Aaron Gertler's Reviews > Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre

A really excellent book on teaching, followed by a really excellent book on acting, followed by a pretty good book on mass hypnotism.

...but it's all one book, and the book is actually pretty short, which astonishes me when I go back and see how much material I highlighted. Keith Johnstone pioneered a new art form in the course of teaching hundreds of students, a situation which lends itself to an endless stream of deep (and deeply amusing) stories.

Also, the advice he gives about creativity puts me in a very similar mindset to the one I've used to create some of my best fiction. If I could assign my 16-year-old self one book to read as he struggled through National Novel Writing Month, this would be it -- I wouldn't have wasted nearly as much time lying awake at night and staring at the ceiling as I tried fruitlessly to connect my loose plot threads. And if I could only travel back in time five years instead of nine, I'd hand Impro to my 20-year-old self before he taught his first writing class; my students would have had a lot more fun.

I hope I find some non-me person to gift this book in the future; meanwhile, you should gift it to yourself, because it's one of the very best things I read in 2018. It's even available for free at the Internet Archive!