Theater Games for Rehearsal: A Director's Handbook

Theater Games for Rehearsal: A Director's Handbook, first published in 1985, is a practical application of Viola Spolin's famous method that guides directors and their companies step-by-step through all phases of the rehearsal period. Spolin shows in easy-to-follow detail how her techniques can be used for a variety of theater situations, ranging from selecting plays or material to be performed, casting, and building a harmonious company to warming up actors, creating stage space, and overcoming opening night jitters.

The edition reflects Spolin's wished-for updates: five important exercises have been added, and instructions presenting her improvisational approach have been clarified throughout. Her wealth of useful notes remain undiminished. Sidecoaching instructions and game evaluations are boxed and highlighted for on-the-spot reading by the director, in rehearsal. Viola Spolin has been called "the high priestess of improvisational theater," and the method that she created andpresented in her books not only remains the pedagogical standard but has found an even wider audience beyond theater.

Featuring a new foreword by renowned film director Rob Reiner, the updated edition is a necessary addition to any theater bookshelf.

Author: Viola Spolin
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Published: 01/11/2011
Pages: 117
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.61lbs
Size: 9.01h x 7.72w x 0.40d
ISBN13: 9780810127494
ISBN10: 0810127490
BISAC Categories:
- Drama | General

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.