This handbook presents theatre games and side coaching for the solo player. It contains over 40 exercises which allow actors to side coach themselves, at home, in rehearsal, or in performance. The author asks the actor to develop the ability to enter present time, a moment of full consciousness and awareness with all the responses awake and alert, ready to guide you...allowing you, the real you, your natural self to emerge . Spolin's improvisational techniques changed the nature and practice of modern theatre. Her work has inspired actors, directors, teachers, and writers in theatre, television, and film. Her techniques have also influenced the fields of education, mental health, social work, and psychology.
About the Author
Viola Spolin, the originator of theater games, was introduced to the use of games, storytelling, folk dance, and dramatics as tools for stimulating creative expression in the 1920s while a student of Neva Boyd at Chicago's Hull House. During her years as a teacher and supervisor of creative dramatics there, she began to develop her nonverbal, nonpsychological approach. Her books have been translated into Swedish, German, and Portuguese. She died in 1994. Paul Sills is Viola Spolin's son and the founding director of Chicago's Second City and of Story Theater. He is the coeditor of the third edition of Spolin's Improvisation for the Theater, also published by Northwestern University Press.