Time Dash

A shortform ImprovOlympic game, originally derived from Viola Spolin's exercises and taught by Charna Halpern in her beginners workshops, in which characters in a scene move either forward or backward in time to give a greater sense of their relationship and story. Del Close recognized the Time Dash's potential for exploring characters across different temporal contexts, and it became a foundational element in the development of the Harold; in long-form practice, a 'time-dash second beat' returns to one or both of the same characters playing the same game at a different point in time.