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How to Improvise a Full-Length Play
By Kenn Adams
Actors, playwrights, directors, theater group leaders, and others will find everything they need to know to create comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and farce with no scripts, no scenarios, and no preconceived characters. Kenn Adams presents a step-by-step method for long-form improvisation, covering plot structure, storytelling, character development, and advanced scene work. Readers will find tips for the basics of performance improvisation, including spontaneity, connection, and collaboration, and learn the needs of a well-constructed play. Sections focus on particular skills and concepts such as:
• Cause-and-effect storytelling
• Symbolism
• Raising the dramatic stakes
• Building the arc of a play
• Creating dramatic conflict
• Defining characters
• Creating environments
• Establishing relationships
• Moving the plot forward
Examples of improvised dialogue and easy-to-follow exercises demonstrate concepts and instructions throughout the book. For anyone ready to take improv to the next level and build an exceptional piece of legitimate theater—from students to professionals—this is the essential tool. |
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Reviews
“I didn’t want to put this book down! But I did, because I couldn’t wait to get started on the exercises. What Kenn Adams offers us here is of enormous value to the creation of scripted as well as spontaneous theater. He charts a process that helps playwrights, dramaturges, directors, and actors—as well as improvisers—find their stories and grip their audiences. Oh, and . . . I laughed out loud!”—Laura Livingston, Artistic Director, Freestyle Repertory Theatre
“It can be done! Kenn Adams gives you the tools to create mind-blowing, spontaneous theater with depth, passion, and characters that the audience cares about. Filled with terrific exercises for committed improvisers at every level, this book is more than a road map—it’s a treasure map to improv gold!”—Dan Klein, Director of Improvisation, Stanford University
“Until now, Kenn Adams has been a favorite, but lesser-sung genius of the long-form improv genre. With the creation of this treasure of a book, those of us who have turned to him for wisdom and inspiration for decades, delightedly expect that the larger improv world will discover his outstanding contributions to the art form. ”—Kat Koppett, Training Director, The Mop & Bucket Theatre Company; author, Training to Imagine
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