The Actor's Instrument: Improvisation

Catalog description

This course is designed to help students explore the development of relationships in theatrical space without the benefit (or confinement) of a script. By cultivating and developing basic performance skills including spontaneity, self-awareness, creative use of the body and mind, access to the imagination, and collaborativity, this course has applications for actors and other performers interested in all types of performance as well as those interested in improvised performance specifically. One of the intentions of this course is to generate truthful, creative, and collaborative play, which can lead naturally to material that is funny or humorous as an organic outcome of the moment. However, "comedy" or "improv comedy," which has a different set of intentions altogether, will be strongly discouraged in this course. "Getting laughs," as a goal in and of itself, manufactures unproductive pressure to "be clever" or to "succeed" in ways that are inconsistent with truly creative engagement.