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Improvising Better
A Guide for the Working Improviser

Jimmy Carrane , Liz Allen

ISBN 0-325-00942-2 / 978-0-325-00942-1 / 2006 / 80pp / Paperback
Imprint: Heinemann Drama
Availability: In Stock

Grade Level: College-Adult

List Price: $10.95
Your Price: $8.76

Improvising Better is an easy to read self-help book created with the new generation of improviser in mind. It’s written for today’s performers, looking for a quick fix to their performance problems. This book is a fast read with long-lasting results.

Jimmy Carrane and Liz Allen have improvised, taught, and directed in Chicago for over thirty years combined, and have either seen or experienced the most common problems facing improvisers today. Improvising Better will give you simple tools for repairing your improvisation through original and enhanced exercises. This book addresses the improviser as a whole, including how offstage issues affect onstage performance. Speaking candidly about this very personal art form, Carrane and Allen offer common-sense solutions, some tough love, and a little inspiration along the way.

Whether you are a beginner or a veteran, Improvising Better will catapult you to the next level in your career as a working improviser.


 Table of Contents Acknowledgments
1. Why We Wrote Our Book
2. How to Read Our Book
3. What Happened to Yes?
4. Nice People + Nice Choices = Boring Scenes
5. Anger Is Okay
6. Afraid of Naming People, Places and Events
7. Misguided Object Work
8. You Are Required to Play the Opposite Sex
9. Fear of Playing Politically Incorrect Characters
10. By the Way, It’s Acting
11. It’s Not the Words, It’s the Connection
12. Lack of Trust
13. Choosing the Funny over the Craft
14. The Improv Committee Resides in Your Head
15. Stop Wanting
16. Yes Begins Offstage
17. Spreading Yourself Too Thin
18. Improv Is Bigger Than You Think
19. Love the Process
Biographies

 Sample Chapters

  • Preview Chapter Sixteen, Spreading Yourself Too Thin.

  •  Also Available

    Also available from Jimmy Carrane
    Also available from Liz Allen
         

    Copyright© 2008 Heinemann Drama, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.