Daughter Of Improv's First Family Launches Youth Theater Program In Los Angeles

Aretha Sills, daughter of The Second City's founding director Paul Sills, and granddaughter of Viola Spolin, known as the mother of improvisational theater, is launching a youth theater program in Studio City on September 15.

Sills has been teaching Viola Spolin's improvisational theater method to actors, directors, and educators for almost twenty years but only recently decided to start a kids program. "My grandmother's theater games teach acting through play, and kids aren't getting enough play and group interaction these days. Play helps them learn to work together, it teaches them about community, and the focus on problem solving helps children focus off stage as well. As my grandmother Viola said, 'Play is democratic!' Children need this right now. Plus, I have a five-year-old, and I want her to be raised playing theater games like I was."

The program offers two five-week children's classes, one for ages five to eight, and one for ages nine to thirteen. Classes start September 15 in Studio City. In the future, Sills hopes to offer teen classes and a variety of arts education classes.

Sills was brought up in the theater, attending rehearsals and workshops run by her father Paul, whose mother Viola created theater games and wrote the seminal acting text "Improvisation for the Theater" that launched the American improvisational theater movement. Paul Sills went on to found the first improvisational theater companies in the U.S., including Chicago's famed Second City. He created and directed the Tony-Award winning Broadway show Paul Sills' Story Theatre. "My father used to call improvisation the family business!" says Aretha.

Aretha Sills had led workshops at Northwestern University, Stella Adler Studio of Acting, Sarah Lawrence College, and at institutions and festivals around the world. She has worked with Tony- and Emmy-Award winning actors and has trained faculty from The Second City, The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science (a program created by Alan Alda to teach scientists communications skills through improvisation and based on the work of Viola Spolin), Northwestern, DePaul Goodman, LAUSD, and many other schools. She gives talks about how improvisational theater emerged out of Progressive-era activism. "Viola was the child of Russian Jewish immigrants, and she started as a social worker, working with immigrant adults and children. The whole improvisational theater movement in America came out of the idea that everyone deserves access to education and the arts. Great problems require focus, creativity and spontaneity, which play brings out in kids and adults alike. Viola developed her work with children and it changed the world. I felt it was time to bring it back where it started."

Information about the upcoming youth improvisation program can be found at: https://www.violaspolin.org/youth-classes/

Photo Credit: Melanie Chapman, Tiphead Pictures