Del Close(1934-1999)
- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Director
Del Close was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas, and attended Kansas
State University, after touring with a sideshow act for a period of
time in his teenage years. In 1957, at the age of 23, he became a
member of the St. Louis branch of "The Compass Players", the direct
precursor of "The Second City", which opened in December, 1959. Most of
the St. Louis cast went to Chicago, but Close chose New York and a
budding career as a hip, young stand-up comic in competition with
Lenny Bruce,
George Carlin,
Bob Newhart, etc. That same year, he also
appeared in the off-Broadway musical, "The Nervous Set", of which an
original cast album exists. Close came to Chicago in 1960 and, more or
less, made it his home for the rest of his life, always gravitating
back there after a few months or even years elsewhere. Perhaps he
understood instinctively the advice
Paul Sills gave
Stuart Gordon some years later:
"Come to Chicago", they Close directed and performed at "The Second
City", until he was fired (major substance abuse problems) in 1965.
He spent the next five years in San Francisco eating acid and touring
with the "Merry Pranksters" on their famous psychedelic bus, creating
light images for Grateful Dead,
and working with The Committee, a North
Beach equivalent of "Second City", which Close helped organize. It was
at "The Committee" that he first began seriously to develop his ideas
and techniques of long-form improvisation, although "Second City" had
experimented with long-form as early as 1962. Close returned to Chicago
in 1970 and set up a free, open-to-all workshop at the Kingston Mines
Company Store, the café attached to the Kingston Mines Theatre Company
on Lincoln Avenue (where the parking garage of Children's Memorial
Medical Center now stands). He drilled his students -- everyone from
acid-dropping love children to a vice-president of the Foote, Cone and
Belding advertising agency -- in the basic principals of improv and
theatre games, and in the specifics of "The Harold", a long-form improv
technique developed by Close. At a time when most improvisation mainly
focused on creating single scenes, Del devised "The Harold" as
something not unlike a sonata form. Several themes would be
established, a community of characters would be introduced, and then
the resulting scenes would play off each other in comedic counterpoint
-- characters from one environment moving to another and phrases and
images recurring, each time accruing new meaning. Going to this from
conventional sketches was like going from arithmetic to calculus. (Why
was it called "The Harold"? When he introduced it, one of his students
said, "Del, you've invented something, you get to name it". Del said,
"Well, the Beatles called their haircut "Arthur", so I'll call this
Harold". He later regretted the flipness. "Probably my most significant
contribution and it's got that stupid name").
The weekly public performances at Kingston Mines sometimes had as many
as 20 performers participating. After a few months, Close hand-picked a
dozen of his best, and moved operations down the block to the Body
Politic for twice-weekly workshops and Sunday night performances. He
named the company "The Chicago Extension Improv Company", as an
extension of his San Francisco work. The best-known players to emerge
from the troupe were "Broadway"
Betty Thomas,
Dan Ziskie,
Brian Hickey and Jonathan
Abarbanel.
Before leaving Chicago, again, in 1972 to perform for
Paul Sills in a Story Theatre production at
the Mark Taper Forum in LA, Close and "The Chicago Extension" had begun
to explore scenario improvs based on dreams. The techniques the
"Extension" developed after Close left became Dream Theatre, which
continued at the Body Politic over the next five years, although with
different personnel. Close returned to Chicago in 1973 as resident
director at "The Second City", a position he kept until 1982. It was
during this decade that he taught and directed a long list of TV and
film comedy greats, including John Belushi,
Bill Murray,
John Candy,
Don DePollo,
George Wendt,
Audrie Neenan,
Eugenie Ross-Leming,
David Rasche,
Shelley Long,
Ann Ryerson, etc.
Upon leaving the troupe, Close pursued legitimate acting opportunities
with a number of theatres, including Wisdom Bridge, Remains, Goodman
and Steppenwolf. He won his
Joseph Jefferson Award in 1985
in a radical "Hamlet", directed by
Robert Falls at Wisdom Bridge.
Close also did TV and film work, appearing in
The Untouchables (1987) and
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986),
among others. It was during this period that Close finally beat his
long heroin addiction (although he continued to smoke cigarettes and
marijuana), in part truly shocked by the excesses and death of
John Belushi, and, in part, because, as he
told Jonathan Abarbanel, "I've decided I want to live".
Close was enjoying his new theatrical vistas, as well as a successful
professional partnership with
Charna Halpern and ImprovOlympic, which
allowed him to concentrate on further development of "The Harold", and
on team improv. Close was 64 when he died of complications due to
emphysema the evening of March 4, 1999, just five days shy of his
birthday. He left no survivors, although he claimed to have fathered an
illegitimate child by a woman in Minneapolis sometime in the late
1950s. Close requested in his will that his skull be given to the Goodman Theatre so that he could play Yorick in the company's next "Hamlet". However, Halpern, his executor, was unable to persuade doctors to remove Close's skull, and it was cremated along with the rest of his body.
Close was one of three titans of improvisational theatre who put it on
the map, refined it, and turned it into the fixture of comedic and
acting technique which it has become. The first was
Viola Spolin, who started the work in the
1930s with her development of theatre games -- originally for children
-- as exercises in imagination. She didn't utilize them for public
performance. It was her son, Paul Sills, who
was able to take theatre games and use them as the basis for
development of satirical revue comedy. Sills and a group of brilliant
cohorts, including Mike Nichols,
Elaine May,
Shelley Berman,
Sheldon Patinkin and others made this
work the focus of various company experiments in the mid-1950s,
including the Compass Players in Chicago and St. Louis. In 1959, The
Second City opened, co-founded by Sills,
Howard Alk and
Bernard Sahlins. Close arrived on the
scene a year later. Within three years, both Sills and Alk had left the
troupe to pursue other ventures. Alk continued to work in the improv
field, but died young. Sills has retained improv and theatre games
within his artistic repertory -- it is part of the basis of his Story
Theatre -- but has not devoted his career to it. Close, then, became
the third titan of improvisation after Spolin and Sills, and the only
one to devote his artistic life and best theoretical thinking to it. He
fully understood pain and suffering as a basis for comedy, as well as
the nature and limitations of the comedic form. The Harold, the
scenario, long-form improv -- call it what you will -- is his personal
legacy to the field; while his own boundless, sometimes manic drive as
a charismatic teacher and director have done more to establish
improvisational theatre around the world than anything or anyone else.
The explosion of improv troupes and teams and classes (the Museum of
Contemporary Art offers an improv class, for example), and the
inclusion of theatre games and improv exercises in standard acting
curricula, are the result of the work of Spolin and Sills and Close.
With specific regard to long-form improv and Close's own contribution,
that legacy will grow even greater through the next generation, as his
students and acolytes inherit the world of comedy.
State University, after touring with a sideshow act for a period of
time in his teenage years. In 1957, at the age of 23, he became a
member of the St. Louis branch of "The Compass Players", the direct
precursor of "The Second City", which opened in December, 1959. Most of
the St. Louis cast went to Chicago, but Close chose New York and a
budding career as a hip, young stand-up comic in competition with
Lenny Bruce,
George Carlin,
Bob Newhart, etc. That same year, he also
appeared in the off-Broadway musical, "The Nervous Set", of which an
original cast album exists. Close came to Chicago in 1960 and, more or
less, made it his home for the rest of his life, always gravitating
back there after a few months or even years elsewhere. Perhaps he
understood instinctively the advice
Paul Sills gave
Stuart Gordon some years later:
"Come to Chicago", they Close directed and performed at "The Second
City", until he was fired (major substance abuse problems) in 1965.
He spent the next five years in San Francisco eating acid and touring
with the "Merry Pranksters" on their famous psychedelic bus, creating
light images for Grateful Dead,
and working with The Committee, a North
Beach equivalent of "Second City", which Close helped organize. It was
at "The Committee" that he first began seriously to develop his ideas
and techniques of long-form improvisation, although "Second City" had
experimented with long-form as early as 1962. Close returned to Chicago
in 1970 and set up a free, open-to-all workshop at the Kingston Mines
Company Store, the café attached to the Kingston Mines Theatre Company
on Lincoln Avenue (where the parking garage of Children's Memorial
Medical Center now stands). He drilled his students -- everyone from
acid-dropping love children to a vice-president of the Foote, Cone and
Belding advertising agency -- in the basic principals of improv and
theatre games, and in the specifics of "The Harold", a long-form improv
technique developed by Close. At a time when most improvisation mainly
focused on creating single scenes, Del devised "The Harold" as
something not unlike a sonata form. Several themes would be
established, a community of characters would be introduced, and then
the resulting scenes would play off each other in comedic counterpoint
-- characters from one environment moving to another and phrases and
images recurring, each time accruing new meaning. Going to this from
conventional sketches was like going from arithmetic to calculus. (Why
was it called "The Harold"? When he introduced it, one of his students
said, "Del, you've invented something, you get to name it". Del said,
"Well, the Beatles called their haircut "Arthur", so I'll call this
Harold". He later regretted the flipness. "Probably my most significant
contribution and it's got that stupid name").
The weekly public performances at Kingston Mines sometimes had as many
as 20 performers participating. After a few months, Close hand-picked a
dozen of his best, and moved operations down the block to the Body
Politic for twice-weekly workshops and Sunday night performances. He
named the company "The Chicago Extension Improv Company", as an
extension of his San Francisco work. The best-known players to emerge
from the troupe were "Broadway"
Betty Thomas,
Dan Ziskie,
Brian Hickey and Jonathan
Abarbanel.
Before leaving Chicago, again, in 1972 to perform for
Paul Sills in a Story Theatre production at
the Mark Taper Forum in LA, Close and "The Chicago Extension" had begun
to explore scenario improvs based on dreams. The techniques the
"Extension" developed after Close left became Dream Theatre, which
continued at the Body Politic over the next five years, although with
different personnel. Close returned to Chicago in 1973 as resident
director at "The Second City", a position he kept until 1982. It was
during this decade that he taught and directed a long list of TV and
film comedy greats, including John Belushi,
Bill Murray,
John Candy,
Don DePollo,
George Wendt,
Audrie Neenan,
Eugenie Ross-Leming,
David Rasche,
Shelley Long,
Ann Ryerson, etc.
Upon leaving the troupe, Close pursued legitimate acting opportunities
with a number of theatres, including Wisdom Bridge, Remains, Goodman
and Steppenwolf. He won his
Joseph Jefferson Award in 1985
in a radical "Hamlet", directed by
Robert Falls at Wisdom Bridge.
Close also did TV and film work, appearing in
The Untouchables (1987) and
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986),
among others. It was during this period that Close finally beat his
long heroin addiction (although he continued to smoke cigarettes and
marijuana), in part truly shocked by the excesses and death of
John Belushi, and, in part, because, as he
told Jonathan Abarbanel, "I've decided I want to live".
Close was enjoying his new theatrical vistas, as well as a successful
professional partnership with
Charna Halpern and ImprovOlympic, which
allowed him to concentrate on further development of "The Harold", and
on team improv. Close was 64 when he died of complications due to
emphysema the evening of March 4, 1999, just five days shy of his
birthday. He left no survivors, although he claimed to have fathered an
illegitimate child by a woman in Minneapolis sometime in the late
1950s. Close requested in his will that his skull be given to the Goodman Theatre so that he could play Yorick in the company's next "Hamlet". However, Halpern, his executor, was unable to persuade doctors to remove Close's skull, and it was cremated along with the rest of his body.
Close was one of three titans of improvisational theatre who put it on
the map, refined it, and turned it into the fixture of comedic and
acting technique which it has become. The first was
Viola Spolin, who started the work in the
1930s with her development of theatre games -- originally for children
-- as exercises in imagination. She didn't utilize them for public
performance. It was her son, Paul Sills, who
was able to take theatre games and use them as the basis for
development of satirical revue comedy. Sills and a group of brilliant
cohorts, including Mike Nichols,
Elaine May,
Shelley Berman,
Sheldon Patinkin and others made this
work the focus of various company experiments in the mid-1950s,
including the Compass Players in Chicago and St. Louis. In 1959, The
Second City opened, co-founded by Sills,
Howard Alk and
Bernard Sahlins. Close arrived on the
scene a year later. Within three years, both Sills and Alk had left the
troupe to pursue other ventures. Alk continued to work in the improv
field, but died young. Sills has retained improv and theatre games
within his artistic repertory -- it is part of the basis of his Story
Theatre -- but has not devoted his career to it. Close, then, became
the third titan of improvisation after Spolin and Sills, and the only
one to devote his artistic life and best theoretical thinking to it. He
fully understood pain and suffering as a basis for comedy, as well as
the nature and limitations of the comedic form. The Harold, the
scenario, long-form improv -- call it what you will -- is his personal
legacy to the field; while his own boundless, sometimes manic drive as
a charismatic teacher and director have done more to establish
improvisational theatre around the world than anything or anyone else.
The explosion of improv troupes and teams and classes (the Museum of
Contemporary Art offers an improv class, for example), and the
inclusion of theatre games and improv exercises in standard acting
curricula, are the result of the work of Spolin and Sills and Close.
With specific regard to long-form improv and Close's own contribution,
that legacy will grow even greater through the next generation, as his
students and acolytes inherit the world of comedy.