Improvisation for the Theater
with Gary Schwartz
Theater training to expand your creative potential
- Learn improvisation
- Overcome negative thinking & judgments
- Learn how to act by work on scripts and monologues
- Enhance creative problem-solving skills
- Learn to relax & let go
- Become more versatile in all parts of life
- Have Fun! Fun! Fun!
TIME & DATES:
Adults Monday Eves. September 27th
from 7:30 to 9pm
Cost: $90 for the full 8 weeks. Drop in fee $15 per class.
.Aboutr the instructor:Multi-talented, award-winning actor, writer, and director with more than 35 years experience teaching acting & improv to beginners and fellow professionals now offers workshops in improvisation.
Gary’s mentor and teacher was Viola Spolin, known as the mother of Improvisation. In the 1950’s, she and her son Paul Sills developed the first improv group in the United States that later became Chicago’s famed Second City. Gary began his association with Ms. Spolin in 1977. He has conducted hundreds of improvisation workshops to various groups and companies all over the world. He is co-founder and director of the award winning Spolin Players, a group of established actors (including Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson) performing Improv in Los Angeles since 1988. He directed The Spolin Players Northwest, a second incarnation of the successful LA production. They performed regularly in Seattle from 2001-2005
Gary Schwartz is a gifted player and coach. He has a thourogh understanding of my work." - Viola Spolin.
"Gary Schwartz was one of Viola's best students. I've had him in several workshops and find he's the best side-coach around. And that includes me." - Paul Sills
Who is Viola Spolin?
Acting for the theater evolves naturally out of playing. Recognizing this source of energy, famed educator/director/teacher Viola Spolin (regarded as the mother of American improvisation) applied the game form to theater disciplines and arrived at her widely acclaimed Spolin Theater Games technique.
What Are Spolin Theatre Games?
There are games to free the actor's tension, games to cleanse the actor of subjective preconceptions of the meaning of words, games of relationship and character, games of concentration - in short, games for each of the areas with which the growing actor is concerned.
The games also heighten sensitivity, increase self-awareness, and effect group and interpersonal communication.