Thanks for focusing on improvisational theater. Since I am not a
musicologist, but a language/conversation person, my empirical and
analytic work has focused on improv theater and children's play.
My experience with improv is different from yours. My first reaction was
that your description sounded like a description of Stanislavsky's
version of improvisation, as a method of training actors. Is that your
experience? In the improvisational groups I studied in Chicago, the
director does not make the decisions as you describe them, things like
"motivation" and even more basically, character roles, identities, and
relationships all emerge from the initial stages of the improvisation.
The audience is usually asked for a suggestion, which can be a location,
a first line of dialog, or a single word. The actors improvise all else.
In my interviews with the actors, they describe the experience as one of
"flow," of doing it for its own sake, just as you describe the children
doing. There's a consensus that thinking too far ahead results in a less
effective dramatic performance--the actors are taught to act in the
moment, to "not write the script in your head."
There are certainly many differences between children's play and improv
theater! I would be interested in hearing further on what you think are
the differences.
Keith Sawyer
Department of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064