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The Improv Olympics were first demonstrated at Toronto's Homemade Theatre in 1976 and have been continued on as the Canadian Improv Games. In the United States, the Improv Olympics were later produced by Charna Halpern under the name "ImprovOlympic" and now as "IO"; IO operates training centers and theaters in Chicago and Los Angeles.
The theater and the school's classes sought to have audiences participate directly in Theater Games, thus effectively eliminating the conventional separation between improvisational actors and audiences. The theater experiment achieved limited success, and it closed after only a few months, but the school continued to use the techniques ...
Theatre games are also commonly used as warm-up exercises for actors before a rehearsal or performance, in the development of improvisational theatre, and as a lateral means to rehearse dramatic material. They are also used in drama therapy to overcome anxiety by simulating scenarios that would be fear-inducing in real life.
Along with this, they host "house" improv teams made up of improv students or graduates from their classes. In the past decade, professional improvisational theater groups have gradually started working more with corporate clients, using improvisational games to improve productivity and communication in the workplace.
Previously, Shepherd and Sills founded Playwrights Theatre Club, along with Eugene Troobnick, and employed improvisational theater forms, named Theater Games, originally created and developed by Sills' mother, Viola Spolin. These same games were employed to develop material for the Compass Players. [5]
Viola Spolin created theater games as a method of training improvisational acting. [3] Her son, Paul Sills popularized improvisational theater, or IMPROV, by using Spoilers techniques to train The Second City in Chicago, the first totally improvisational theater company in the US. [4]
For 40 years, ComedySportz has presented improv games in Milwaukee. Performers from around the country are coming here for a world championship week.
Johnstone's work with performers comprised a vast collection of training games, exercises and lazzi. He wrote two books about his system; 1979's Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre, and 1998's Impro For Storytellers. [3] Johnstone's teaching was described as a reversal of the lessons he received as a child in postwar Britain.