Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre

Impro is the most dynamic, funny, wise, practical, and provocative book on theatre craft that I have ever read. (James Roose-Evans, British theatre director, priest, and writer)

Keith Johnstone's involvement with the theatre began when George Devine and Tony Richardson, artistic directors of the Royal Court Theatre, commissioned a play from him. This was in 1956. A few years later, he was associate artistic director, working as a playreader and director, in particular helping to run the writers' group. The improvisatory techniques and exercises that evolved there, fostering spontaneity and narrative skills, were developed further in the actors' studio and, then, in demonstrations to schools and colleges. This ultimately resulted in the founding of a company of performers called The Theatre Machine.

Divided into four sections - Status, Spontaneity, Narrative Skills, and Masks and Trance - and arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the audiobook sets out the specific techniques and exercises which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is both an audiobook of ideas and a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity. This audio edition of Impro is skillfully narrated by William Reay and includes as a second appendix a previously unpublished essay The Full Mask, which Johnstone wrote 50 years after the original publication of the book.

Produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont. ©1979, 1981 Keith Johnstone, Irving Wardle.