Direct Experience and Peak Experiences
“What we are after is a direct experience!” — Viola Spolin I used to think that a direct experience is the same as what Abraham Maslow called the ‘peak experience’. Maslow coined the term to describe what other people have referred to as a ‘religious experience’ as in a born again feeling where the subject.. read more →
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 wholesome way within our local community, person to person, is still.. read more →
How to Leave Your Ego at the Door
“Enough about me… What do you think about me?” Making Your Partner Look Good “Make your partner look good!” is a coach used in current improvisational training. The reason this coach is valuable is because it is based on the idea that there is more opportunity for good improv by being more concerned with your.. read more →
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 →
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 stool set out in front of the group).. 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 →