Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
At Play: The Improvisational Life and Epic Career of Viola Spolin

At Play: The Improvisational Life and Epic Career of Viola Spolin

Coleman, Janet

Hardcover

Theater History

Publisher Price: $30.00

PREORDER - Expected ship date November 11, 2027

ISBN10: 1493084623
ISBN13: 9781493084623
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Nov 11 2027
Pages: 272
Weight: 1.00
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Viola Spolin was a woman perpetually at play.

There is hardly an actor, director, or theater teacher on the planet who hasn't encountered the ubiquitous theater games she developed as a young performer. She remains one of the most underappreciated figures in American cultural history, a woman whose legacy is found everywhere from experimental black-box theaters to Saturday Night Live.

Heartfelt, yet unsentimental and with a full appreciation for its subject's quirks and flaws, At Play tells the story of Spolin's remarkable life and work. Janet Coleman, who both knew and worked with Spolin, gives a rich account of her journey from the crucible of Chicago radical politics as a child, through her training with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler, and on to the Theater Games System that would find commercial life through Chicago's Second City troupe. Coleman gives us a Spolin who is by turns warm and icily remote, single-minded and mercurial, quick-witted yet disdainful of the life of the mind. Coleman's narrative includes encounters with such motley figures as L. Ron Hubbard, Paul Mazursky, Alan Alda, Wilhelm Reich, and Sanford Meisner. This is a long-overdue account of one of the most brilliant, infuriating, and utterly original artists in American history.

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