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 it is revealed. The act of revealing – that is.. read more →
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 playing. In addition, the sidecoach has to also be.. read more →
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 the game is the ‘ball’ — the FOCUS, a technical problem, sometimes a double technical problem which.. read more →
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 creative connections that lead to breakthroughs.” –.. read more →
Tales of Viola Spolin
How Viola Spolin Helped Me Overcome Self-Pity “Poor me. Nobody loves me.” Underneath my cheerful façade, underneath my very well developed sense of humor, I walked aroundHollywoodwith that deeply embedded in my soul. I was working as a bartender, ministering to and medicating others’ pain with banter and booze while chasing the dream of being.. read more →
Out of the Head and Into the Space
Discovering Space as Substance and a New Reality[i] 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 at the age of thirteen in 1964. In the 60’s.. read more →
Viola Spolin and Me
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 Potsdam University. He told me he was doing a paper.. read more →
The Trouble with 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 happy accident, I encountered Viola.. read more →