This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register here or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org

with Jodi Kanter

“Improvising is openness to contact with the environment and each other and willingness to play.”

— Viola Spolin

Take a break from your Monday and get in touch with your sense of play through theater games. Very different from “improv” shows designed for entertainment, these simple, structured improvisation sessions will lead us through building environments, creating characters, making images, moving and inventing new languages using nothing but our bodies and our virtually shared space.

The foundation of this workshop will be the theater games and explorations of Viola Spolin, author of the classic Improvisation for the Theatre. These games focus on a wide range of core acting skills including nonverbal communication, concentration, listening, observation, character, relationship, and sensory awareness.

Actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner attested that the principles behind Spolin’s games “have formed the basis of all the work I’ve done.” Elsewhere, another writer described them as “structures designed to almost fool spontaneity into being.” Spolin’s work is taught all over the world to children and adults, professional actors, educators, and community members.

We will apply these skills to storytelling and our individual healing journeys. No previous theater experience required.

Theater Games Workshop will be hosted on the 1st & 3rd Mondays from 2:30-3:45pm ET. 

Upcoming Dates:

• September 13 & 27
• October 4 & 18
• November 1 & 15
• December 6 & 20

Suggested Donation: $10

About Jodi Kanter

Jodi has been involved in theater since she was ten years old. She grew up acting and studying performance in American theater’s “Second City,” Chicago Illinois.  She is currently a professor of theatre in the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University, where she has been on faculty for nearly fifteen years. Her academic work in theater includes her book, Performing Loss: Strengthening Communities Through Theatre and Writing (2007). Jodi’s focus on performance as a tool for individual and social healing and change has led her to create workshops, events and productions in a wide variety of settings including hospitals, schools, and prisons. Most recently, she co-created a four-month diversity and inclusion program for members of DC’s fourteen Neighborhood Village associations using the methodology of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Jodi holds a PhD. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in dramatherapy at Lesley University.