Viola Spolin (November 7, 1906 - November 22, 1994) can probably be considered as the American Grandmother of Improv. She influenced the first generation of Improv at the Second City in Chicago in the late 50's, as her son, Paul Sills, was one of the co-founders. Spolin developed new games that focused upon creativity, adapting and focusing the concept of play to unlock the individual's capacity for creative self-expression. Viola Spolin's use of recreational games in theatre came from her background with the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. She studied under Neva Boyd. November 7 is the 311th day of the year (312th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 54 days remaining. ... 1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... November 22 is the 326th day (327th on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ... The Second City Logo The Second City is a long-running improvisational comedy troupe based in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago, with offshoot troupes in other cities, most notably Toronto. ... Nickname: The Windy City, The Second City, Chi Town Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location in Chicagoland and Illinois Coordinates: Country United States State Illinois Counties Cook, DuPage Incorporated March 4, 1837 Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) Area    - City 606. ... WPA Graphic The Works Progress Administration (later Works Projects Administration, abbreviated WPA), was created in May 1935 by Presidential order (Congress funded it annually but did not set it up). ... Neva Leona Boyd (1876-1963) founded the Recreational Training School at the Hull House in Chicago. ...

Spolin is the author of a number of improv texts, her most famous being Improvisation for the Theatre.

Early work

Viola Spolin trained initially (1924-26) to be a settlement worker, studying at Neva Boyd's Group Work School in Chicago. Boyd's innovative teaching in the areas of group leadership, recreation, and social group work strongly influenced Spolin, as did the use of traditional game structures to affect social behavior in inner-city and immigrant children. Nickname: The Windy City, The Second City, Chi Town Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location in Chicagoland and Illinois Coordinates: Country United States State Illinois Counties Cook, DuPage Incorporated March 4, 1837 Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) Area    - City 606. ... In sociology, a group is usually defined as a collection consisting of a number of people who share certain aspects, interact with one another, accept rights and obligations as members of the group and share a common identity. ... In biology, psychology and sociology social behavior is behavior directed towards, or taking place between, members of the same species. ... Inner City on MTV Inner City is an American music group formed in Detroit in 1987. ... Immigration is the act of moving to or settling in another country or region, temporarily or permanently. ...

While serving as drama supervisor for the Chicago branch of the Works Progress Administration's Recreational Project (1939-1941), Spolin perceived a need for an easily grasped system of theater training that could cross the cultural and ethnic barriers within the WPA Project. Building upon the experience of Boyd's work, she responded by developing new games that focused upon individual creativity, adapting and focusing the concept of play to unlock the individual's capacity for creative self-expression. These techniques were later to be formalized under the rubric "Theater Games." This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

The Birth of American Improv

In 1946 Spolin founded the Young Actors Company in Hollywood. Children six years of age and older were trained, through the medium of the still developing Theater Games system, to perform in productions. This company continued until 1955, when Spolin returned to Chicago to direct for the Playwright's Theater Club and, subsequently, to conduct games workshops with the Compass Theatre, the country's first professional, improvisational acting company. From 1960 to 1965, still in Chicago, she worked with her son Paul Sills as workshop director for his Second City Company and continued to teach and develop Theater Games theory. As an outgrowth of this work, she published Improvisation for the Theater (ISBN 0-8101-4008-X) (1963), consisting of approximately two hundred and twenty games and exercises. It has become a classic reference text for teachers of acting, as well as for educators in other fields. In 1965 she co-founded the Game Theater in Chicago, again working with Sills. Open only one evening a week, the theater sought to have its audiences participate directly in Theater Games, thus effectively eliminating the conventional separation between improvisational actors and audiences who watched them. The experiment achieved limited success, and the theater closed after only a few months. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Acting is the work of an actor, a person in theatre, film, or any other storytelling medium who tells the story by portraying a character and, usually, speaking or singing the written text or play. ... The second city of a country is the city that is (or was) the second-most important, usually after the capital or first city, according to some criteria. ... Separation may refer to a several different subjects: In chemistry, separation refers to the separation process. ... An audience is the/a group of people who participate in and experience or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music or academics in any medium. ... In the scientific method, an experiment (Latin: ex-+-periri, of (or from) trying), is a set of actions and observations, performed in the context of solving a particular problem or question, to support or falsify a hypothesis or research concerning phenomena. ...

Later years

In 1970 - 1971 Spolin served as special consultant for productions of Sills' Story Theater in Los Angeles, New York, and on television. On the West Coast, she conducted workshops for the companies of the Rhoda and Friends and Lovers television series and appeared as an actress in the Paul Mazursky film Alex in Wonderland (MGM 1970). A consultant (from the latin consultus meaning legal expert) is a professional who provides expert advice in a particular domain or area of expertise such as accountancy, technology, the law, human resources, marketing, medicine, finance, public affairs, communication, or more esoteric areas of knowledge, for example engineering of different kinds... Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,290. ... Official language(s) English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  Ranked 27th  - Total 54,520 sq mi (141,205 km²)  - Width 285 miles (455 km)  - Length 330 miles (530 km)  - % water 13. ... Regional definitions vary from source to source. ... A workshop is a room or smaller building which contains tools and/or machinery for making or repairing things. ... Rhoda is an American situation comedy and a television spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. ... Friends and Lovers is a 1999 film directed by George Haas about a group of twentysomethings on a ski trip. ... Alex in Wonderland is a 1970 feature-length black comedy film directed by Paul Mazursky, starring Donald Sutherland and Ellen Burstyn. ...

In November 1975 the publication of the Theater Game File made her unique approaches to teaching and learning more readily available to classroom teachers; in 1976 she established the Spolin Theater Game Center in Hollywood, serving as its artistic director. In 1979 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Eastern Michigan University, and until recently she has continued to teach at the Theater Game Center. In 1985 her new book, Theater Games for Rehearsal: A Director's Handbook, was published. 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... A teachers room in a Japanese middle school, 2005. ... The artistic director of a theatre is responsible for choosing the material staged in a season, and the hiring of creative/production personnel (such as directors), as well as other theatre management tasks. ... An Honorary degree (Latin: honoris causa ad gradum) is a degree awarded to someone by an institution that he or she may have never attended, it may be a bachelors, masters or doctorate degree - however, the latter is most common. ... Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti, MI, USA 48197) is a comprehensive, co-educational public university located in Ypsilanti, Michigan. ...

Spolin's Games

Spolin's Theater Games are simple, operational structures that transform complicated theater conventions and techniques into game forms. Each game is built upon a specific focus or technical problem and is an exercise that militates against the artifice of self-conscious acting. (for options, see option exercise) U.S. marine emerges from the water upon completing the swimming portion of the triathlon. ... Look up artificial in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Acting is the work of an actor, a person in theatre, film, or any other storytelling medium who tells the story by portraying a character and, usually, speaking or singing the written text or play. ...

The playing (acting) emerges naturally and spontaneously; age, background, and content are irrelevant. By themselves, the games have liberating effect (accounting for their wide application in self actualization contexts); within the theater context, each clearly fosters a facet of performance technique. There are games to free the actor's tension, games to "cleanse" the actor of subjective preconceptions of the meaning of words, games of relationship and character, games of concentration - in short, games for each of the area with which the growing actor is concerned. Key to the rubric of Spolin games are the terms physicalization ("showing and not telling"), spontaneity ("a moment of explosion"), intuition ("unhampered knowledge beyond the sensory equipment - physical and mental"), audience ("part of the game, not the lonely looker - onners"), and transformation ("actors and audience alike receive…the appearance of a new reality") To achieve their purpose, Theater Games need only the rules of the game, the players (both actors and audience are considered to be players), and a space in which to play. Beyond the very tangible pleasures of "playing" which the games encompass, they also heighten sensitivity, increase self-awareness, and effect group and interpersonal communication. As a result, Spolin's games have developed currency beyond actor training, that is, in encountering techniques, self-awareness programs, and nonverbal communication studies. Viola Spolin's systems are in use throughout the USA not only in university, community, and professional theater training programs, but also in countless curricula concerned with educational interests not related specifically to theater. Naturally is the fifth album by American rock band Three Dog Night, released in 1970 (see 1970 in music). ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ...

References

• The Spolin Center

See also

• Books by Viola Spolin
• The Second City - Warning, lots of Flash Animations