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The Improv Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Improvising in Comedy, Theatre, and Beyond Paperback – June 15, 2008
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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.
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherContinuum
- Publication dateJune 15, 2008
- Dimensions6.69 x 0.89 x 9.61 inches
- ISBN-100826428584
- ISBN-13978-0826428585
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- Publisher : Continuum; 0 edition (June 15, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0826428584
- ISBN-13 : 978-0826428585
- Item Weight : 1.54 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.69 x 0.89 x 9.61 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,553,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #652 in Performing Arts History & Criticism
- #1,287 in Acting & Auditioning
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As I read the book, I realized that this book spells out a lot of the skills needed to improve social skills for people on the AUTISM spectrum. The listening skills, give-and-take, and team playing required in improv would work well with teaching social skills to those who don't have these abilities -- and the beauty is that when one is successful, you get immediate positive feedback (laughter) which motivates you to try harder.
I really think that improv classes could go a long way to teach older higher-functioning children on the autism spectrum how to be funny -- thereby helping them with social skills.
Parents of children on the autism spectrum -- really consider purchasing this book, and possibly setting up improv classes, in order to help your teenage child understand humor. It could go a long way to helping them adapt to their high school experience, and help their peers see them favorably so that they can improve their friendships.
There are one or two parts that are not workable in my very conservative high school, but those are few and far between. This book, along with anything by Bruce Miller, will give you substantive ways to improve your acting classes.
That said, I can't recommend this book. The authors are egotistical in style and freely criticize others' works, including, of all things, M. Night Shyamalan! Huh?!? I find the reading to be very negative - kinda in opposition to the whole "yes and..." vibe.
So, if you get something out of this book, great! I just can't bring myself to read it all the way thru.









