Viola Spolin
Viola Spolin
Viola Spolinwas a theatre academic, educator and acting coach. She is considered an important innovator in 20th century American theater for creating directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life. These acting exercises she later called Theater Games and formed the first body of work that enabled other directors and actors to create improvisational theater. Her book Improvisation for the Theater, which published these techniques, includes...
analysis audience audiences begin careful enjoyment flat last learned member performance revered spoke technique wheel
The audience is the most revered member of the theater. Without an audience there is no theater. Every technique learned by the actor, every curtain, every flat on the stage, every careful analysis by the director, every coordinated scene, is for the enjoyment of the audience. They are our guests, our evaluators, and the last spoke in the wheel which can then begin to roll. They make the performance meaningful.
technique theater communicate
The techniques of the theater are the techniques of communicating.
mind intuition possibility
When the rational mind is shut off, we have the possibility of intuition.
freedom-of-speech theatre watches
We have freedom of speech, but you got to watch what you say.
vision intuition world
My vision is a world of accessible intuition.
followers initiate
Don’t initiate! Follow the initiator! Follow the follower.
children punishment play
There are few places outside his own play where a child can contribute to the world in which he finds himself. His world: dominated by adults who tell him what to do and when to do it -benevolent tyrants who dispense gifts to their good subjects and punishment to their bad ones, who are amused at the cleverness of children and annoyed by their stupidities.
clever creativity rearranging
Creativity is not the clever rearranging of the known.
reality giving actors
General improvisations often give actors an insight beyond their words by helping them to 'see the word' and achieve a reality for the scene.
known
That which is not yet known comes out of that which is not yet here.
air self views
When student-actors see people and the way they behave when together, see the color of the sky, hear the sounds in the air, feel the ground beneath them and the wind on their faces, they get a wider view of their personal world and development in the theater is quickened. The world provides the material for the theater and artistic growth develops hand-in-hand with one's recognition of it and one's self within it.
spontaneity
Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves.
losing-everything daily-activities goal
It stands to reason that if we direct all our efforts towards reaching a goal, we stand in grave danger of losing everything on which we have based our daily activities. For when a goal is superimposed on an activity instead of evolving out of it, we often feel cheated when we reach it.
cages turns
One must be chary of words because they turn into cages.