This practical guide presents a wide array of games and exercises designed to develop the players observation, imagination, presentation and self-confidence. This long-awaited new edition has been fully revised and extended, now including example workshops and an index of games to help instructors get the most out of the exercises in rehearsals, workshops and classes. Christine Poulter shares what she has learned from her students over the years, and opens up the language of the book to the worlds of youth work, healthcare, the prison service, ‘customer care’, management training, and secondary school education. This is an essential resource for directors, drama teachers, and students of Drama, Theatre and Performance at all levels. It will also be useful to anyone looking to improve their presentation skills.

John Abbott, author of The Improvisation Book, explains how theatre directors at every level can use improvisation in the rehearsal room. Foreword by Mark Rylance. ‘Improvisation can be used as part of the creative process of rehearsing a play. It can be a fabulous tool for exploration and discovery. It can strengthen the actor’s commitment to their character. And it can create an environment of confidence and spontaneity.’ Packed with useful exercises and improvisation scenarios, and examples from a wide variety of plays, Improvisation in Rehearsal reveals how improvisation enriches and enlivens the creation of characters, back-stories, relationships, shared histories and emotional lives. The book also demonstrates how improvisation can be used as a powerful tool in the foundation of a strong company, and when searching for the hidden depths and dynamics in a scene. Building on his own experience as an actor, director and teacher, Abbott writes with clarity and an infectious enthusiasm which will motivate directors to try the techniques for themselves. As Mark Rylance says in his Foreword, this book ‘will inspire and delight its readers’.

The Uses of Drama : Acting As a Social and Educational Force: An Anthology Aristotle, Barrault, Brecht, Chambers, Laban, Mariwitz, Stanislavski… this book contains personal selection of writings on the theatre, ranging in time from Aristotle to Brook. Included are such aspects as drama as therapy, drama in education and the search for new drama.

Janet Coleman brilliantly recreates the time, the place, the personalities, and the neurotic magic whereby the Compass made theater history in America. The Compass began in a storefront theater near the University of Chicago campus in the summer of 1955 and lasted only a few years before its players—including David Shepherd, Paul Sills, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, Barbara Harris, and Shelley Berman—moved on. Out of this group was born a new form: improvisational theater and a radically new kind of comedian. “They did not plan to be funny or to change the course of comedy,” writes Coleman. “But that is what happened.”

The Improvisation Game: Discovering the Secrets of Spontaneous Performance Packed with exercises and practical techniques, The Improvisation Game explores how improvisation can be used both to create performance and as an end in itself. It reveals the techniques, structures, and methods used by key practitioners in the field of improvised drama, music, and dance—among them are Keith Johnstone, Max Stafford-Clark, Phelim McDermott, Tim Etchells, John Wright, and Robert Lepage.

Training Using Drama: Successful Development Techniques from Theatre and Improvisation The use of training techniques originally developed for theatre and improvization within the workplace has increased enormously and the effectiveness of the approach is finding many enthusiastic followers. Sometimes actors themselves are brought into an organization to act as catalysts within a training/role-play setting, but increasingly, trainers use the techniques themselves. This guide to using development techniques from theatre and improvization shows how anyone can make use of them. Complete with 50 detailed activities, the book shows how to use storytelling, role-plays and coaching to improve creativity, leadership, teamwork and personal development.

Improvisation and Accompaniment for Social Justice How contemporary activists, artists, and academics oppose oppressive structures of power and unjust social relations to create a more decent and democratic future Insubordinate spaces are places of possibility, products of acts of accompaniment and improvisation that deepen capacities for democratic social change. Barbara Tomlinson and George Lipsitz’s Insubordinate Spaces explores the challenges facing people committed to social justice in an era when social institutions have increasingly been reconfigured to conform to the imperatives of a market society. In their book, the authors argue that education, the arts, and activism are key terrains of political and ideological conflict. They explore and analyze exemplary projects responding to current social justice issues and crises, from the Idle No More movement launched by Indigenous people in Canada to the performance art of Chingo Bling, Fandango convenings, the installation art of Ramiro Gomez, and the mass protests proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” in Ferguson, MO. Tomlinson and Lipsitz draw on key concepts from struggles to advance ideas about reciprocal recognition and co-creation as components in the construction of new egalitarian and democratic social relations, practices, and institutions. Insubordinate Spaces: Improvisation and Accompaniment for Social Justice is from the Insubordinate…

We’re at it again with a THIRD BOOK! We asked popular improv teachers and performers from around the world their advice. We felt like it was especially poingant to discuss improv in the times of Covid and Lockdown. We published all their beuaitulf answers on the improv community here! David Escobedo gathered and published this book. He has been coaching and performing improv since 1994, and who runs the Improv Boost.

The SIN is a network of international improvisers in Europe that meets twice per year. The network aims to create an environment of support and collaboration across borders. It is our ambition to explore the art of improvisational theatre together as well as sharing advice and good practices on all organisation and production around improv. The ultimate goal is to boost improvisational theatre in local communities throughout Europe by working together and learning from each other within the international community. This book is a snapshot of different insights, pedagogies, and good practice from some of the members of our group. We’re offering them to the wider community as a window into the thought and function of our group, and to further our aims of boosting improv in theatres around Europe. As teachers and theatre directors, we can all feel a bit isolated at times. The SIN as a group, and this book as an offering, are efforts to bring a feeling of community and the free exchange of ideas that help make this art form the beautiful thing that it is. We hope that everyone reading it feels supported, inspired, and perhaps even provoked. Contents: Improvisation and the Scientific Method…

Improvising Gender is a book about playing characters of different genders truthfully and convincingly. It’s packed full of exercises to help you construct a wide variety of characters and worlds using different genders. A mix of insights and thought-provoking experiments, this book will also help you to be more understanding of and welcoming to performers of all genders.