we actually came up with this form. He didn't have all the stuff together. It was just like scene after scene after scene. It just went on forever. I told him about one of my favorite games at the Improv Olympic, which was the Time Dash where you had a beginning middle and end. Then he thought 'Well, if we tied that together.' It was the only game at Improv Olympic that I really loved, because it was improv. We didn't know if it was a form or not. Before, during and after the excersize is over. Before, during and after the first meeting. Things progressed. It was real art to me. So, we decided together 'If we take three of those, and one of your opening games and some intersepersed, we can combine both our work.'
JF: I was talking to Dave Pasquesi about the beginning of the Harold and he said there was a lot of experimentation, that people would try a lot of new things to see what worked and what didn't.
CH: Well sure, we went in there with that training wheels plan. It was always an opening with monologues and information, but sometimes we were just wandering around looking at the floor. It was about a year until we figured 'Ok, let's not do that. [laughs] Let's stand there and really focus.' There were a lot of things that slowly changed, but we were all kind of inventing the wheel together. We did have a little bit of the structure. We knew that the scenes were going to come back. We knew that there'd be some monologues. We didn't know what the games were going to be. The games were always improvised. It was really cool. They would go for about 45 minutes back then. After Barron's Barracudas I think Del and I pretty much got it down.
JF: You mentioned that first workshop where Del did the Innvocation with you and some other people. What was it like being in those early workshops and how did it change what you viewed improv as?
CH: It was mind-boggling. We were really learning everything right for the first time. That's the first time we heard 'Say yes to each other. Make each other look good. Why are you pimping each other?' 'We got a laugh.' 'Oh really? You think that's more important?' We were like 'Wow.' We would leave there thinking that he had just given us the secrets to the universe. Think of all the things that we take for granted: the idea of getting a laugh because something was called back, seeing how patterns work. That was mind-blowing to us. 'Oh, we don't have get up there and be funny?' No, it's about call-backs, and if you call-back three times you're going to get huge laughs. We were like 'Holy shit.' This was mind-blowing.
J: So, how did Improv Olympic begin to change and grow as time went on?
C: Basically, we kept getting better and better at long-form. It was about the time that Blue Velveeta came that they got the Harold down. They were doing fast, furious Harolds. It wasn't like Barron's Barracudas anymore, who were doing 45 minutes. There's were like 30 minutes. They knew exactly what was happening and everything would tie up. The opening would connect to the closer. Everything would have levels.
The Barrons were great. They were the pioneers, but they weren't the best team that we ever had. It just got better and better. Blue Velveeta was the best team then, then The Family with Adam McKay the UCB guys. Del described them as 'Watching 6 men fall down the stairs at the same time land on their feet.' Through the years they just hit it, then Del and I decided 'Ok, that's the training wheels Harold. Now we can get it to the point where we don't worry about the form anymore.' We know that now we do a bunch of different scenes. They can take place at different times. It doesn't have to be in order. You can intersperes it with other games. You get it to be different levels of meaning. It was like free-falling now. It wasn't 1, 2, 3, scene, 1, 2, 3, game, 1, 2, 3.
JF: Have you noticed a change in improv over the years? Has it become faster and more condensed, like from Barron's Barracudas to Blue Velveeta? And if so, do you like that? Do you think it's a good step?
CH: Del used to say that we were doing comedy. The reason we were doing slow comedy is because we need time to think, and if we think we'll be more intelligent and the show will be more satisfying. He used to say 'Access your third thought.' Your first thought is your knee-jerk reaction. It's going to be a little jokey. Your second thought is a little better. The third thought is going to be the best. So, our Harolds were all very slow in the old days because they were doing it, then as they started getting better and better at it we started getting better at accessing that third thought. Now it's fast and it's still smart, and that's what we need. If we have some teams that are fast and not smart, then no, I don't like it. If we have a team like The Family was that is smart and could just access that third thought faster, then I like it.
And people are doing it better. Del used to talk about morphogenetic fields. It's kind of like this theory where you put rats in a maze and they can't do the maze, then as soon as a rat does it, then the other rats can do it right away. So, it's kind of like those ideas are trapped in that knowesphere. That's what's been happening here. People are getting better and better at it. And people are coming into classes better. I can see there are certain concepts that the world just has already.
JF: So are you happy with the state of improv? And if it could change in any way how would you like to see it change?
CH: The hard part for me is to keep it as good as it has always been in the past. There are new coaches. They weren't here when Del was teaching, so sometimes I see things being taught wrong. There are wrong values being taught. It's hard for me, because I can't be everywhere. I'm kind of a victim of my own success. I can't be teaching every team. So, I'll see teams on stage and go 'Oh God, they're doing this wrong, or they're not thinking or they don't understand why the opening is so important.' That concerns me. So, I'm not always totally happy, no. Even with some of my best teams I'm never happy. I think that's a director's job though to never be satisfied.
Do I think improv has gotten better over the years? Absolutely. I remember seeing a documentary about the old Second City days with Elaine May and Severn Darden, and oh what's the name. My name just went blank. I'll come up with it in a minute. Do you know the name of the pioneers of Second City?
JF: A couple people. I know Paul Sills.
CH: I know her name. Anyway, Severn and this woman who I'm trying to think of, she walked out on stage, Severn was on his knees and he was planting. He said 'How do you like my garden?' She said 'That's not a garden, that's garbage.' The audience cracked up. She was fantastic. She'd get thrown out of a level 1 class now. But these were the pioneers. This was funny stuff. That's why Del came up with these things, because he was there. He was like 'We shouldn't do that to each other. We can't screw each other over for a joke.' That's what Joan Rivers used to do to him. He did a scene with her, this is the famous story, where she initiated the scene and said 'I want a divorce.' From her initiation he understood that she wanted him to play the distraught husband, so he said 'But honey, what about the children?' She said 'We don't have any.' It got a huge laugh, but he looked like an idiot. What man doesn't know if he has children or not? She would get a laugh at the expense of her fellow players, as a result people didn't trust her on stage. She became a stand-up, but she's not an improviser. It's a different animal, because an improviser should take care of their partners. You're taking a risk to be out there every night. You have to make sure that your partner has your back.
Those are the things he developed with Elaine May. They called them 'The Kitchen Rules.' They'd do a show, he and Elaine and Severn and Mike Nichols, and they'd go back to her apartment and go 'What the hell went wrong tonight? Why was it so bad?' Well, Del said 'When someone said 'We've got a flat tire,' I said 'Ok, I'll fix it. Give me the jack.' Someone said 'No, I don't have a jack. No, there's no jack.' If you had just given me the jack, we could have fixed it, been on our way and seen what the scene was about instead of saying no to each other.' So, they decided 'Ok, we'll say yes to each other. That will be one of the rules.' So, Del was coming up with these rules with Elaine a long time ago.
JF: Where were you born?
CH: Chicago.
JF: What were some early influences on your sense of humor?
CH: My parents were the earliest. They were very funny people. Diner was very fun. My dad was kind of like a Don Rickles. We had to defend ourselves and take it.
JF: Did you look for any of that in the humor that you found fun later on in your life?
CH: I think it was an influence on my sarcasm, then later, watching tv I was influenced by the Smothers Brothers.
JF: When did you know that you wanted to get involved with show business and performing?
CH: Not until I started taking improv classes. It was in college, upper college. Even when I was in college I was studying to be a teacher, and I even taught for a couple years in a school for juvenile deliquents. I had a minor of theater in college. If you were a Speech major, you had to take a second major. I actually had Speech and English as a double major, then I was a minor in theater. So, they made me do a few plays, and my plays always turned into comedies. I would resort to comedy and the directors would tear their hair out. I was in an Ionesco play called 'No Exit.' It's a short play where these two people realize this is their hell, to be together forever in this same room. To prove that the girl is lying to me, I'm supposed to pick up this knife and stab her. So, we're on stage and I picked up the knife. The prop department made the knife. [laughs] And I picked it up and it fell apart. So, I had to strangle her. I guess I had a funny reaction on my face. I was surprised and I started strangling her and the whole audience was in hysterics. There was my first foraye into comedy.
JF: So, how did you get involved with improv comedy?
CH: I was actually at a party and I met Tim Kazarinski. I remember fooling around, doing bits and he said that I should be on stage. He set me up with an audition for Second City, which of course I failed miserably because I didn't even know what it was. They had you do cold readings and I was like 'What the hell is going on here?' Then I wanted to find out what it was that I just lost. Then I started to watch shows. I thought 'You can do this? This is great.' So, I started taking classes at Players Workshop, which is now something totally different, so I don't recommend it. Yeah, I was hooked.
JF: And about what year was that if you don't mind saying?
CH: I'm going to say that was about 80. Maybe 1979.
JF: So, what were those early classes like in Players Workshop?
CH: They were pretty bad now that I look back on it. [laughs] Now that I realize how to do it I realize how much was wrong that I was taught. I was taught that if you give someone what we call now-a-days 'a gift,' like if I say to you 'Bob, I'm so sorry you've become a parapelegic and [inaudible]' you kind of know what I'm expecting from you, they would call that a 'lay-on.' Every time you'd give someone information they'd say 'You're laying-on information. Don't lay-on information.' It wasn't until I met Del that I learned no, you're telling him something, that's a gift. I was totally taught not to give that gift. [laughs] So, now that I look back. I'm like 'Wow, that's terrible.'
JF: So, were people doing actual improv scenes in those classes?
CH: Oh yeah, they were teaching Second City stuff, like the warm-up and [shift [?]]. You know if you do something I do it bigger then bigger. More structured scenes than relationship scenes that were really improvised, that's what I remember doing more.
JF: How did you get involved with the kind of improv that you would come to identify as long-form improv?
CH: Well, that didn't even exist when I was a student. I read about David Shepard coming to town. David, I had read in 'Something Wonderful Right Away,' had created this game competition called Improv Olympic in Canada, but it didn't go over well. I know now that's because David was a little scattered to say the least. So, when he came to town I saw him and thought to myself 'Well, heck, I can do that Improv Olympic thing here if he'll give me a crack at it. I have an improv group. Dan Castellanetta has an improv group.' There were so many of us who graduated the Players Workshop who didn't have a place to play, because there wasn't Improv Olympic. There was only Second City, and if you weren't on the Main Stage of Second City you weren't playing. There wasn't even an ETC.
So, I approached him and he said 'Yeah, if you think you can pull it off, do it.' So, I got my group, Dan Castellanetta's group, a guy named Frank Farrell had a group called 'Free Shakespeare,' and we started to perform. We were doing games and were very successful. I even got a team of improvisers that were Rabbis called 'The God Squad.' [laughs] I started doing things to get press by making identity teams. It was successful. We were packing CrossCurrents, but after a few months the work was really bad. It was game-y and commercial. We were resorting to the same tricks. It was always the same ending. It started to get boring, and I knew something was wrong if we started getting bored.
I had heard about Del Close over the past year and that he hated me, because he hated David Shepard. He hated anyone that worked with David Shepard. I was mad about that. He didn't know me. He hadn't seen my shows. So, I just thought 'This guy's a real asshole.' I met him in an art gallery, and we had a very bad first meeting because he was doing something called the Innovacation and I thought he was invoking demons. I went up to him and told him he had a lot of nerve to invoke demons. He was like 'Um, I protected the building.' I was like 'You can't do that,' and walked away. Now if he didn't hate me before, he definitely hated me now, but I figured he didn't know who I was.
So, at the time again, back when I'm bored at CrossCurrents, I saw him sitting in the cafe one day at CrossCurrents, which was a bar and a lobby and a theater. So, I went up to him and asked him if he wanted to teach a class for Improv Olympic. He goes 'Can I do anything I want?' I was like 'Yeah.' He goes 'Can I invoke demons?' I was like 'Yeah.'
He taught an amazing class. He showed what the Innvocation really was. Afterwards I took him for coffee and I said 'There has to be something more to improvisation than these games.' He said 'Oh, you're not a twit after all.' I said 'Thanks, I guess.' He said 'Well, I've been working on something in the 60's called the Harold, which will change the face of improvisational comedy, but Ruby won't let me work on it, because he's making no ends and he doesn't want to change anything.' He said 'If you want to close down your little game theater and work with me we can change the face of improvisational comedy together.' I was like 'Yes, please.' That's what we did and after long-form was born.
He taught me everything he knew and together we actually came up with this form. He didn't have all the stuff together. It was just like scene after scene after scene. It just went on forever. I told him about one of my favorite games at the Improv Olympic, which was the Time Dash where you had a beginning middle and end. Then he thought 'Well, if we tied that together.' It was the only game at Improv Olympic that I really loved, because it was improv. We didn't know if it was a form or not. Before, during and after the excersize is over. Before, during and after the first meeting. Things progressed. It was real art to me. So, we decided together 'If we take three of those, and one of your opening games and some intersepersed, we can combine both our work.'
JF: I was talking to Dave Pasquesi about the beginning of the Harold and he said there was a lot of experimentation, that people would try a lot of new things to see what worked and what didn't.
CH: Well sure, we went in there with that training wheels plan. It was always an opening with monologues and information, but sometimes we were just wandering around looking at the floor. It was about a year until we figured 'Ok, let's not do that. [laughs] Let's stand there and really focus.' There were a lot of things that slowly changed, but we were all kind of inventing the wheel together. We did have a little bit of the structure. We knew that the scenes were going to come back. We knew that there'd be some monologues. We didn't know what the games were going to be. The games were always improvised. It was really cool. They would go for about 45 minutes back then. After Barron's Barracudas I think Del and I pretty much got it down.
JF: You mentioned that first workshop where Del did the Innvocation with you and some other people. What was it like being in those early workshops and how did it change what you viewed improv as?
CH: It was mind-boggling. We were really learning everything right for the first time. That's the first time we heard 'Say yes to each other. Make each other look good. Why are you pimping each other?' 'We got a laugh.' 'Oh really? You think that's more important?' We were like 'Wow.' We would leave there thinking that he had just given us the secrets to the universe. Think of all the things that we take for granted: the idea of getting a laugh because something was called back, seeing how patterns work. That was mind-blowing to us. 'Oh, we don't have get up there and be funny?' No, it's about call-backs, and if you call-back three times you're going to get huge laughs. We were like 'Holy shit.' This was mind-blowing.
J: So, how did Improv Olympic begin to change and grow as time went on?
C: Basically, we kept getting better and better at long-form. It was about the time that Blue Velveeta came that they got the Harold down. They were doing fast, furious Harolds. It wasn't like Barron's Barracudas anymore, who were doing 45 minutes. There's were like 30 minutes. They knew exactly what was happening and everything would tie up. The opening would connect to the closer. Everything would have levels.
The Barrons were great. They were the pioneers, but they weren't the best team that we ever had. It just got better and better. Blue Velveeta was the best team then, then The Family with Adam McKay the UCB guys. Del described them as 'Watching 6 men fall down the stairs at the same time land on their feet.' Through the years they just hit it, then Del and I decided 'Ok, that's the training wheels Harold. Now we can get it to the point where we don't worry about the form anymore.' We know that now we do a bunch of different scenes. They can take place at different times. It doesn't have to be in order. You can intersperes it with other games. You get it to be different levels of meaning. It was like free-falling now. It wasn't 1, 2, 3, scene, 1, 2, 3, game, 1, 2, 3.
JF: Have you noticed a change in improv over the years? Has it become faster and more condensed, like from Barron's Barracudas to Blue Velveeta? And if so, do you like that? Do you think it's a good step?
CH: Del used to say that we were doing comedy. The reason we were doing slow comedy is because we need time to think, and if we think we'll be more intelligent and the show will be more satisfying. He used to say 'Access your third thought.' Your first thought is your knee-jerk reaction. It's going to be a little jokey. Your second thought is a little better. The third thought is going to be the best. So, our Harolds were all very slow in the old days because they were doing it, then as they started getting better and better at it we started getting better at accessing that third thought. Now it's fast and it's still smart, and that's what we need. If we have some teams that are fast and not smart, then no, I don't like it. If we have a team like The Family was that is smart and could just access that third thought faster, then I like it.
And people are doing it better. Del used to talk about morphogenetic fields. It's kind of like this theory where you put rats in a maze and they can't do the maze, then as soon as a rat does it, then the other rats can do it right away. So, it's kind of like those ideas are trapped in that knowesphere. That's what's been happening here. People are getting better and better at it. And people are coming into classes better. I can see there are certain concepts that the world just has already.
JF: So are you happy with the state of improv? And if it could change in any way how would you like to see it change?
CH: The hard part for me is to keep it as good as it has always been in the past. There are new coaches. They weren't here when Del was teaching, so sometimes I see things being taught wrong. There are wrong values being taught. It's hard for me, because I can't be everywhere. I'm kind of a victim of my own success. I can't be teaching every team. So, I'll see teams on stage and go 'Oh God, they're doing this wrong, or they're not thinking or they don't understand why the opening is so important.' That concerns me. So, I'm not always totally happy, no. Even with some of my best teams I'm never happy. I think that's a director's job though to never be satisfied.
Do I think improv has gotten better over the years? Absolutely. I remember seeing a documentary about the old Second City days with Elaine May and Severn Darden, and oh what's the name. My name just went blank. I'll come up with it in a minute. Do you know the name of the pioneers of Second City?
JF: A couple people. I know Paul Sills.
CH: I know her name. Anyway, Severn and this woman who I'm trying to think of, she walked out on stage, Severn was on his knees and he was planting. He said 'How do you like my garden?' She said 'That's not a garden, that's garbage.' The audience cracked up. She was fantastic. She'd get thrown out of a level 1 class now. But these were the pioneers. This was funny stuff. That's why Del came up with these things, because he was there. He was like 'We shouldn't do that to each other. We can't screw each other over for a joke.' That's what Joan Rivers used to do to him. He did a scene with her, this is the famous story, where she initiated the scene and said 'I want a divorce.' From her initiation he understood that she wanted him to play the distraught husband, so he said 'But honey, what about the children?' She said 'We don't have any.' It got a huge laugh, but he looked like an idiot. What man doesn't know if he has children or not? She would get a laugh at the expense of her fellow players, as a result people didn't trust her on stage. She became a stand-up, but she's not an improviser. It's a different animal, because an improviser should take care of their partners. You're taking a risk to be out there every night. You have to make sure that your partner has your back.
Those are the things he developed with Elaine May. They called them 'The Kitchen Rules.' They'd do a show, he and Elaine and Severn and Mike Nichols, and they'd go back to her apartment and go 'What the hell went wrong tonight? Why was it so bad?' Well, Del said 'When someone said 'We've got a flat tire,' I said 'Ok, I'll fix it. Give me the jack.' Someone said 'No, I don't have a jack. No, there's no jack.' If you had just given me the jack, we could have fixed it, been on our way and seen what the scene was about instead of saying no to each other.' So, they decided 'Ok, we'll say yes to each other. That will be one of the rules.' So, Del was coming up with these rules with Elaine a long time ago.
posted by JoshFult at 11:30 AM
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