If Viola Spolin is the godmother of modern improvisation, that makes her son, Paul Sills, its Michael Corleone — the heir to the family business. Sills, who assisted his mom with her children’s theater workshops in the 1940s, enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1948. There, he directed many student productions and in the process met David Shepherd, with whom, in 1955, he organized the Compass Players, the first improvisational theater company in the U.S. In 1959, Sills and Bernie Sahlins formed Chicago’s Second City Theater, where he was director until 1965. All of Sills’ work in comedy theater, and in fact his life itself, was influenced by the theory and practice of improvisation.
For Spolin’s classic text, Improvisation for the Theater, Sills wrote a section entitled Paul Sills’ Sayings of Viola Spolin, a compilation of wisdom that can be seen as a coach’s advice to her players, and also as a mother’s advice to a son. Here are a few of those bromides. They need no comment, but give them some thought, because they are deep, and offer fresh insight into why improvisation is important to the conduct of business in the Networked World:
Approval/disapproval is keeping you from a direct experience.
That which is not yet known comes out of that which is not yet here.
Don’t initiate! Follow the initiator! Follow the follower!
When you are in a state of reflection you are including another; when you initiate you deny yourself.
Games and story bring out self rather than ego.
Let the magic of the focus work for you. Stay out of it.
Focus is not the content of focus; it is the effort to stay on focus.
Change is not enough. This body of work asks more: transformation.
Movement, interaction, transformation.
Tags: , Bernie Sahlins, Change, Coaching, Compass Players, David Shepard, Focus, Improvisation, Paul Sills, Practice, Sayings, Second City, Theory, Transformation, Viola Spolin, Wisdom