At Play

Viola Spolin was a woman perpetually at play.

There is hardly an actor, director, or theater teacher on the planet who hasn't encountered the ubiquitous theater games she developed as a young performer. She remains one of the most underappreciated figures in American cultural history, a woman whose legacy is found everywhere from experimental black-box theaters to Saturday Night Live.

Heartfelt, yet unsentimental and with a full appreciation for its subject's quirks and flaws, At Play tells the story of Spolin's remarkable life and work. Janet Coleman, who both knew and worked with Spolin, gives a rich account of her journey from the crucible of Chicago radical politics as a child, through her training with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler, and on to the Theater Games System that would find commercial life through Chicago's Second City troupe. Coleman gives us a Spolin who is by turns warm and icily remote, single-minded and mercurial, quick-witted yet disdainful of the life of the mind. Coleman's narrative includes encounters with such motley figures as L. Ron Hubbard, Paul Mazursky, Alan Alda, Wilhelm Reich, and Sanford Meisner. This is a long-overdue account of one of the most brilliant, infuriating, and utterly original artists in American history.