Viola Spolin Quotes

Viola Spolin was 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 her philosophy and her teaching and coaching methods, and is considered the "bible of improvisational theater". Spolin's contributions were seminal to the improvisational theater movement in the U.S. She is considered to be the mother of Improvisational theater. Her work has influenced American theater, television and film by providing new tools and techniques that are now used by actors, directors and writers.

Spolin influenced the first generation of improvisational actors at the Second City in Chicago in the mid- to late 1950s, through her son, Paul Sills. He was the founding director of the Compass Players which led to the formation of the Second City. He used her techniques in the training and direction of the company, which enabled them to create satirical improvisational theater about current social & political issues. Spolin also taught workshops for Second City actors, as well as for the general public. Paul Sills and the success of the Second City were largely responsible for the popularization of improvisational theater, which became best known as a comedy form called "improv." Many actors, writers and directors, grew out of that school of theater and had formative experiences performing and being trained at the Second City. See below for a list of notable theater, television and film professionals who were influenced by Spolin and Sills.

Spolin developed acting exercises or "games" that unleashed creativity, adapting focused "play" to unlock the individual's capacity for creative self-expression. Viola Spolin's use of recreational games in theater came from her background with the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression where she studied with Neva Boyd starting in 1924. Spolin also taught classes at Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago.

She authored a number of texts on improvisation. Her first and most famous was Improvisation for the Theater, published by Northwestern University Press. This book has become a classic resource for improvisational actors, directors and teachers. It has been published in three editions in 1963, 1983 and 1999. Wikipedia

✵ 7. November 1906 – 22. November 1994

Viola Spolin: 9 quotes 0 likes

Famous Viola Spolin Quotes

“Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become 'stage-worthy.”

Viola Spolin

Improvisation for the Theater (1963), page 3
Context: Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become 'stage-worthy.' We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking and crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations. If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach. 'Talent' or 'lack of talent' have little to do with it.

“Games develop personal techniques and skills necessary for the game itself, through playing. Skills are developed at the very moment a person is having all the fun and excitement playing a game has to offer--this is the exact time one is truly open to receive them.”

Viola Spolin

Improvisation for the Theater 1963), page 4

“That which is not yet known comes out of that which is not yet here.”

Viola Spolin

Improvisation for the Theater 3rd Edition (1999), Paul Sills' Sayings of Viola Spolin, page xiii

“The most significant change in the games themselves is the addition of 'Follow the Follower' (p 62), a variation on the 'Mirror' game in which no one initiates and all reflect. This game quiets the mind and frees players to enter a time, space, a moment intertwined with one another in a non-physical, non-verbal, non-analytical, nonjudgmental way.”

Viola Spolin

Improvisation for the Theater 3rd Edition (1999), Viola Spolin's Preface to the Second Edition, page iv

“The theater workshop can become a place where teachers and students meet as fellow players, involved with one another, ready to connect, to communicate, to experience, to respond, and to experiment and discover.”

Viola Spolin

Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher's Handbook (1986) Northwestern University Press, page 2

“Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that for the moment frees us from handed-down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and undigested theories and techniques of other people's findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression.”

Viola Spolin

Improvisation for the Theater 1963), page 4

“Don't initiate! Follow the initiator! Follow the follower.”

Viola Spolin

Improvisation for the Theater 3rd Edition (1999), Paul Sills' Sayings of Viola Spolin, page xiii

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly that playing can pull many a director and cast out of a tight spot, freeing all of them from the fear-producing trap of memorizing, characterizing and interpreting. This playing draws upon a very important, almost forgotten, little understood or utilized, and greatly maligned life-giving force --- passion!”

Viola Spolin

Theater Games for Rehearsal - A Director's Handbook(1988), Northwestern University Press, Preface

“Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person - mind, body, intelligence and creativity, spontaneity and intuition.”

Viola Spolin

Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher's Handbook (1986) Northwestern University Press, page 3

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