On “Impro”

The book Impro by Keith Johnstone is described as a ‘landmark work’ by the blurb on the back of my copy. It describes techniques and exercises he developed for theatrical improvisation classes he ran. Notes There’s a lot in this book, too much to summarise easily. But some of the points that stood out most to me were: Many people who want to become professional actors are unwilling to take risks when they start improvisation classes, perhaps out of fear of revealing too much about themselves. Johnstone defines an “offer” as anything that an improvising actor does. Offers can be either accepted or blocked by another actor in the scene, where “blocking” means stopping the development of the scene’s action or negating the offer. (However, situations where one of the characters is opposing another don’t count as blocking if this opposition is consistent with the scene and leads to relevant actions.) It’s common for beginning improvisers to block instinctively. Johnstone describes a series…