Salinsky - The Improv Handbook

The Improv Handbook

The Ultimate Guide
to Improvising in Comedy,
Theatre, and Beyond

by TOM SALINSKY
and DEBORAH FRANCES-WHITE

Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

www.bloomsbury.com

First published by Continuum International Publishing Group 2008
Reprinted 2011 (twice), 2012
Reprinted by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama 2013

Tom Salinsky and Deborah Frances-White 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization
acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this
publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

Visit www.bloomsbury.com to find out more about our authors and their books

You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for
newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Salinsky, Tom.
The improv handbook : the ultimate guide to improvising in comedy, theatre, and
beyond / by Tom Salinsky and Deborah Frances-White.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-2859-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8264-2859-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-2858-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8264-2858-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Improvisation (Acting)
I. Frances-White, Deborah. II. Title.
PN2071.I5S27 2008
792.028dc22
2008017480

eISBN-13: 978-1-4725-3662-4

For my parents

For Mother and Dad who

encouraged me in all my endeavors.

And for Patti Stiles,

our mother in improv.

What follows is a personal account of the state of the art of comedy improvisation. In writing this book, we have tried to serve two masters. On the one hand, we want to give as broad an overview as possible. We have tackled questions like: Where did improvisation come from? Where is it going? What is it good for? Who are the major leaders and how do they differ? Can you make money at it? How?

But, on the other hand, as practitioners of the art with over twenty years of experience between us, we have also formed some pretty strong opinions about what works and what doesnt, whats helpful and whats destructive, whats positive and whats negative. Our experience in improvisation has mainly been with the school of thought associated with Keith Johnstone and Calgary, although we have also made it our mission to go to Chicago and train with people associated with Del Closenotably Charna Halpernand Deborah is now an Artistic Associate of the Chicago Improv Festival. And this book also covers work influenced by Viola Spolin, ideas we have developed ourselves and some material that doesnt neatly fit into any of these categories. Does our longer experience with Keith make us biased? It depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, yes, we think that we have found a productive methodology and we acknowledge the enormous debt we owe to Keith in discovering that. On the other hand, we dont feel any particular intellectual loyalty to Keith, and will be happy to accept, use and steal ideas from anyone. Our mantra is simply: whatever works.

Our hope is that this personal viewpoint will be appealing and interesting. This book, for better or worse, is our account of what improvisation is, has been, will be and should be. It is shaped by our experiences and our history, and if we come across as opinionated, then we hope that you will be either overjoyed to have found like minds or stimulated by an opposing argument, or at least made pleasantly aggrieved to have found people you can entirely disagree with.

: How to Improvise. Before that, we will briefly look at What Is Improvisation? and after that we will look at How to Improvise in Public, How to Make Improvisation Pay and also hear from some of the current leading lights of the art form (Del Close and Viola Spolin are both sadly no longer with us).

Section Two is modeled on our improvisation workshops, which have been enormously popular since almost the day they began. We are tremendously pleased and proud to have trained hundreds of improvisers since then, and to have been invited to teach at British institutions such as The Actors Centre, RADA, The Central School of Speech and Drama and as guests of other improvisation companies the world over.

Improvisation has a tremendous power to liberate, inspire and enthusewhich is why we still love it after all these years. Agree or disagree, seasoned improviser or trembling neophyte, we hope this book is an enjoyable and stimulating read.

A glossary of terms is included at the back of the book, which may be helpful for those new to improvisation.

Tom Salinsky and Deborah Frances-White
October 2007
London

Overview

Where did improvisation come from, and who are the main and most influential practitioners today?

Almost any book on improvisation will tell you that improvised theatre began with the Commedia DellArteand for once, any book is right, although possibly not for the reasons supposed.

A moments thought about how theatre came to be will reveal that the notion of re-enacting events for an audience almost certainly came before the notion of writing a script to be memorized, but it is fair enough to not describe this kind of proto-theatre as improvised, despite the fact that it was necessarily re-created fresh at each performance.

As the writer, very swiftly, assumed dominance of the theatre, the script became of paramount importance. The reason for this is also clear to see, and applies not just to theatre, but to all temporal art forms. Mozart was thought to be an astonishing improviser, but it is only his premeditated music which remains, sinceby definitionhis improvisations were not recorded for posterity (although they may have inspired music which he later recorded). Scripts, books and music manuscripts can travel and endure in the way that a brief moment of inspiration cannot.

The Commedia DellArte arose in Italy in the fifteenth century and specialized in bawdy comedies built around stock situations and populated by stock characters, often played by actors who had played them for many years, or even decades. In contrast to almost all the theatre which preceded itat least from the ancient Greeks onthere was no definite script. Instead, Commedia DellArte performers were free to improvise around the familiar situations, creating extemporized comic set-pieces, dialogue exchanges and even plot details as the fancy took them. No doubt this was a highly successful methodology, as it endured well into the eighteenth century and its influence is still felt today. It surely