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Theater Without a Script-Improvisation and the Experimental Stage of the Early Mid-Twentieth Century in the United States

100%

Szuster M.

Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture

2019

issue 9

374-392

It was in the mid-twentieth century that the independent theatrical form based entirely on improvisation, known now as improvisational/improvised theatre, impro or improv, came into existence and took shape. Viola Spolin, the intellectual and the logician behind the improvisational movement, first used her improvised games as a WPA worker running theater classes for underprivileged youth in Chicago in 1939. But it was not until 1955 that her son, Paul Sills, together with a college theater group, the Compass Players, used Spolin’s games on stage. In the 1970s Sills made the format famous with his other project, the Second City. Since the emergence of improv in the US coincides with the renaissance of improvisation in theater, in this paper, I will look back at what may have prepared and propelled the emergence of improvised theater in the United States. Hence, this article is an attempt to look at the use of improvisation in theater and performing arts in the United States in the second half of the 20th century in order to highlight the various roles and functions of improvisation in the experimental theater of the day by analyzing how some of the most influential experimental theaters used improvisation as a means of play development, a component of actor training and an important element of the rehearsal process.

“Alchemy and smoke in a bottle” – contemporary improvisational theater in Poland and the United States

32%

Szuster M.

Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica

2017

vol. 40

issue 2

107-138

Artykuł jest próbą uchwycenia i opisania współczesnego teatru improwizacji poprzez analizę jego cech, definicji i elementów teatrotwórczych w celu scharakteryzowania i usystematyzowania gatunku. Zestawienie i porównanie różnych aspektów impro(v) w Polsce i Stanach Zjednoczonych pozwala nie tylko spojrzeć na teatr improwizacji poprzez pryzmat próby jego “przeszczepienia” do tradycji polskiej (która korzystała z improwizacji jako narzędzia artystycznego, ale dotychczas nie wynosiła jej do kategorii osobnej formy teatralnej), ale również ukazuje eksperymentalną elastyczność tego gatunku w obrębie różnych tradycji i struktur kulturowych. Oparty w dużej mierze na wywiadach środowiskowych z rodzimymi i amerykańskimi improwizatorami, artykuł ten stanowi swoiste studium przypadku in medias res współczesnego teatru improwizacji w Polsce i USA.

The article is an attempt to capture improvisational theater as a modern dynamic phenomenon through analyzing its features, definitions and traits in order to characterize the genre and to systematize the current state of knowledge on the subject matter. By comparing and contrasting various aspects and notions of impro(v) in Poland and the United States, the study not only looks at the theater of improvisation through the prism of the “relocation” of the form from its original grounds and implementing it in within a different tradition, but also shows the experimental flexibility of the genre within different cultural traditions and structures. Based largely on interviews with Polish and American improvisers alike, this article is an in-medias-res case study of the contemporary improvised theater in Poland and the USA.

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1 Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica

1 Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture

2 Szuster M.

1 2019

1 2017

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Theater Without a Script-Improvisation and the Experimental Stage of the Early Mid-Twentieth Century in the United States

“Alchemy and smoke in a bottle” – contemporary improvisational theater in Poland and the United States