Theatresports
Theatresports is a form of improvisational theatre, which uses the format of a competition for dramatic effect. Opposing teams can perform scenes based on audience suggestions, with ratings by the audience or by a panel of judges. Developed by director Keith Johnstone in Calgary, Alberta, in 1977, the concept of Theatresports originated in Johnstone's observations of techniques used in professional wrestling to generate heat, or audience reaction. Derivatives ComedySportz, started in 1984 in Milwaukee, WI, tends to emphasise the sports competition format more than Theatresports, for example by having a referee who awards points and administers fouls. The Australian shows '' Thank God You're Here'' and ''TheatreGames LIVE'' follow a similar format to these shows. New York City's Face Off Unlimited has also adapted the concept to numerous productions. Two similar formats, Ligue nationale d'improvisation and Canadian Improv Games both also officially debuted in 1977 in Quebec an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Improvisational Theatre
Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv or impro in British English, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted, created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, action, story, and characters are created collaboratively by the players as the improvisation unfolds in present time, without use of an already prepared, written Play (theatre), script. Improvisational theatre exists in performance as a range of styles of improvisational comedy as well as some non-comedic theatrical performances. It is sometimes used in film and television, both to develop characters and scripts and occasionally as part of the final product. Improvisational techniques are often used extensively in drama programs to train actors for stage, film, and television and can be an important part of the rehearsal process. However, the skills and processes of improvisation are also used outside the conte ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Calgary
Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in Canada. Calgary is at the confluence of the Bow River and the Elbow River in the southwest of the province, in the transitional area between the Rocky Mountain Foothills and the Canadian Prairies, about east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies, roughly south of the provincial capital of Edmonton and approximately north of the Canada–United States border. The city anchors the south end of the Statistics Canada-defined urban area, the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor. Calgary's economy includes activity in many sectors: energy; financial services; film and television; transportation and logistics; technology; manufacturing; aerospace; health and wellness; retail; and tourism. The Calgary Metropolitan Region is home to Canada' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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ComedySportz
ComedySportz (CSz) is an improvisational comedy organization started in 1984 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by a group of local comedians including Dick Chudnow, Karen Kolberg, Bob Orvis, Brian Green, and others. Match format The traditional format of a ComedySportz match features two teams of improvisational performers ("Players"), competing in various rounds, using improv games and performing scenes. Audience members judge the results and award points as directed by the Referee. In every match, a ComedySportz referee monitors the action, awarding points, and administering Fouls as necessary. The flavor is somewhat like the television show '' Whose Line Is It Anyway?'', though the ComedySportz organization precedes that show's debut by 4 years. The CSz format is a more competitive and For Everyone (content-wise) version of the Theatresports format, which preceded ComedySportz by 7 years. ComedySportz penalties (put in place for the audience's benefit) include: * Out of Bounds Foul: ca ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Keith Johnstone
Donald Keith Johnstone (21 February 1933 – 11 March 2023) was a British-Canadian educator and theatre director. A pioneer of improvisational theatre, he was best known for inventing the ''Impro System'', part of which are the Theatresports. He was also an educator, playwright, actor and theatre director. Life Donald Keith Johnstone was born in 1933 in Brixham, Devon, England. He grew up hating school, finding that it blunted his imagination and made him feel self-conscious and shy. After attending St Luke's College Exeter, he taught at a working-class school in Battersea, London in the early 1950s, before being commissioned to write a play by the Royal Court Theatre in 1956. He subsequently became a play-reader, director and drama teacher there, where he chose to reverse all that his teachers had told him in an attempt to create more spontaneous actors. From 1973 to 1975 he was a professor at Queens University in Kingston Ontario Canada. His play Shot By An Elk was first ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Face Off Unlimited
Face Off Unlimited is an improvisational comedy production company based in New York City. History In 2003, Jay Painter and Eric Robinson founded Friday Night Face Off, a weekly improvised comedy show in Port Jefferson, New York featuring two teams of comedic improvisers engaged in a mock competition, a concept originated by Theatresports. Friday Night Face Off (often abbreviated as FNFO) has since become the longest continuously running improv comedy shows in Long Island history. In 2009, Painter and Robinson formed Face Off Unlimited, A Limited Liability Company, and brought on former FNFO creative director Joe Tex as Partner and Chief Operating Director. Face Off Unlimited produces various comedy stage shows, has a writing division who specializes in creating content for robots, video games, and iOS applications, including French robotics company, Aldebaran Robotics and its NAO and Pepper humanoid robots. Face Off offers multi-level improv and writing classes and workshops ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Canadian Encyclopedia
''The Canadian Encyclopedia'' (TCE; ) is the national encyclopedia of Canada, published online by the Toronto-based historical organization Historica Canada, with financial support by the federal Department of Canadian Heritage and Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. Compiled by more than 5,000 scholars and specialists, the publication is a non-partisan, non-political initiative by a not-for-profit organization without political or governmental ties. First published in 1985, the consistently updated version has been available for free online in both Canadian English, English and Canadian French, French since 2001. The physical copy and website includes "articles on Canadian biographies and places, history, the Arts, as well as First Nations, science and Canadian innovation." , over 700,000 volumes of the print version of ''TCE'' have been sold and over 6 million people visit ''TCE'''s website yearly. The encyclopedia website consists of more than 25,000 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Theatre In Calgary
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. It is the oldest form of drama, though live theatre has now been joined by modern recorded forms. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Places, normally buildings, where performances regularly take place are also called "theatres" (or "theaters"), as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe"). Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminolog ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Improvisational Theatre In Canada
Improvisation, often shortened to improv, is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. The origin of the word itself is in the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation. Skills and techniques The skills of improvisation can apply to many different abilities or forms of communication and expression across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines. For example, improvisation can make a significant contribution in music, dance, cooking, presenting a speech, sales, personal or romantic relationships, sports, flower arranging, martial arts, psychotherapy, and much more. Technique ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alberta Report
The ''Alberta Report'' was a conservative weekly newsmagazine based in Edmonton. It was founded and edited by Ted Byfield, and later run by his son, Link Byfield. It ceased publication in 2003. Promoting his own Western Standard, successor publication in 2004, Ezra Levant described the Report as having been the only general interest magazine in Western Canada covering the news from a conservative perspective. In 2022, the Alberta Report was returned as an online publication under the ownership of Western Standard New Media Corp. History and profile In 1973, Byfield returned to journalism by publishing the ''St. John's Edmonton Report'', a local paper, as part of the operations of the Company of the Cross, a lay Anglican religious order, also co-founded by Byfield, which included a series of traditional Anglican private boarding schools for boys, starting with the Saint John's Cathedral Boys' School in 1957. The minister of St. John's School, Keith T. Bennett, served on the orig ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maclean's
''Maclean's'' is a Canadian magazine founded in 1905 which reports on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, trends and current events. Its founder, publisher John Bayne Maclean, established the magazine to provide a uniquely Canadian perspective on current affairs and to "entertain but also inspire its readers". Rogers Media, the magazine's publisher since 1994 (after the company acquired Maclean-Hunter Publishing), announced in September 2016 that ''Maclean's'' would become a monthly beginning January 2017, while continuing to produce a weekly issue on the Texture app. In 2019, the magazine was bought by its current publisher, St. Joseph Communications."Toronto Life owner St. Joseph Communications to buy Rog ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ligue Nationale D'improvisation
The Ligue nationale d'improvisation (LNI) (French for "National Improvisation League") is an improvisational comedy theatre company created in Quebec. Most of the participants are thespians, comedians or humorists. The Improvisation League format has spread to France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Argentina. Description Although the format has evolved over the years, it has always included humor, improvisation, and certain characteristics inspired by hockey: hockey jerseys, referees, and an audience that surrounds the performance area, which looks like a hockey rink. Teams in the league are made up of six members: three men and three women. A referee chooses at random a topic that the participants must act out. The teams are given 20 seconds for a preparatory "caucus" to decide how to play the scene. After the scene, the audience votes for the winner by holding up cardboard signs displaying the color of the team they like. Each scene or round is worth one point. The team with the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Theatre Games
Theatre games are structured activities and exercises designed to train actors, that was developed in the 20th century by practitioners such as Viola Spolin and son Paul Sills, Joan Littlewood, Clive Barker, Keith Johnstone, Jerzy Grotowski and Augusto Boal. Theatre games are also commonly used as warm-up exercises for actors before a rehearsal or performance, in the development of improvisational theatre, and as a lateral means to rehearse dramatic material. They are also used in drama therapy to overcome anxiety by simulating scenarios that would be fear-inducing in real life. Improvisational theatre games have also been used in performance on stages and on television, most notably on Who's Line Is It Anyways. Examples Zip Zap Zop: A concentration and energy-passing game where players pass a clap and a word (Zip, Zap, or Zop) in order. Freeze: A game where players jump into scenes frozen in action, encouraging quick thinking and scene-building. See also * Group-dynamic ga ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |