Forget the script and get on the stage! In How to Improvise a Full-Length Play, actors, playwrights, directors, theater-group leaders, and teachers will find everything they need to know to create comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and farce, with no scripts, no scenarios, and no preconceived characters. Author Kenn Adams presents a step-by-step method for long-form improvisation, covering plot structure, storytelling, character development, symbolism, and advanced scene work. Games and exercises throughout the book help actors and directors focus on and succeed with cause-and-effect storytelling, raising the dramatic stakes, creating dramatic conflict, building the dramatic arc, defining characters, creating environments, establishing relationships, and more. How to Improvise a Full-Length Play is the essential tool for anyone who wants to create exceptional theater. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

In this step-by-step guide, an actor and improvisational teacher brings his tested methods to the page to show how actors can take risks and gain spontaneity in all genres of scripted theater. Through 28 lessons—each of which includes warm-ups, points of concentration, and improvisation exercises—Improv for Actors provides insights into thinking and reacting with fluidity, exploring a character’s social status, using the voice and body as effective tools of storytelling, and more. Actors of all levels will soon be able to give a fresh, original approach to classic characters, create funnier performances in farce and comedy, and make dramatic characters richer and more believable.

A complete improvisation curriculum in twenty-four class-length units. This comprehensive resource who shows the who, what, when, why and how of comedy improvisation. Main topics: What is improv?; Improvisational skills; Structuring; Strategies; How to start your own improvisation team. Includes many games and exercises.

The Improv Handbook is the most comprehensive, smart, helpful and inspiring guide to improv available today. Applicable to comedians, actors, public speakers and anyone who needs to think on their toes, it features a range of games, interviews, descriptions and exercises that illuminate and illustrate the exciting world of improvised performance. First published in 2008, this second edition features a new foreword by comedian Mike McShane, as well as new exercises on endings, managing blind offers and master-servant games, plus new and expanded interviews with Keith Johnstone, Neil Mullarkey, Jeffrey Sweet and Paul Rogan. The Improv Handbook is a one-stop guide to the exciting world of improvisation. Whether you're a beginner, an expert, or would just love to try it if you weren't too scared, The Improv Handbook will guide you every step of the way.

Free Play is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about why we create and what we learn when we do. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms. An international bestseller and beloved classic, Free Play is an inspiring and provocative book, directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured, and how finally it can be liberated—how we can be liberated—to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice. Stephen Nachmanovitch, a pioneer in free improvisation, integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity, drawing on unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and original metaphors. The whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, is about being true to ourselves and our visions. Free Play brings us into direct, active contact with boundless creative energies that we may not even know we had.

Long-Form Improv deftly teaches the wildly popular form of improvisation that is so foundational to the comedy stylings of many of today’s top actors and thriving comedians. Crammed with innovative ideas for conceptualizing improvised scenework and “finding the game of the scene,” this crisply written manual covers techniques for experienced improvisers, curious actors, and even non-actors. A complete long-form improv resource comprising topics like ideation and character creation, improvising scenes for extended periods of time and enhancing them—and even performing the most famous expression of long-form improv, the half-hour improvised form known as “The Harold”—this astute text is written in a friendly, supportive voice by an experienced improv teacher and professional actor whose own frustration in learning the craft drove an obsession to create a program free of confounding teachings and contradictory concepts. The book’s groundbreaking infusion with drama theory and game theory brings new life to the teachings of the craft, breaking down various aspects of long-form improv into short chapters for swift, step-by-step intake of its vital lessons. Students of acting and long-form improv alike should expect Long-Form Improv to bolster their education and fast-track their course to improv greatness.

Renowned improv instructor and award-winning director Mick Napier has been at the heart of the professional improvisation community for more than 25 years. The first edition of Improvise. quickly earned its position as necessary reading for improv students across the country and around the world and gave birth to a new generation of performers who questioned "The Rules" of improvisation. This expanded and revised edition has a new foreword by The Late Show host Stephen Colbert, additional advice and tips for success, and a full reproduction of Mick Napier's web journal from his time directing the famous show Paradigm Lost for The Second City that included Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, and Kevin Dorff. In this entertaining and incredibly informative book, Napier will teach you the essentials of... --Why "The Rules" don't matter --How to take care of yourself in a scene --Using context to your advantage --Effective two-person scenes --Balanced large-cast scenes --Successful auditioning --Solo exercises you can practice at home