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Product details
- ISBN 9781621538240
- Weight: 658g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 31 Aug 2023
- Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Discover the behind-the-scenes story of how The Second City theatre created a generation of world class great actors, directors, and writers.
In the late Fifties and Sixties, iconoclastic young rebels in Chicago opened two tiny theatres—The Compass and The Second City—where they satirised politics, religion and sex. Developing scenes by improvising based on audience suggestions turned out to be a fine way to develop great actors, directors, and writers. Alumni went on to create such ground-breaking works as The Graduate, Groundhog Day, and Don’t Look Up. Many of them also became stars on Saturday Night Live. Something Wonderful Right Away features the pioneers who founded the empire that transformed American comedy.
This new edition tells even more of the story. Included for the first time is an interview with Viola Spolin, the genius who invented theatre games that were the foundation of improvisational theatre. Also included are dozens of follow-up stories about Mike Nichols, Barbara Harris, Del Close, Joan Rivers, Alan Arkin, and Gilda Radner, plus “You Only Shoot the Ones You Love,” the story of how this book’s author, playwright Jeffrey Sweet, ended up being so involved in the community he covered that he was captured by it.
In the late Fifties and Sixties, iconoclastic young rebels in Chicago opened two tiny theatres—The Compass and The Second City—where they satirised politics, religion and sex. Developing scenes by improvising based on audience suggestions turned out to be a fine way to develop great actors, directors, and writers. Alumni went on to create such ground-breaking works as The Graduate, Groundhog Day, and Don’t Look Up. Many of them also became stars on Saturday Night Live. Something Wonderful Right Away features the pioneers who founded the empire that transformed American comedy.
This new edition tells even more of the story. Included for the first time is an interview with Viola Spolin, the genius who invented theatre games that were the foundation of improvisational theatre. Also included are dozens of follow-up stories about Mike Nichols, Barbara Harris, Del Close, Joan Rivers, Alan Arkin, and Gilda Radner, plus “You Only Shoot the Ones You Love,” the story of how this book’s author, playwright Jeffrey Sweet, ended up being so involved in the community he covered that he was captured by it.
Jeffrey Sweet is a founding resident writer of Chicago’s Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theater, where many of his plays (including The Value of Names, Porch, Flyovers, The Action Against Sol Schumann, and Court-Martial at Fort Devens) have premiered before playing on stages around the world. His book, The Dramatist’s Toolkit, is a widely-used text on playwriting, and The O’Neill is a history of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Among the actors who have starred in his scripts are Ellen Burstyn, Alan Bates, Richard Kind, Nathan Lane, Jon Cryer, William Petersen, Amy Morton, Gary Cole, Jack Klugman, and Megan Mullally.
