Viola Spolin Quotes

• Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become 'stage-worthy.' We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking and crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations. If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach. 'Talent' or 'lack of talent' have little to do with it.

  Viola Spolin

  Moving, Play, Wish

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.50, Northwestern University Press

  89 Copy quote

• The unknown is where we go to find new things and intuition is how we find them.

  Viola Spolin

  Intuition, New Things

  57 Copy quote

• Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person - mind, body, intelligence and creativity.

  Viola Spolin

  Creativity, Play, Mind

  90 Copy quote

• Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that for the moment frees us from handed-down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and undigested theories and techniques of other people's findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression.

  Viola Spolin

  Memories, Reality, Discovery

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.4, Northwestern University Press

  93 Copy quote

• The techniques of the theater are the techniques of communicating.

  Viola Spolin

  Technique, Theater, Communicate

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.14, Northwestern University Press

  57 Copy quote

• We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything.

  Viola Spolin

  Teach

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.50, Northwestern University Press

  53 Copy quote

• Theater Games are a process applicable to any field, discipline, or subject matter which creates a place where full participation, communication, and transformation can take place.

  Viola Spolin

  Communication, Games, Discipline

  44 Copy quote

• It is highly possible that what is called 'talented behavior' is simply a greater individual capacity for experiencing. From this point of view, it is in the increasing of the individual capacity for experiencing that the untold potentiality of a personality can be evoked.

  Viola Spolin

  Inspirational, Motivational, Attitude

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.50, Northwestern University Press

  81 Copy quote

• Get out of your head, into your space and await the invisible stranger

  Viola Spolin

  Space, Stranger, Invisible

  40 Copy quote

• Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theatre.

  Viola Spolin

  Play, Wish, Theatre

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.50, Northwestern University Press

  65 Copy quote

• Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves.

  Viola Spolin

  Spontaneity

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.4, Northwestern University Press

  35 Copy quote

• The audience is the most revered member of the theater. Without an audience, there is no theater. Everything done is ultimately for the enjoyment of the audience. They are our guests, fellow players, and the last spoke in the wheel which can then begin to roll. They make the performance meaningful.

  Viola Spolin

  Meaningful, Player, Theatre

  47 Copy quote

• When the rational mind is shut off, we have the possibility of intuition.

  Viola Spolin

  Mind, Intuition, Possibility

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.14, Northwestern University Press

  15 Copy quote

• If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn, and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach.

  Viola Spolin

  Environment, Individual, Permit

  Viola Spolin (1963). “Improvisation for the theater: a handbook of teaching and directing techniques”

  35 Copy quote

• One must be chary of words because they turn into cages.

  Viola Spolin

  Cages, Turns

  32 Copy quote

• First teach a person to develop to the point of his limitation and then-pfft!-break the limitation.

  Viola Spolin

  Firsts, Limits, Break

  40 Copy quote

• It stands to reason that if we direct all our efforts towards reaching a goal, we stand in grave danger of losing everything on which we have based our daily activities. For when a goal is superimposed on an activity instead of evolving out of it, we often feel cheated when we reach it.

  Viola Spolin

  Losing Everything, Daily Activities, Goal

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.12, Northwestern University Press

  31 Copy quote

• That which is not yet known comes out of that which is not yet here.

  Viola Spolin

  Known

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.13, Northwestern University Press

  21 Copy quote

• Don’t initiate! Follow the initiator! Follow the follower.

  Viola Spolin

  Followers, Initiate

  Viola Spolin, Carol Sills (1985). “Theater Games for Rehearsal: A Director's Handbook, Updated Edition”, p.93, Northwestern University Press

  15 Copy quote

• When student-actors see people and the way they behave when together, see the color of the sky, hear the sounds in the air, feel the ground beneath them and the wind on their faces, they get a wider view of their personal world and development in the theater is quickened. The world provides the material for the theater and artistic growth develops hand-in-hand with one's recognition of it and one's self within it.

  Viola Spolin

  Air, Self, Views

  29 Copy quote

• My vision is a world of accessible intuition.

  Viola Spolin

  Intuition, Vision, World

  Viola Spolin (1999). “Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques”, p.11, Northwestern University Press

  9 Copy quote

• There are few places outside his own play where a child can contribute to the world in which he finds himself. His world: dominated by adults who tell him what to do and when to do it -benevolent tyrants who dispense gifts to their good subjects and punishment to their bad ones, who are amused at the cleverness of children and annoyed by their stupidities.

  Viola Spolin

  Children, Punishment, Play

  19 Copy quote

• General improvisations often give actors an insight beyond their words by helping them to 'see the word' and achieve a reality for the scene.

  Viola Spolin

  Reality, Giving, Actors

  19 Copy quote

• Creativity is not the clever rearranging of the known.

  Viola Spolin

  Clever, Creativity, Rearranging

  22 Copy quote

• We have freedom of speech, but you got to watch what you say.

  Viola Spolin

  Freedom Of Speech, Theatre, Watches

  12 Copy quote

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