-Born in 1906, died in 1994.

-Is considered as the American Grand Mother of Improvisation.

-Late 1950’s: She influenced the first generation of improvisation at the Second City in Chicago.

-She developed new games that focused upon creativity, adapting and focusing the concept of play to unlock the individual`s capacity for creative self-expression.

“Anyone who wishes to can play

in the theatre and learn to

become ‘stageworthy’. We learn

through experience and

experiencing, and no one

teaches anyone anything.”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V5C61zflu8

-Intuition is often thought to be an endowment or a mystical force enjoyed by the gifted alone.

-All of us have moments when the right answer “just came” or we did “exactly the right thing without thinking.”

1.Games

-“Games develop personal techniques and skills necessary for the game itself, through playing”.

-Follow the rules; each individual must become involved.

-Enthusiasm and trust.

2. Approval/Disapproval

-Investigation, questioning, accepting or rejection.

-“We must wander daily through the wish to be loved and the fear of rejection before we can be productive”

-We are “creatively paralyzed”.

3. Group Expression

-“A healthy group relationship demands a number of individuals working interdependently to complete a given project with full individual participation and persona contribution.”

- Competition

4. Audience

-“The role of the audience must become a concrete part of theatre training.”

-“Without an audience there is no theatre...they make the performance meaningful.”

5. Theatre Techniques

-Theatre techniques as rituals?

-Theatre games.

-“Methods alter to meet the needs of time and place”.

6. Carrying the Learning Process into Daily Life

-No scripts should be brought home.

-“experiencing is the only homework...”

7. Physicalization

Physicalization: the means by which material is presented to the student on a physical, non-verbal level as opposed to an intellectual or psychological approach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

Spolin explains that “anyone can learn whatever he or she chooses to learn” and that “’talent’ or ‘lack of talent’ have little to do with it”. Do you believe this is true; can anyone learn to do anything they want? Does this mean we all have the universal skills to complete any task?

-musician, author, computer artist, and educator

-studied at Harvard and the University of California, where he earned a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness

- His mentor was the anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson

- has had numerous appearances on radio, television, and at music and theater festivals

-2 or more people coming together in situations to work together, unplanned, and create a performance

-eg. 2 musicians coming together from different backgrounds and making music

-Everyday speech is an example of improv, having unscripted conversation back and forth

- Rachel Rosenthal and the Instant Theatre

-Group working together, where each member brings their own set of strengths and weaknesses

- work is done more efficiently, A releases B’s energy, B releases A’s energy, ideas multiply

- Law Of Requisite Variety – crossing one identity with another and multiplying the variety of the total system

- Law of requisite variety explains reproduction, different genes meshing together to create evolution

-Entrainment: the synchronization of two or more rhythmic systems moving into a single pulse.

- eg. Group of men hammering on a building site, after while they fall into the same rhythm without any explicit communication.

- the body’s physiological rhythms resonate with each other

-Hypnotists use entrainment to work with their subjects, working with the timing and tone of their breath.

- doctors and neurologists can use entrainment to syncro- nize the 2 hemispheres of the brain, using audio, visual, and vibration signals.

-They can also manipulate certain areas of the brain (eg. Induce sleep in insomniac patients)

Entrainment states, that a group of peopleworking silently in a library will work moreprogressively knowing everyone else around them is working too. Do you work better in a group of people all working, or do you work better alone? Why do you think this might be?

-Known for his work around forum theatre and the theatre of the oppressed

- Boal has made interesting theories of animation and education

-From 1956 to 1971 Boal worked as the artistic director at the Arena Theatre of Sao Paulo

-Created an Acting Laboratory where the actors studied the works of Stanislavski

Boal, A. (2000) Theatre of the Oppressed, London: Pluto Press. 219 pages.Boal, A. (1992) Games for Actors and Non-Actors, London: Routledge. Boal, A. (1998) Legistlative Theatre, London: Routledge. 272 pages

-“Emotion took precedence over all else and should be given a free rein to shape the final form of the actor’s interpretation of a role”

-A newly discovered emotion may run the risk of being petrified by the mechanized patterns of the actor’s behaviour

-“Every human activity is an extremely complicated operation, which is possible only because the senses are capable of selection…”

- Believed that actors act and react in a repetitive way

1. Muscular ExercisesActors are aware of their muscles and the various movements they can make 

2. Sensory ExercisesThis exercise is about genuinely experiencing the same sensations ‘from memory’ 

3. Memory ExercisesPurpose is to develop memory and enhance awareness, so that their powers of attention, concentration, and analysis can further develop

4. Emotion ExercisesIn order to identify with a character or role, one has to start by destroying the wall of mechanisms (a.k.a. the actor’s ‘mask’)

 

-An intense emotion memory exercise can be dangerous unless one afterwards ‘rationalizes’ what has occurred

-Actors discover new things when they take the risk of experiencing emotions

-The important thing about emotion is what it signifies

- Rationalizing emotion demonstrates the difference between what we term ‘dramatic action’ and simple physical activity

1. The Will-Concept for the actor is not the ‘being’ of the character, but the ‘will’

-The will is the concretion of the idea and the essence of the motivation

-The idea of the character should correspond to the Stanislavskian ‘super-objective’: idea (abstract form) and will (concrete presence) are one and the same

- Idea = will = emotion = theatrical form: the abstract idea when transformed into a concrete will in a given situation will give rise in the actor to the emotion which will find a theatrical form that is convincing for the audience

2. The Counter-will

- For an actor to live on stage, he must find the counter-will to each of his wills

- “The counter-will must always exist so that he can genuinely live his character, adding depth to it to truly realize it, rather than simply illustrating it”

- The internal conflict of will and counter-will creates the dynamic of the performance so that the actor will never be the same from one moment to the next, because he or she will always be in a continual state of change

- Without counter-will, the actor will stay the same: static and untheatrical

3. The Dominant Will

-“Dominant will emerges from the interior conflict between will and counter-will, it is the manifestation of the will in conflict with other characters”

- Actors must always refer back to the dominant will because it structures the conflict of all wills

- The wills; ideas they underlie and emotions they give rise to are the actors colours

Example: Actor Heath Ledger playing the Joker in the film ‘The Dark Knight” Clip 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKa-aDga1fE Clip 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2aXcVzoTXo

Can you think of other similar examples in the realm of professional cinema in which an actor or actress does an extremely convincing job of portraying a character or role? (be it real or fictional)

http://improvencyclopedia.org/references//Viola_Spolin.html“Creative Experience” Spolin, Viola.

“Playing Together” Nachmanovich, Stephenhttp://www.freeplay.com/Top/index.m5.html

Boal, Augusto. "The Structure of Actor's Work." CMST 2G03 Performance and Performativity. 161-79. Smith, Mark K. "Augusto Boal." The Encyclopedia of Informal Education. 1 July 2008. 24 Sept. 2008 <http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-boal.htm>.