Yes, and why does Improv do that?
We at Unscripted teach improv for life skills: to build confidence, resilience, and social skills. However, we find one of the hardest things to explain is… why exactly does improv work on those skills? To those who have not already taken an improv class, it can be a hard question to answer. Some of our students are familiar with improvisational games from shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway, or Wild n’ Out, or think improv is similar to Saturday Night Live–while those are fun, great examples of improv, the link to why Improv builds life skills isn’t always clear.
However, if we look at how institutions like Second City, The Upright Citizens Brigade, and Theatresports come into their traditions, we’ll see right away that improv at its core is interested in the growth of the self, at the development of personal creativity and confidence.
To look into those traditions, we could look back into dusty annals of a tradition stretching back as far as Rome–but we’ll start in the 20th century, for this is a blog, not a master’s thesis! We’ll discuss two artists who are at the trunk of the many branching paths of improv, and what they set out to do: Viola Spolin and Keith Johnstone.
Viola Spolin (1906-1994)
One of the most iconic names in the world of improv, Viola Spolin’s name is attached to the rise of the world of Improv as we know it, to the advent of Second City, and a great deal of art and theatre. Her book Improvisation for the Theatre was published in 1963 and is still today one of the best handbooks for improvisers, teachers, directors and more. But Spolin didn’t set out to create a new art form when she developed her games. She instead was just trying to help her students connect with each other.
Spolin began working within the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) drama program in inner city Chicago in 1939. Many of her students came from immigrant backgrounds, recently settling in Chicago. They were from diverse cultures and often struggled to connect with each other. She discovered that what the students needed from a drama program was something that was easily accessible to them and that could “cross the cultural and ethnic barriers within the WPA project.” Spolin went on to develop games to cross those barriers, and solve the problems she was finding as an educator, games that “focused upon individual creativity, adapting and focusing on the concept of play to unlock the individual’s capacity for creative self-expression.”
When she encountered a problem in class or on the stage, Spolin would develop a game to work through that problem, using play to encourage her students to connect in new ways and work together. These games were first collected in the “Theatre Games” rubric, which would later become her book Improvisation for the Theatre. Spolin’s approach to use play as a way to connect people and develop social skills worked so well that she soon founded a theatre company for young actors, called the Young Actors Company. She also became a founding member of the Compass Players, members of which eventually went on to become the founders of Second City, and much more. She set out to solve problems of connection, to foster individual creativity, and in the process created a whole new tradition of art.
One of the most iconic names in the world of improv, Viola Spolin’s name is attached to the rise of the world of Improv as we know it, to the advent of Second City, and a great deal of art and theatre. Her book Improvisation for the Theatre was published in 1963 and is still today one of the best handbooks for improvisers, teachers, directors and more. But Spolin didn’t set out to create a new art form when she developed her games. She instead was just trying to help her students connect with each other.
She set out to solve problems of connection, to foster individual creativity, and in the process created a whole new tradition of art.
Keith Johnstone (1933-2023)
Fans of Whose Line Is It Anyway have Keith Johnstone to thank for the format: Theatresports, where the actors compete in games pitched by the opposing teams or a host, for points awarded by the judges or the audience. But much like Spolin, Johnstone didn’t set out to create a form or necessarily even make art when he began creating his techniques.
Johnstone explains about his experience as a student in school in the late 1930s in England (From Impro For Storytellers):
I remember being held in 'detention' and fuming at the school's refusal to help me: 'So I can't get my tongue round the words, so I lumber like a bear - why isn't that my teachers' responsibility? What's so important about the number of sheep in Tierra del Fuego in 1936 compared to being human? What about relationships? What about shyness? What about fear? …. I yearned for something that might have been called Drama as Self Improvement, and I was right to yearn for it.
Johnstone became a teacher himself, and spent his life “teaching the skills that [his] teachers had ignored.”
As a teacher, Johnstone developed games to solve problems in his classroom, to develop students' creativity and confidence, to engage students who would not otherwise participate, often without them even realizing that they were developing skills or learning at all. He might encourage students to be creative by asking them to yell out loud what happens next in a story, and before the class knew it they were creatively writing a new fable.
As a teacher, Johnstone developed games to solve problems in his classroom, to develop students' creativity and confidence, to engage students who would not otherwise participate, often without them even realizing that they were developing skills or learning at all.
Johnstone later moved to Calgary, Canada, where he created a form of theatre that was intended to have all the excitement of pro wrestling, while still telling stories. This led to Theatresports. Theatresports is now a global institution–countries send teams to conferences to ‘compete’ in a variety of different styles of contest. But throughout it all, the undercurrent of “drama as self-improvement’ remains: for Johnstone, theatre was about being human, and being human well. Theatresports is common in Canadian high schools as an afterschool activity, and in cities in Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout the world for adults, teens and kids alike.
Improv at Unscripted
Both these foundational members of the world of improv created their games with a purpose: to cross cultural boundaries, to build confidence, to encourage those studying improv to improve themselves. We at Unscripted follow in that tradition: our games build specific social skills: active listening, empathy, communication in body language, and telling persuasive stories for just a few examples. We believe improv can help students grow both in personal confidence and the skills important for success in life. Improv is all about playing with confidence when we don’t know what’s going to happen next–and this is a fundamental challenge of life as well.
Improv is all about playing with confidence when we don’t know what’s going to happen next–and this is the fundamental challenge of life as well.
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