Although the following is very Brave New Workshop centric, it might prove helpful for people looking for info on the history of improv. The following is a piece of support material from:
A Survey of the History of Improvised Theatre
With Critical Examination of the connection between Commedia Dell Arte and the 2005 Production of Religious Pretense in the University of Minnesota Xperimental Theatre
For completion of a BA in Theatre
From the University of Minnesota
Department of Theatre Arts and Dance
2006
Dave Jennings
Timeline
The following timeline of improvised theatre is a combination of three sources: A timeline adapted from The Commedia dell'Arte: A Documentary History by Kenneth Richards, John Sweeney’s Innovation at the Speed of Laughter, and Stevie Ray’s History of Improvisation. It is not a complete record, but it should prove helpful in understanding the rich history of Improvisation, Commedia Dell Arte, and the impact on the Twin Cities Scene.
3rd c.B.C to early A.D. - "Fabula Atellanae", comedies and popular farces, parodies, and political satires featuring stock characters with large masks (Pappus, Maccus, Servus, Mandacus, and Dossenus, originated in Atella, south of Rome.
1268 . - Venetian Carnevale documents first use of masks.
1321 . - The Divine Comedy.
1450 . - Gutenburg Bible printed.
1480 . - Botticceli: 'The Birth of Venus'.
1500 . - Benvenuto Cellini born.
1507 . - First performance of Bibbiena's "La Calandria", based on Plautus's
"Menaechmi", in Urbino.
1518 . - Machiavelli publishes ' La Mandragola', one of the earliest plays with
commedia-like characters and plot.
1525 . - Pietro Aretino publishes "la cortigiana", his most famous comedy.
1528 . - Angelo Beolco, known as Il Ruzzante, presents a comedy in which each
character speaks a different dialect.
1532 . - Machiavelli's 'The Prince' is published (posthumously).
1545 . - The first contract for 8 artisans forming an Italian professional acting troupe,
at Padua.
1548 . - Francesco Andreini born.
1552 . - A.F. Grazzini refers to improvised playing at Florence.
1564 . - First record of an actress (Lucrezia Senese) listed with an acting troupe
1564 . - Shakespeare, Marlowe born.
1565-6 . - First references to commedia characters - e.g., Zanni and Pantalone - in
connection with acting companies.
1568 . - February: earliest surviving detailed description of an improvised
performance by Massimo Troiano da Napoli at Castel Trausnitz in Bavaria. This
indicates foreign touring by commedia troupes.
1568 . - First mention of the Gelosi Company in Milan.
c1570 .- paintings depicting commedia dell'arte.
1571 . - Gelosi Company makes its first visit to Paris, where it acts at the house of
the Duke of Nevers before Charles IV. Company of Zan Ganassa (Alberto Naseli) also in Paris this year. First illustration of Arlecchino.
1574 . - Zan Ganassa Company is in Madrid. Gelosi Company invited to Venice to
play for French King Henry III (the third son of Catherine de Medici) at his request. First record of Confidenti Company.
1574 . - Record of Italian performers in England at Windsor and Reading (did
Shakespeare see these?)
1576 . - Henry III of France requests the Italian company he had seen in Venice to
perform in Paris.
1577 . - Gelosi Company is again in France, protected from French Parliament by the
King.
1577 . - The company of Drusiano Martinelli performs in London. There is indication
that Italian comedians accompanied Queen Elizabeth on her summer travels.
1578 . - Gelosi Company returns to Florence, under the direction of Flaminio Scala.
1585 . - Palladio's Teatro Olimpico completed.
1587 . - Confidenti Company is in Spain.
1588 . - Gelosi Company returns to Paris, briefly.
1589 . - A great theatrical spectacle mounted in Florence to celebrate the marriage of
Ferdinand I and Christine of Lorraine, included a Commedia performance starring Isabella Andreini.
1590 . - First mention of the Accesi Company. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
opens.
1599 . - The Globe opens.
1600 . - Accessi Company peforms for the marriage of Henry IV and Maria
de'Medici.
1601 . - Tristano Martinelli, celebrated Arlecchino performer, publishes
Compositions de rhetorique. Fedeli Company formed by G.B. Andreini (son of Francesco and Isabella).
1601 . - Shakespeare's Hamlet performed.
1604 . - Isabella Andreini dies at Lyons. Francesco Andreini gives up the commedia
and disbands Gelosi Company. Inigo Jones brings Italian stage scenes to England.
1605 . - Comici Fedeli formed, acquiring several actors from the Gelosi Company.
1611 . - Flamino Scala publishes Il teatro delle Favole rappresentative.
1611 . - Shakespeare's Tempest performed.
1613 . - Maria de'Medici invites Comici Fedeli to Paris, where they played off and on
until 1623.
1616 . - Death of Shakespeare.
1619 . - Flamino Scala's Il finito marito published.
1624 . - Death of Francesco Andreini.
1630 . - Death of Tristano Martinelli.
1634 . - Italian players perform in Warsaw.
1637 . - Domenico Biancolelli born.
1639 . - Racine born.
1640 . - Last mention of Confidenti troupe.
1642 . - English Parliament, influenced by the Puritans, closes theatres.
1658 . - Fiorelli-Locatelli Troupe shares the Petit Bourbon with Moliere's company,
the Compagnie de Monsieur.
1660 . - Restoration of Charles II. Davenant's and Killigrew's companies granted
patents (women included).
1661 . - Arlecchino, Domenico Biancolelli, called to Paris.
1664 . - Scaramouche, the most popular italian character, receives a pension of 15,000
livres.
1673 . - Moliere dies. His company and the Fiorelli-Locatelli troupe move to the
Guenegaud Theatre, where they play until 1680.
1675 . - William Wycherley's "the Country Wife" opens in London at the new Drury
Lane Theatre, designed by Christopher Wren, on the site of the old Drury Lane which burned in 1672.
1676 . - George Etherage's "Man of Mode" performed to great success.
1682 . - From now until 1697, the repertory of Italian comedy falls into two
categories: comedies of buffoonery, parades, parodies and satires, and nuanced character comedies similar to Moliere and Marivaux.
1684 . - Italians begin making changes with their dialogue,interjecting French
phrases and interpolating entire scenes into French.
1697 . - Italian players expelled from Paris because their scenario "La Finta
Matrigna" pokes fun at Mme de Maintenon, the mistress of the King.
The King authorizes Tortoriti (Pascariel) to form a troupe of his own, using some of the same actors, but they cannot come within 30 leagues of Paris.
1698 . - Jeremy Collier publishes "Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the
English Stage".
1716 . - Louis XV re-establishes Riccoboni's Troupe in the old Hotel de Bourgogne
Theatre, where they keep the spirit of the characters, but perform in French.
1723 . - Louis XV grants a subsidy of 15,000 livres to Riccoboni and his colleagues.
1737 . - the Stage Licensing Act passed in England.
1739 . - Carlo Goldoni becomes dramatist for Medebach's company.
1742 . - Antonio Sacchi, the great Arlecchino, forms his own company.
1745 . - Goldoni writes Servant of Two Masters for Sacchi.
1760 . - Carlo Gozzi attempts to revive improvised playing.
1762 . - Goldoni leaves Venice to work with the Comedie Italienne in Paris, where he
lived until his death in 1792.
1762 . - The Opera-Comique is amalgamated with the Italian comedy.
1780 . - The theatre of the Italian comedy assumes the name "Theatre des Italiens",
although there was not a single Italian actor left in the cast.
1897 The Moscow Art Theatre is founded by Constantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko. Its work created new concepts of theatrical production and marked the beginning of modern theater. Rebelling against the highly stylized theater of the 19th cent., the founders set out to create instead a true ensemble theater based on a realistic method of acting and production. Their productions of Chekhov's plays, especially suitable to the company's subtle and intense style, brought fame to both Chekhov and the theater. Other memorable productions were Tolstoy's Czar Fyodor Ivanovitch, Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, and Gorky's Lower Depths.
1911 Teacher, Sociologist, and Educational Theorist Neva Boyd founds the Chicago
Training School for Playground Workers and begins developing her theories on creative game-play.
1921 Neva Boyd founds the Recreational Training School at Chicago’s Hull House
1923 Russian trained actor/director Richard Boleslavsky opens the American
Laboratory Theatre or “The Lab” in New York, NY. A member f the Moskow Art Theatre and Student of Stanislovski. His co-director Maria Ouspenskaya conducts rehearsals using improvisation for the first time in American Theatre. One student of the school is Lee Strasberg
1924-1927 Neva Boyd has Viola Spolin living in her home as a student. She teaches Spolin games, storytelling, and dramatics. These will become the basis for Spolin’s life work.
1931 Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman, and Cheryl Crawford found the Group Theatre in New York. Basing their work on Stanislavski, they use improvisation to train actors. Strasberg’s work becomes known as “The Method.” New York continues to use improvisation solely as ab actor training tool, not as performance art.
1932 Dudley Riggs is born in Little Rock, Arkansas. He joins his family’s circus as a
performer at age five.
1939-1941 Viola Spolin is Drama Supervisor of the Chicago Branch of the WPA’s Recreation Project. She works primarily with illiterate immigrants, she develops theatre games out of necessity to unlock creativity and self expression. The first audience suggestion was used in 1939 in a public performance with a cast of actors all under the age of 14. The Chicago media headlined “Yesterday’s News is Tomorrow’s Play.”
1941 The Group disbands and Strasberg moves to Hollywood
1946 Viola Spolin moves to Los Angeles to form the Young Actors Company
1947 Strasberg returns to New York where he joins fello actor Elia Kazan at The Actors Studio; he later becomes director.
1948 Savern Darden and Paul Sills begin classes at Chicago University, home of the ad hoc theatre company, Tonight at 8:30. Sills becomes director in 1950. Sills also eventually starts teaching Spolin workshops at the theatre. Sills is Viola Spolin’s son.
1950s The advent of television causes the attendance of live performances to wane.
Dudley Riggs and some of his fellow circus performers bring a new act to New York City, incorporating “audience input” into parts of the show for the first time. Calling themselves the “Instant Theatre Company,” the group brings the show to Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Burbank, California, before settling in Minneapolis.
1952 David Shepard, with $10,000 inheritance, hitchhikes to Chicago with a dream tp
open his own theatre based on the work of his idol, Bertoit Brect. He comes fresh from studying caberet theatre in Europe. He wants to open a cabert-style theatre that could be “replicated in every community around the globe.”
1953 The Playwrights Theatre Club opens in Chicago. Paul Sills had the actors, Dave
Shepard had the money, and Eugene Troobinick had the car. It was to be a professional repertory theatre. To avoid city ordinances they sell membership by subscription. Actors include Zohra Lambert, Ed Asner, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, and Barbara Harris.
1955 After bribing nearly the entire city government, the Playwright’s Theatre is closed
by the fire inspector. Sills rents a theatre at the University of Chicago for classes.
1955 On May 15th Roger Bowen debuts his first scenario play, “Enterprise,” at the
Reynolds Club at the University of Chicago. This is the first modern long-form improvisation, a cornerstone in Shepard’s style. Shepard continues his quest for a ‘theatre for the people,’ running ads in New York newspapers reading: “Wanted: Ten scripts for popular theatre opening in Chicago. Prefer Brectian fables and political satires, plays on famous modern events, cabaret material. Will correspond with wood-be playwrights.”
1955 On July 5th, Fred Wranovics, a former bartender, takes over the bankrupt Hi-Hat
Lounge on 55th Street. He knows shepard and Paul Sills from the Playwrights Theatre Club. They team to open the Compass Tavern. The Compass Players perform in a back room, and they make improvised scenarios the basis of the theatre. Shepard introduces “The Living Newspaper,” improvised scenes based on newspaper stories of the day.
1955- November 1st, The Compass Players have been kicked out of the Tavern because
bar sales are more important. They move to The Dock on South Lake Park Ave, owned by George Schall. The actors are all members of equity. Shows run Wednesday through Sunday. They rehearse 2:00 to 4:30, run home to change, return to socialize with the audience at the 5:00 cocktail hour, and the curtain goes up at 8:30. The show is primarily improv at this point and made up of audience suggestions tat are compiled and discussed over a 15 minute break before the improv set.
1956- A man named Keith Johnstone was commissioned as a playwright by the Royal
Court Theatre. This eventually led to a position as Associate Artistic Director, working as Play-Reader, Director, and Director of the Writer’s Group. He used improvisatory (his term) techniques to develop creativity, spontaneity, and narrative skills. The exercises were such a success in rehearsal that the company decided to try demonstrations in schools and colleges across England. It was met with such success that The Theatre Machine was founded to perform Impro.
1957 Ted Flicker opens the St. Louis Compass Players with actors Nancy Ponder, Jo
Henerson, and Del Close, They live in the mansion of Fred Landesman. In July Ted Flicker and Elaine May spend every day for two weks in the third floor kitchen of the mansion developing what would become known as the “Westminster Place Kitchen Rules.” These rules were as follows:
1) Whatever verbal or pantomimed reality that is brought to the stage by one player may not be negated or denied by another.
2)While improvsing, a player has infinite opportunities for choice, and it is better to take an active rather than a passive choice. Try to take the “unlikely choice.”
3) In an improvisation, where there are no lines, or given characters, or dramaturgical ‘spine’ to set a character in motion, you are your character, although not one called by your name. All characterizations, or acting, comes from an exaggerated or intensified rendition of yourself called by another name.
4) All improvisations require the discovery and development of three elements; place, character, and circumstance (the where, who, and why) wherein a need for each other between the characters is expressed.
5) Since neither doing business (buying or selling), nor arguing are dramatic transactions, they should be avoided.
1958 Dudley Riggs brings his “Instant Theatre Company” to the Café Espresso on
University Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis. His café/theatre houses the United States’ first espresso machine west of the Mississippi. After years of battling the audiences, Dudley decided to incorporate them into the show. He began asking the audience for their input, “Who do you hate in this town?” When the audience shouted, “The Mayor,” the troupe would perform an instant sketch about the mayor. At the time, the word “improvisation” was a term used primarily by jazz musicians. Since Dudley had great respect for jazz, he avoided the term “improvisation” and dubbed his new art, "Instant Theatre." Later, in a New York Times review, a critic dubbed Dudley’s art, “Word Jazz.”
1959 On December 16th the Second City is opened in Chicago in an old Chinese laundry
and adjoining hat shop by Paul Sills, Roger Bowen, Eugene Troobnick, Dave Shepard, and Bernie Sahlins. The name comes from an article in The New Yorker by A.J. Liebling where he claims that Chicago always wished that it was like New York.
1960 November 22, 1960, New York: After interviewing 3,000 actors, Ted Flicker opens
‘The Premise’ in Greenwich Village. To avoid a theatre license it is registered as an “exhibition of mental ability.”
1961 At the Brave New Workshop, the current style of comedy satire/satire revue
shows is established, and the name “Brave New Workshop” is added for the first time.
1961 Paul Sills opens The Second City in Los Angeles and New York.
1962 The first improv classes are taught to high school students at the Brave New
Workshop.
1963 The first edition of Improvisation for the Theatre by Viola Spolin is published.
1965 After mounting productions in the Café Espresso on University Avenue, then
moving to 207 East Hennepin Avenue, Dudley Riggs and crew follow the muse to 2605 Hennepin Ave-nue on November 30, 1965, making the former bike shop into their permanent home. The ticket price of a Brave New Workshop show in 1965 is $2. Current owners John Sweeney and Jenni Lilledahl are born.
1970 Brave New Workshop International Touring Company is formed to take the
Brave New Workshop style of improvisation to college campuses and outlying
Minnesota communities, as well as to other states and countries.
1971 Dudley Riggs opens a second theatre, the Experimental Theater Company (ETC),
at 1430 Washington Avenue in the Seven Corners area of Minneapolis. This theatre and café become home to other Brave New Workshop productions, as well as stand-up comedy and variety acts. The 2605 Hennepin location continues to be the theatre’s main stage. Dudley Riggs operates the ETC until 1991, when he consolidates his operations back to the single 2605 Hennepin -location.
1972 In San Francisco the Groundlings is formed
1970s The Brave New Workshop International Touring Company expands to in-
clude performances at conventions and for private businesses. This is the first time the Brave New Workshop crosses over from stage to boardroom.
1975 The fourth annual New Year’s Eve Party at the Brave New Workshop features a three-and-a-half-hour satirical comedy focusing on the low points of the year, as well as a buffet for the grand price of $8.50.
1984 Dick Chudow creates ComedySportz in Milwaukee based on the format of Keith Johnstone’s TheatreSports, creating an international franchise.
1985 Viola Spolin publishes “Theatre games for Rehearsal: A Director’s Handbook.”
1990 The Brave New Workshop celebrates twenty-five years at 2605 Hennepin by reducing ticket prices to the 1965 price of $2.
1997 John Sweeney and Jenni Lilledahl purchase the theatre from its founder, Dudley Riggs. The name of the historic theatre changes slightly to “The Brave New Workshop, founded by Dudley Riggs in 1958.”
1997 The Brave New Workshop signs a seven-figure contract to be the official comedy provider for the new Disney Cruise Line ships, the Magic and the Wonder.
1997 The Brave New Workshop decides to aggressively expand its corporate services division, developing new corporate entertainment and training products and increasing its scope from less than fifteen events per year to more than one hundred.
1998 The Brave New Workshop celebrates its forty-year anniversary by opening a new space for the theatre’s main stage and offices at 3001 Hennepin Avenue in Calhoun Square.
1999 The Brave New Institute grows from seven students to a school hosting more than two hundred fifty students each week. It now has eleven teachers and fifteen sections of class per week.
2000 The Brave New Workshop produces “Flanagan’s Wake,” an interactive Irish comedy at the 2605 Hennepin location. This production is in cooperation with the Noble Fool Theatre of Chicago.
2001 The Brave New Workshop reaches another milestone when, for the first time in its history, it opens a theatre in a location other than Minneapolis. The Brave New Workshop renovates the historic Palace Theatre at 17 West Seventh Place. In January 2001, the Brave New Workshop opens that space with the Irish comedy, “Flanagan’s Wake.”
2002 The Brave New Workshop moves its main stage operations back to the 2605 Hennepin Avenue theatre, once again establishing this location as its historic home. ComedySportz Minneapolis moves into the Calhoun Square.
2003 “Flanagan’s Wake” closes after a successful two-year run, making way for “MN: It’s Not Just For Lutherans Anymore!” which opens in the Palace Theatre space.
2003 The University of Minnesota’s Improv Group is Founded, an ‘open gym’ is held every Monday night at the U of M’s Rarig Center
2004 Religious Pretense is first performed at the Minneapolis Fringe Festival
2005 Religious Pretense is performed as part of the Xperimental Theatre Season at the U of M
2005 David Shepard appears at the 8th Annual Chicago Improv Festival.
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