Why the Viola Spolin technique and not the Stella Adler technique or the Stanislavski system or English acting from the Duncan Ross approach?

I met Viola in the early nineties, the last few years of her life. She frequented the workshops of her son Paul Sills in Hollywood. At the time I was teaching Improvisation for the Theater at the Stella Adler Conservatory on Argyle. The term ‘improv’ being a misnomer that I will get to in a moment; what I was teaching was basic acting. Viola’s exercises were similar to Stella’s but I found that with them ‘learning’ was more fun for the neophyte. Selma Hayek and Sean Aston were young actors in my early classes.

I noticed Viola milling about in the lobby one evening and approached her. What I was interested in at the time was her advanced exercises ‘What’s Beyond’ and ‘Changing Emotions’ I had studied Meisner with Kyle Donnelly at the Actors Center in Chicago, I had studied with W. Duncan Ross at U.S.C. (unfortunately for both of us he passed away while I was there), and finally I had studied the Adler Technique with Stella and Joanne Linville, in Los Angeles. None of them dealt with the advanced stuff of arcing scenes, and what you actually ‘played’-- which are related. They all spent a great deal of time on back-story and that, I felt, was ‘unplayable’. What actors are playing in dramatic scenes is more base than race or class or circumstances.

I had seen Steven Book use some of Viola’s earlier games like ‘Vowels and Consonants’ and ‘Animal Character’ as ‘focuses’ to make young actors more ‘organic’ but I already knew from experience that wanting something from the other actor before the scene ended was the best ‘focus’ for making actors more ‘organic’. And letting the audience see if you got it or not the best way to ‘arc’ a scene-- that is, letting them see “how that makes you feel” to paraphrase Meisner.

I was young so instead of asking her a question I told her--basically what I just wrote in the previous paragraph--that I believed playing ‘something’ took away all ‘acting’ mannerisms.  What she said next has become my mantra ever since. I wrote it down at the time, “If the audience cannot see your struggle to achieve something they cannot root for you to achieve it.”

As I grew to grasp the meaning of that, I began to get and keep acting work. I began booking. I was ‘doing’ and not ‘acting’. But mostly I learned that acting was fun, if you focused on affecting the other character/actor and not ‘performing’ an ideal-- not playing the stage directions. To quote another early teacher, Del Close, “getting out of your head, and into the circumstances”; that is the skill that both good actors and good improvisers share.

I spent the next several months seeking her out and speaking with her. I enjoyed that, while she and I stood in the lobby discussing the original intention of all her exercises--dramatic acting, the audiences and the classes at the playhouse were focused on sketch comedy.

So many things she said at the time took me years to get to the truth of. I asked about ‘What’s Beyond’ she talked about ‘Entrances and Exits’. Over the years I have come to learn to make the what’s beyond the moment before and, yeah, that is exactly what she meant. So many things she said led me to understand what other teachers had said. I have her to thank for putting it all together for me, so when I hear actors thank me for doing the same for them it is Viola they are thanking. That is why I teach The Spolin Technique.

Lastly I must mention Stanislavski.

As a master’s candidate at U.S.C., I was fortunate to be in a group workshop translating “An Actor Prepares” and other works by the master, the first by a Russian actor (actress in this case), not a critic or novelist. We debated at length the ‘magic if’ and the phrasing of ‘what scene is it?’ We discussed his seven reasons for a scene to exist, and over time I have come to understand how asking that question in just that way forces the actor to worry about only what is relevant in the playing, and not the back-story.

What scene is it? What do I want from the other character before the scene ends? Who is the other character? And finally, Who am I?

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