Recent Posts
No Fail – No Fear
“I don’t believe in success and failure.” – Viola Spolin. We all approach new things with some trepidation. I’ve been told by new students that they are there in the workshop because Improv terrifies them and they want to face that fear. Bravo to them for their...
THE INNOVATORS – Viola Spolin by Jeffrey Sweet
The Innovators From Dramatics Magazine 2010-09-09 Viola Spolin – Jeffrey Sweet, author of Something Wonderful Right Away – an Oral History of Second City and The Compass Players Young Viola Spolin wanted to be an actress. She left her home in Chicago and went to New...
How Viola Spolin Helped Me Overcome Self-Pity
Tales of Viola Spolin Written by Gary Schwartz on January 12, 2012. “Poor me. Nobody loves me.” Underneath my cheerful facade, underneath my very well developed sense of humor, I walked around Hollywood with that deeply embedded in my soul. I was working as a...
The Rise of the Guru
From Spolin’s Games to Improv Today Religion began with a single purpose; to connect humanity to the spiritual. Ever since its conception, religion has evolved and morphed. Some say it has been refined and some say redefined and re-interpreted. Nonetheless, it has...
Becoming Part of a Whole
Becoming Part of the Whole contrasted with Yes, and… Improvisation today concerns itself with connection, but it is mostly a connection of common ideas and shared references. Yes, and… is not wholly without merit, for in many cases collaboration of this sort can...
ON SPACE
SPACE: Something about which we know very little; the stage area where a reality can be placed; space can be used to shape the realities we create; an area of no boundaries; without limits; the player uses space to bring reality into the phenomenal world; to make space for the object; the larger environment; the space beyond; a place to perceiver receive communication.
The Group Games Model of Learning
The Group Games Model of Learning by Gary Schwartz Games are a natural group form. They provide personal, wholehearted, unselfconscious involvement in activities that allow us to feel free to absorb and integrate our experiences and add them to our growing knowledge...
WHEN TO EXPLORE AND HEIGHTEN
This post is an esoteric one, but an important one. I am always at a loss when I send out a side-coach and, in the words of Viola Spolin, it doesn’t penetrate. My first thought is to say it again or louder, but if it makes no sense to the players, I am only referring...
Sidecoaching & the Language of Authority
Do this, don't do that! Like this! Here’s how I want it! That's better! That's rotten! That's not funny! Now that was FUNNY! That's what I want! - spoken by a director at a recent improv workshop I attended. If you teach or direct, you must be mindful of your role as...
Let What You See, See You
Space Walk Commentary (from the Theater Game File Handbook by Viola Spolin: published by Northwestern University Press) Space Walks and Feeling Self with Self, more than just physical sensory and perception exercises, are organic ways of...
Beyond Yes, And
“Information is a very weak form of communication” – Spolin I have been working with Spolin Games for the last thirty years. I first began in an improv comedy class learning how to be fast and funny with a group of very talented actors, who are still playing. Then, by...
What Does it Mean to Improvise?
“Creativity is not the clever rearranging of the known.” – Viola Spolin Creativity is a state that allows us to touch the unknown and to bring it into the phenomenal world: To make the invisible visible. The unknown is a territory that holds all possibilities, until...
Improv as a Tool for Writers
This comes from writer / performer Eva Moon. Improv as a Tool for Writers By Eva Moon One of the pleasures of writing fiction is falling in love with the characters you create - and then torturing the hell out of them. Bringing them to life and uncovering all...
I Have to Stop You…
Recently, I attended a master class by Impro creator Keith Johnstone. It was very interesting to watch how he conducted scenes with beginners and some of his wonderfully talented master students. I watched as he constantly stopped players from the outset when they...
If You’re Happy and You Know it, Clap Your Hands!
Or Debriefing the Debrief Remember when we played for fun? I’ve been playing games most of my life. The games we play shape us as people and as a society. In the same way lion cubs and kittens, cavort, pounce and chase around, play equips them for being cats in later...
But Was I Good?
Approval/Disapproval comes from an authoritarian based system. It starts with our parents, goes to our teachers and we internalize it so completely it becomes the fabric of our lives and of society. I'm not saying that Authoritarians don't get things done or are not...
WHEN & WHAT TO EXPLORE AND HEIGHTEN?
This post is an esoteric one, but an important one. I am always at a loss when I send out a side-coach and, in the words of Viola Spolin, it doesn’t penetrate. My first thought is to say it again or louder, but if it makes no sense to the players, I am only referring...
Biographical & Historical Information on Viola Spolin by Jeff Sweet
Young Viola Spolin wanted to be an actress. She left her home in Chicago and went to New York to gave it her best shot. She got no work there. She returned to Chicago and shifted her focus. In so doing, she transformed the American theater. (PS, she also finally...
An Improv Game for Writers
Viola Spolin’s Writing Game Any number of players and one sidecoach Materials: 4 pieces of paper or one divided into quadrants, pen or pencil Label each paper 1, 2, 3 and 4. Title #1 My Dream, #2 How To, #3 A Story and #4 A letter (or any 4 disparate subjects or...
Transcending the Game
Giving our full effort is, in effect fulfilling our potential. By testing our limits we ever increase the possibility of going further and further. It is in our nature to explore via play. Remember that in all games, the rules are made to be broken – we forget this....
The Four Game Progression
How to Improve your Improv The Problem: In working to create scenes from Who, What and Where, no matter what the game is, once the players establish their who, what and where, novices and players who come from the 'story' approach to improv, invariably begin thinking...
Playing Creates Community
In our ever more complex and technological era, true person to person interaction is lost as we interact with each other via technology instead. (witness this blog) The technological revolution has brought us closer in one respect, but the need to interact in a...
The Story Trap
Pointer # 9 - The energy released in solving the problem, flowing through the Where, Who, and What, forms the scene. Taken from "Improvisation for the Theater" by Viola Spolin; 3rd Edition, Northwestern University Press. I believe creating story should not be the...
The Layers of the Onion
Silent Tension without Who, What and Where* It had been maybe two years of Wednesday afternoon workshops with Viola before we did an exercise called Silent Tension without Who, What and Where. "I don't do this one right away." she said to us. "But now that you have...
The Power of Play and the Need for Playing
Play creates happy emotional condition of the organism-as-a-whole. Play involves social values, as does no other behavior. The spirit of play develops social adaptability, ethics, mental and emotional control, and imagination. These are the more complex adjustments a...
What’s in a Game?
“Acting requires presence. Playing produces this state.” –Viola Spolin When I assisted Viola Spolin in various workshops, the very first thing we would play was a game of “Swat Tag”. The game involves a group of people sitting in chairs, a ‘home base’ (a chair or...
The Genius of Preoccupation
Spolin’s pathway to the Unknown The [Spolin’s Theater Games] exercises are artifices against artificiality, structures designed to almost fool spontaneity into being–or perhaps a frame carefully built to keep out interferences in which the player waits. Important in...
Counteracting Fear
What if…? “What if I can’t do it?” That’s where it starts for me. I get afraid. “Afraid of what?” “Not being able to do it? Then people will laugh at me?” “Hey! I’m in an Improv class, isn’t that what I want?” the voice in my head is having a discussion with another...
Story, Story – Live!
The game of Building a Story is a staple with improv groups around the world. It is the essence of collaboration by building a story one word at a time and by sharing ideas using give and take and intense listening. Invariably, the challenge wakes you up and your...
The Beginner’s Mind
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few… Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Beginner’s mind is experiencing a thing for the first time. “Firsts” are always memorable. Improvisation is a constant search for ‘first times’. I once...
The Art of Sidecoaching
The most subtle and essential element in Spolin Games is sidecoaching. The sidecoach is at once a fellow player, a grounded teacher and a canny director. Sidecoaching is as much a skill as it is an art. It therefore requires the same intuitive ability evoked by...
A Brief History of Improvisation: Spolin and Sills Laid Down The Rules
Spolin and Sills Laid Down The Rules. The Generations Who Came After Played by Them. That’s How Chicago Invented Itself by Todd London Originally published as “Chicago Impromptu” in American Theatre, July/August 1990 In the beginning, Viola Spolin wrote the word...
My First Entrance into the Unknown
My Big Breakthrough "…trying to force an insight can actually prevent the insight. While it is commonly assumed that the best way to solve a difficult problem is to relentlessly focus, this clenched state of mind comes with a hidden cost; it inhibits the sort of...
Stop Making Offers!
Playwriting is not Scene Improvisation Some students find it very difficult to keep from "writing a play." They remain separate from the group and never interrelate. Their withdrawal blocks progress while working on-stage. They do not enter into relationships but...
Show! Don’t Tell!
When you don’t see where you are, all you can do is talk about it. You get a suggestion for a scene: Who – A husband and wife. Where – at Disneyland. What – waiting to get on a ride. Most players will begin the scene with dialogue something like this. Husband: Well,...
Short Form and Long Form are the same
The distinction between short form and long form is a development that stems from the going awry or misunderstanding the focus of a game. These terms get bandied about as if they are two separate disciplines. They are not. Spolin used these games as exercises to help...
Body – Mind – Intuition
"If you can get it out of the head and into the body…Body, Mind, Intuition. This is what we're after. Body, Mind, Intuition" – Viola Spolin The quote above was directed to sixty teachers in a workshop Viola ran and which I assisted. I've had the great good fortune to...
Introducing Viola Spolin
Improvisation: Beyond Process is Celebration A profile of Viola Spolin and my talk about the first exercise I did in her workshop.
The Paradox of Side-Coaching
Solving my "Shut-Off" "My work is not Psychodrama!! Never use your own tears! Use the character's tears!" Viola proclaimed this very emphatically when we would try to work out our personal problems in a scene. Some actors in our workshop were trained to use 'sense...
Space is not nothing – it is EVERYTHING!
Using Space objects is not pantomime. As I wrote about in my previous blog, http://www.improv-odyssey.com/out-of-the-head-and-into-the-space/ Space object and work with contacting the where is one aspect of this work. As Viola puts it in her Handbook for the Theater...
How I Met Viola Spolin
My First Encounter with the Mother of Improvisation I was living in Hollywood, tending bar, performing comedy and mime in local cafes and trying to break into show business like thousands of other hopefuls from all over the country. A dear friend of mine called from...
Out of the Head and Into the Space
Discovering Space as Substance and a New Reality Preface I started my performing career as a mime. Mimes in the mid 1970′s and 80′s were synonymous with corny uninspired white faced buskers who went around mimicking passers-by and asking for money. I became a mime...
The Seduction of the Teacher
"Students who regard an instructor highly will tend to adopt that instructor’s attitudes, orientations, and values. This is a seductive phenomenon because it can lead to the ego-enhancement of instructors who have not reached full psychological maturity. This...
The Magic Bond of Playing
After 35 years of playing Spolin Games with various groups, I've noticed an interesting thing. I am struck by the fact that these groups as a result of playing together for an extended period keep in touch with each other and often come together to play as opportunity...
See Unlabeled
"That's what poetry is for. Using language to penetrate the mystery." – Joseph Campbell, the Power of Myth Intuition is not just a word When you hear a word too often it can lose its meaning. Often Viola would exchange the word intuition for other phrases that she...
The Approval / Disapproval Syndrome
What keeps us in our head If you have survived by trying to please others, figuring out what they want you to say and how they want you to act – and then doing so with as much skill and originality as possible, your approval/disapproval syndrome is highly...