Viola Spolin - Spolin's Work With Children

Spolin's Work With Children

Viola Spolin began began working with children early in her career. Aside from her work with The Parent's School, Spolin used her Theatre Games as a way to help develop creative confidence in troubled kids as well as for child actors and kids who just wanted to have fun improvising. Spolin was associated for many years with the Jane Adam's Hull House as well as other locations where she and her assistant teachers taught improv workshops to children.

Spolin also directed numerous shows for children, including a production at Playwights in the mid-1950s. Soon after the Second City opened its doors in 1959, Spolin started putting up shows for children on the weekends. During Spolin children's shows the kids in the audience were invited up onto the stage to play Theatre Games with the cast. In the mid-1960s, Spolin handed the children's show (along with her improv classes) over to her protégé and assistant, Josephine Forsberg, who renamed it The Children's Theatre of the Second City and continued to produce and direct it until 1997, using Viloa Spolin's audience participation improv games after every performance.