Dramatic Improvisation is the art of using acting skills to create stories in the space around you. It is a body of knowledge that you can learn and practice. Actors, both professional and non-professional, can use these skills to create characters, scenes, and dramas.
SOME HISTORY
Before writing and printing all drama would have been improvised. Commedia Del Arti is the best known improvised theatre form in European history. Using stock characters, prepared scenarios and rehearsed routines the Comedia Companies toured widely. With their roots in the traditional improvised comedy dramas of the Middle East and North Africa, Comedia was a major influence on the great plays of European Drama.
More recently, through the work of Keith Johnstone and Viola Spolin, comedy improvisation has developed in Europe and America.
Dramatic Improvisation is something else. Like Comedia it is based on a body of knowledge the actors practice and use in performance. It is a disciplined and formal theatre form but with a playful and anarchic heart. The actors practise and train and train and practice but come the performance light the touch paper and stand well back!