Theater Games for Rehearsal: A Director's Handbook - Softcover

Viola Spolin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810127490 ISBN 13: 9780810127494

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Theater Games for Rehearsal is a practical application of the famous methods which have led Viola Spolin to be called ""the high priestess of improvisational theater."" Spolin's first book since the best-selling Improvisation for the Theater, this handbook guides directors and their companies step-by-step through all phases of the rehearsal period. Distilling her lifetime of experience in the theater, Spolin shows in easy-to-follow detail how her techniques can be used for a variety of theater situations, ranging from selecting plays to be performed, auditioning the cast, and building a harmonious company to warming up actors, creating stage space, and overcoming opening night jitters. The convenient, large format presents the Spolin method clearly, explains the uses of each game, and provides a wealth of useful hints and notes. Sidecoaching instructions and game evaluations appear in large, readable type for easy reference in the rehearsal hall. By making Spolin's approach to scripted theater accessible for the first time to large audiences, Theater Games for Rehearsal will have a lasting effect on strategies of theatrical production.

About this title

About the Author:

Viola Spolin (1906-94), the originator of theater games, was introduced to the use of games, storytelling, folk dance, and dramatics as tools for stimulating creative expression while a student of Neva Boyd in Boyd's Recreational Training School. During her years as a teacher and supervisor of creative dramatics there, Spolin began to develop her nonverbal, nonpsychological approach. Carol Bleackley Sills, director of Sills/Spolin Theater Works, has been Viola Spolin's editor since 1983. She studied with Viola Spolin and helped start the Game Theater, Chicago. She collaborated with her husband, Viola's son Paul, on a new form he called Story Theater. She presents workshops at Paul Sills' Wisconsin Theater Game Center and, most recently, directed The Tao of Chuang Chou at New Actors Workshop in New York.

From the Back Cover:

This handbook guides directors and their companies step-by-step through all phases of the rehearsal period. Distilling her lifetime of experience in the theater, Spolin shows in easy-to-follow detail how her techniques can be used for a variety of theater situations.

About this edition

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0810127490
• ISBN 13: 9780810127494
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 117
• Editor: Carol Bleackley Sills