20 Facts About Viola Spolin

Viola Spolin was an American theatre academic, educator and acting coach.

Viola Spolin is considered an important innovator in 20th century American theater for creating directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life.

Viola Spolin's work has influenced American theater, television and film by providing new tools and techniques that are now used by actors, directors and writers.

Viola Spolin influenced the first generation of improvisational actors at the Second City in Chicago in the mid- to late 1950s, through her son, Paul Sills.

Viola Spolin was the founding director of the Compass Players which led to the formation of the Second City.

Viola Spolin taught workshops for Second City actors, as well as for the general public.

Viola Spolin developed acting exercises or "games" that unleashed creativity, adapting focused "play" to unlock the individual's capacity for creative self-expression.

Viola Spolin taught classes at Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago.

Viola Spolin initially trained to be a settlement worker, studying at Neva Boyd's Group Work School in Chicago.

Boyd's innovative teaching in the areas of group leadership, recreation, and social group work strongly influenced Viola Spolin, as did the use of traditional game structures to affect social behavior in inner-city and immigrant children.

Viola Spolin drew on Moreno's idea of using audience suggestions as the base of an improvisation, which became a hallmark of the Second City's brand of improv and is universally employed in workshop and performance.

In 1946, Viola Spolin founded the Young Actors Company in Hollywood.

Viola Spolin returned to Chicago in 1955 to direct for the Playwright's Theater Club and, subsequently, to conduct games workshops with the Compass Players, the country's first professional improvisational acting company.

Viola Spolin eventually handed both the children's show and the improv classes over to Forsberg, who continued teaching Spolin's work at the Second City from the mid-1960s on, leading to the creation of Forsberg's own improv school, Players Workshop in 1971, as well as the Improv Olympic and the Second City Training Center in the 1980s, all of which were based on Spolin's work.

In 1970 and 1971 Viola Spolin served as special consultant for productions of Sills' Story Theater in Los Angeles, New York City and on television.

Viola Spolin designed it to make her unique approaches to teaching and learning more readily available to classroom teachers.

Viola Spolin believed that every person can learn to act and express creatively.

Viola Spolin began working with children early in her career.

Viola Spolin was associated for many years with Jane Addams Hull House as well as other locations where she and her assistant teachers taught improv workshops to children.

Viola Spolin directed numerous shows for children, including a production at Playwights in the mid-1950s.