“This is the happiest day of my life” read a text sent to Harry Lowitz, Parker alumnus, when he notified a long time family friend that he had been “tapped” into an improv group at Yale. 

Starting from a young age, Lowitz has participated in many forms of comedy. He began by joining an improv group in second grade at the Second City, and such activities have played a consistent role in his life throughout high school and continue to today. 

When applying to colleges, Lowitz was considering the things he wanted to be present at this new stage in his education. What he didn’t fully understand at the time, though, was exactly how important comedy would be to him in his future and the vital role it would play in his life. 

“I knew that, if at all possible, I would like to go to a school where [comedy] could be a part of what I was doing, I think more so than I realized,” said Lowitz. More recently, Lowitz has had moments to reflect and has thought about how he may want to pursue comedy after college. “Maybe I’d actually like to do comedy for a career,” he said. 

Conveniently, and to his surprise, Lowitz explained how “Yale seems like an exceptionally great school for comedy. There’s currently four improv groups and four sketch comedy groups.” Out of these eight, Lowitz is involved in two –– Red Hot Poker, and The Purple Crayon. 

Red Hot Poker, the first group Lowitz joined at Yale, was where he began to start forming his first friends in college. “It was really a starting point for everything else that I did once I got on campus,” Lowitz explained. As his love for the group developed, so did his role. “I just became the new director of Red Hot Poker,” Lowitz announced. In this group, he was joined by one of his childhood best friends, Alice, whom he’d met by virtue of Second City’s middle school improv program. Coincidentally, Alice was also involved in The Purple Crayon. 

The Purple Crayon, the group that performed at Parker, differs from Red Hot Poker in the way that it is long form comedy. Lowitz explained that long form is “more about world building, and generating characters, and seeing them through…” As can be inferred from the name, such performances often stretch over more extended periods of time. That is, in comparison to short form. 

As for the name of this group, it is an eponym for the book “The Purple Crayon” about Harold, a boy who creates his own realities by drawing outside of the lines. “We’re named The Purple Crayon because we make things just like Harold does in the book,” Lowitz said. 

With the words given by the crowd, this group works to mold random remarks into a story. In the show performed during Morning Exercise, the group chose Upper School science teacher Gigi Mathews to come on stage and talk about her job. Mathews, while sitting in the spotlight on a stool, explained how the “Whoosh Bottle” experiment brought her great joy. With this phrase, The Purple Crayon tied “whoosh” to a theoretical exam question. 

A group member pretended to be in the middle of an assessment, trying to remember what sound could be heard, like a chuckle or yip, when a certain reaction took place. At Parker and at many other institutions, such a question would be comedically unexpected. What really appears on these tests are how much of an element is remaining after a chemical reaction or other questions of that nature, not the sound of the students watching. This moment got many laughs from the crowd considering its perceived absurdity. 

Now, one might wonder why Lowitz decided to come back to Francis W Parker. Members of the Purple Crayon, or as Lowitz refers to them, “Crans,” often travel as a group to perform. “We do a winter tour and a spring tour,” Lowitz explained. “We were in San Francisco over winter break.” 

During these travels, Crans book gigs, visit their communities, and often do workshops with youth. All in all, this group feels grateful to have such opportunities and enjoys sharing it with others. “We just kind of feel really lucky that doing the improv gigs allows us to travel together and spread improv to people in different parts of the country,” said Lowitz.