Impro for Storytellers (Theatre Arts (Routledge Paperback)) [Paperback]

If you want the best collection of improv games since Spolins "Improvisation for the Theatre", this is it. Johnstone paces the book with wonderful stories of how the games have been used under all sorts of circumstances, with a brilliant and dry sense of wit. If you are interested in improv, please read this book!

As much a psychological treatise as a practical work, it is one of my favorite HOW-TO books on writing. The transcripts of sample activities read like step-by-step reinforcements of a more open, organic means of thinking.

What Manuel Smith did for Assertiveness in "When I say No I feel Guilty" Johnstone does for creative storytelling in this book!

This follow-up is more specialized: a handbook for putting IMPRO into practice, including detailed improv structures for performance and for rehearsal, and chapters on how to teach these games. Sample run lists and notes from performances impart Johnstone's experiences, trials and errors over many years teaching in several countries. The book is exhaustive and beautifully written, but for the general reader, IMPRO is more appropriate.

One disappointment about the book is some sloppy copy-editing. It is rife with typos, of the sort that are not picked out by a computer spell-checker since the typos form actual words.

The title IMPRO FOR STORYTELLERS is, as Tim Sheppard pointed out below, potentially misleading. This is not a book that will help a solo performer generate material, though some of the exercises within can be translated for that purpose. Johnstone's concern is that improv not be restricted to a form of "light entertainment" (think "Who's Line Is It Anyway?"), but as a way of generating narrative and using it to explore human relationships.