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Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre |
Author: Keith Johnstone
Published: 1987-01-07 |
List price: $28.95
Our price: $19.11
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As of: December 01st, 2008 12:14:20 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Just do it
I've recently discovered improvisation. As a tai chi instructor I've found improv fits in perfectly with my other training. It teaches you to find a way to say yes to what is offered you, good and bad. It helps put you in control of your own life.
 How can you even devour the information?
Honestly, I don't know why there are so many positive reviews for this book. I purchased this book based purely on that criteria.
I was expecting the best book anybody can get their hand on to learn improv, but what I got was a tedious toil read with nothing practical to be taken from the book.
The author constantly went on talking about himself and his theater, and put me to sleep with all these fluffs. The information is presented in "how-to" unfriendly. I couldn't even figure out what was the point the author was trying to make with all these fluffs. Look I don't care about the "you" and "what you did", all I care about is the "I", the selfish me...which is the learning the material in a easy "how-to" fashion that affects me.
Frankly, I am extremely disappointed, after all the positive reviews. Am I missing something? Am I the only one here who found this book useless?
Don't waste your time and money on this.
A much better book on improvisation will be "Truth In Comedy", which the information are much more easy to learn on a practical level.
Of interest to all enlightened beings.
You don't need to be interested in theatre to find this book fascinating. I've purchased over a dozen copies to give to my friends. It's changed my life more than any other!
Has the power to change your life and how you experience it
This book taught me many, many things, mostly immediately applicable to improv but also, on a deeper level, everyday life. It is not a book of physical techniques to try but of mental exercises to show us how we think of the world, how we are trained not to think and what we subconsciously do or avoid doing. This theoretical base I see as being immensely helpful to understanding improvisational work, but the lessons I have learned easily apply to real life situations. The author writes mostly non-linearly, but it is still very easy to follow and full of life rather than being overbearing and pretentious or dry and dull. Reading it has also exposed me to many fascinating stories, especially in the final chapter on Masks and trance, which tells us of hypnotic states and Mask-related cultures across the world and across time. The lessons we learn from these apply to our world as well, but we are conditioned to reject Mask work as being silly or strange. This book has changed and will continue to change how I think of myself and my interactions with other people and I am sure that once I get back into the improv workshop I will be a more confident and knowledgeable performer, both consciously and subconsciously, and thus a more eager participant and more ready and open to further teaching. I recommend this book to any who want a theoretical, metaphysical and spiritual guide to both improvisational performance and the constant improv performance of life.
Impro
As a theater actor, this book has been a very good tool for me. It has made me a better listener which is important on the stage. Just memorizing lines is not enough. In case someone drops a line, you can immediately come to their rescue, without making them look bad, thus maintaining the scene. I highly recommend this to anyone in the theater.
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