This dissertation is an archival study of the works of Viola Spolin who is considered by many to be the founding mother of improvisational theater. During her life she published Improvisation for the Theater which is essential reading for anyone interested in doing improvisational theater as well as Theater Games for The Classroom where she adapted some of her techniques and games to an educational setting outside of theater. Along with these works, I was able to examine two of her unpublished works, a handbook on education and What's Your Score? as well as various notes, correspondences and interviews housed at Northwestern University's Charles Deering Memorial Library Special Collections. In so doing, I have composed a picture of Viola Spolin yet unseen. Using three essentials of theater games as theoretical pillars (Focus, Side Coaching, and Evaluation) as established by Spolin in Theater Games for The Classroom, I will argue that, like the work of Paulo Friere or bell hooks, Viola Spolin's improvisational pedagogy is worthy of reclamation for the field of composition. I argue this because I believe Spolin's work can create classrooms in which students experience the autonomy of discoveries that feel organic and relevant to their own lives through collaboration that builds on the unique individual identity of each student. Spolin's work gives us a different model of the teacher, that of Side Coach, that uses description rather than prescription to work with students in achieving these organic moments of discovery. Finally, I argue that looking to Improvisational methods of evaluation or assessment can help us become more fair to more students by involving students in the goal setting process. Any one of these contributions would be enough to warrant inclusion in the pantheon of composition theorists we as a discipline use to guide our teaching and scholarship. All three together prove without any doubt that Spolin's work is worthy of reclamation for our classrooms.
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机译：这篇论文是对维奥拉·斯普林作品的档案研究，她被许多人认为是即兴戏剧的奠基人。在她的一生中，她出版了 Improvisation for the Theater，这是任何对即兴戏剧感兴趣的人来说的必读之作，以及 Theater Games for The Classroom，在那里她将她的一些技术和游戏改编为剧院以外的教育环境。除了这些作品，我还研究了她的两部未出版的作品，一本关于教育的手册和《你的分数是多少？以及收藏在西北大学查尔斯·迪林纪念图书馆特殊馆藏中的各种笔记、通信和采访。在此过程中，我创作了一幅尚未被人看到的维奥拉·斯普林的画像。以斯普林在《课堂戏剧游戏》中确立的戏剧游戏的三个基本要素作为理论支柱（焦点、侧面指导和评估），我将论证，就像保罗·弗里尔 （Paulo Friere） 的作品或铃钩一样，维奥拉·斯普林 （Viola Spolin） 的即兴教学法值得在作曲领域进行回收。我之所以这样说，是因为我相信斯普林的工作可以创造这样的教室，让学生体验到自主的发现，这些发现通过建立在每个学生独特的个人身份基础上的合作，让他们感到有机且与自己的生活相关。斯普林的作品为我们提供了一种不同的教师模式，即 Side Coach，它使用描述而不是处方来与学生一起实现这些有机的发现时刻。最后，我认为，通过让学生参与目标设定过程，寻找即兴评估或评估方法可以帮助我们对更多学生更加公平。这些贡献中的任何一项都足以保证我们作为一门学科用来指导我们的教学和学术的作曲理论家的万神殿。这三者共同证明，毫无疑问，斯普林的工作值得在我们的课堂上得到引用。
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