In 1955, Paul Sills called Compass, widely considered the first improvisational theater in the United States, “a search for a community.” Viola Spolin (originator of Theater Games and author of Improvisation for the Theater) and her son Paul Sills (founding director of Compass, The Second City, and Story Theater) created a new form of theater that celebrated American progressive ideals of liberty, community, and democracy. Through family stories, personal history, photographs, and Spolin and Sills' own words and writing, the talk will trace the roots of Spolin and Sills’ work, via Spolin’s teacher, pioneering social worker and educator Neva Boyd, to Progressive-era activism cultivated at Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago. ***
