About the Book:

Recommended by The Second City school of improv and sketch comedy!

Impro is an excellent book for someone just starting out in improv, and worthwhile reading for people who've been doing it for a while. Discusses a lot of basic theory, and explores the nature of spontaneity.

A must-read for anyone remotely interested in the performing arts. Keith Johnstone calls on us to bring the creativity and whimsy of improvisation into all corners of our lives and art. His involvement with the theatre began when the Royal Court Theatre, commissioned a play from him. This was in 1956. A few years later Keith Johnstone was himself Associate Artistic Director, working as a play-reader and director, in particular helping to run the Writers' Group. The improvisatory techniques and exercises evolved there to foster spontaneity and narrative skills were developed further in the actors' studio, then in demonstrations to schools and colleges, and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers, called The Theatre Machine.

Subtitled Improvisation and the Theatre, the book is divided into four sections, Status, Spontaneity, Narrative Skills, and Masks and Trance, arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them. Impro sets out the specific techniques and exercises that Keith Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is both an ideas book and a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity. It will open your mind and provide food for thought for the inner child and inner artist.

What people say:

"Impro ought to be required reading not only for theatre people generally but also for teachers, educators, and students of all kinds and persuasions. Readers of this book are not going to agree with everything in it; but if they are not challenged by it, if they do not ultimately succumb to its wisdom and whimsicality, they are in a very sad state indeed… Johnstone seeks to liberate the imagination, to cultivate in the adult the creative power of the child… Deserves to be widely read and tested in the classroom and rehearsal hall… Full of excellent good sense, actual observations and inspired assertions." — CHOICE

About the Author:

Keith Johnstone (1933-2023) was a British and Canadian theatre director, teacher, author and playwright specializing in improvisational theatre. He worked at the Royal Court Theatre in the 1960s where he developed his pioneering techniques for improvisational work, known as the Impro System. He was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary and is best known as the the inventor of Theatresports.