The Improv Handbook - by Tom Salinsky & Deborah Frances-White (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Improv Handbook" provides everything someone interested in improvisational comedy needs to know, as written by a husband-and-wife comedy duo with years of experience and teaching in the field.

Book Synopsis

The most comprehensive, smart, helpful and inspiring guide to improve available today. Applicable to comedians, actors, public speakers and anyone who needs to think on their toes.

From The Improv Handbook:
The problem for improvisers is anxiety. faced with a lot of nameless eyes staring at us, and feeling more than anything else like prey, we are likely to want to display very consistent behavior, so that anyone who looks at us, looks away and then looks back sees the same thing. Thus we become boring, we fade into the background, and we cease to be of interest.

The Improv Handbook provides everything someone interested in improvisational comedy needs to know, as written by a husband and wife comedy duo with years of experience and teaching in the field. in addition to providing a comprehensive history of improvisational theater as a backdrop, it also looks at modern theories and practices of improvisation on a global scale, including how the form of comedy has evolved differently in different parts of the world, from Europe to the UK to the Chicago scene. The Improv Handbook also contains an essential performance segment that details different formats of improvisation. Chapter topics include Theatresports, Micetro, Gorilla Theatre, and the inventions of Keith Johnstone and Del Close as well as other popular forms of improv, like those on "Whose Line is it Anyway." The core section of the book is called simply, "How to Improvise" and delves into issues of spontaneity, the fundamentals of storytelling, working together, upping the ante, and character development. The book concludes with sections on how to improvise in front of an audience and- just as crucially- how to attract an audience in the first place.

Review Quotes

"Cofounders of the London-based improvisational theater company The Spontaneity Shop, Salinsky and Frances-White provide a wonderful addition to the growing literature on theatrical improvisation. The book can serve as both a scholarly resource, since it covers the history of improvisation from its beginnings to the present, and a practical guide, for the beginner and advanced improviser... The authors include interviews with ten leading international improvisers, and they conclude with an appendix that details many of the most common improvisational games used in academic and professional settings. This book is a must for institutions supporting theater and performance programs. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers, all levels." -S.W. Cole, CHOICE, January 2009

Title mention in Bookseller Buyers Guide.

About the Author

Tom Salinsky is the co-founder (with his wife Deborah Frances-White) of The Spontaneity Shop. He and Deborah have performed improvisation for The Royal Court, The RSC Summer Season, The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Festival, and at the Bloomsbury Theatre. They have toured the world and performed at many comedy festivals by invitation. They teach at RADA, The Actors Centre, The National Youth Theatre, and many other colleges and institutions, as well as their own successful workshop program. Deborah Frances-White is the co-founder (with her husband Tom Salinsky) of The Spontaneity Shop. She and Tom have performed improvisation for The Royal Court, The RSC Summer Season, The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Festival, and at the Bloomsbury Theatre. They have toured the world and performed at many comedy festivals by invitation. They teach at RADA, The Actors Centre, The National Youth Theatre, and many other colleges and institutions, as well as their own successful workshop program.