Community
Many theatre troupes are devoted to staging improvisational performances and growing the improv community through their training centres. One of the most widespread is the international organization Theatresports, which was founded by Keith Johnstone, an English director who wrote what many consider to be the seminal work on the relationship between status, story telling and improvisational acting, Impro. There are also many independent Improv groups around the world; a non-exhaustive but lengthy list is available here. In addition to for-profit theatre troupes, there are several college-based improv groups in the United States that are becoming popularized as a result of programs such as Whose Line is it Anyway?.
In Europe the special contribution to the theatre of the abstract, the surreal, the irrational and the subconscious have been part of the stage tradition for centuries. From the 1990s onwards a growing number of European Improv groups have been set up specifically to explore the possibilities offered by the use of the abstract in improvised performance, including dance, movement, sound, music, mask work, lighting, and so on. These groups are not especially interested in comedy, either as a technique or as an effect, but rather in expanding the improv genre so as to incorporate techniques and approaches that have long been a legitimate part of European theatre.
Read more about this topic: Improvisational Theatre
Famous quotes containing the word community:
“What I wanted was to create thoughtful citizens—people who believed they could live interesting lives and be productive and socially useful. So I tried to create a community of children and adults where the adults shared and respected the children’s lives.”
—Deborah Meier (b. 1931)
“when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
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“Jesus, Buddha, Mahommed, great as each may be, their highest comfort given to the sorrowful is a cordial introduction into another’s woe. Sorrow’s the great community in which all men born of woman are members at one time or another.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)