Who is Viola Spolin

Viola Spolin was my teacher, dear friend and mentor. Her work changed my life. It will change yours. My passion is teaching her work and sharing its
transformative power with all who are interested.

Join me on a journey to your playful self. Through playing Viola Spolin’s theater games, you will follow a path to the source of your own treasure house of creativity. An excursion into the intuitive where you can explore new areas of spontaneous theater, and uncover the natural ability to play with abandon as you did when you were young.

“Gary Schwartz is a gifted player/coach. He has a thorough understanding of my work”. – Viola Spolin

Since her retirement in 1980, Ms. Spolin authorized Gary Schwartz, Director of Intuitive Learning Systems and Improv Odyssey to continue her work.

Theater educator, director, and actress recognized internationally for her “Theater Games” system of actor training, was raised in a tradition of family theater amusements, operas, and charades. Viola Spolin trained initially (1924-26) 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 Spolin, as did the use of traditional game structures to affect social behavior in inner-city and immigrant children.

From 1960 to 1965, she worked with Paul Sills (her son) as a workshop director for Second City Company. The alumni of this world-famous improvisational theater include Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Jim Belushi, Gilda Radner, David Steinberg, Alan Arkin, Valerie Harper, Ed Asner, and many others. She continued to teach and develop the Spolin Games theory while working with these and other notable talents.

As an outgrowth of this work, she published Improvisation for the Theater (1963), consisting of approximately two hundred and twenty games/exercises. Translated into eleven languages, it has become a classic reference text for teachers of acting, as well as for educators in other fields.
In 1970 – 1971 Spolin served as a special consultant for productions of Sills’ Story Theater in Los Angeles, New York, and on television. On the West Coast, she conducted workshops for the companies of the Rhoda and Friends and Lovers television series and appeared as an actress in the Paul Mazursky film Alex in Wonderland (MGM 1970).

Beyond the very tangible pleasures of playing which the games encompass, they also heighten sensitivity, increase self-awareness, and effect group and interpersonal communication. As a result, Spolin’s games have developed currency beyond actor training, that is, in encountering techniques, self-awareness programs, and nonverbal communication studies.

Viola Spolin’s systems are in use throughout the world not only in university, community and professional theater training programs but also in countless curricula concerned with educational interests not related specifically to the theater. She has worked with such thinkers as Fritz Perls, creator of Gestalt therapy.

Exemplary of the broad recognition her work has received is a 1966 New England Theater Conference Award citing contributions to theater, education, mental health, speech therapy, and religion, and the 1976 award by the Secondary School Theater Association of its highest honor; the Founders Award. She was also awarded commendations by President Ronald Reagan, and Gov. George Deukmejian of California, citing her contribution to American theater and education.

Resource links  www.spolingamesonline.org, spolin.com, and violaspolin.org