Aretha Sills
Aretha Sills teaches improvisational theater and creative writing. The granddaughter of Viola Spolin, she studied theater games for many years with her father, director Paul Sills (creator/director of The Second City and Story Theater), and has conducted workshops for Paul Sills’ Wisconsin Theater Game Center, Bard College, Stella Adler Studio of Acting, Stockholm International School, Sarah Lawrence College, and Northwestern University. She has worked with Tony- and Emmy-Award winning actors and has trained faculty from Northwestern, DePaul, Columbia College, The Second City, The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, LAUSD, CETA, and many other institutions and schools. She is the Associate Director of Sills/Spolin Theater Works and she directs The Predicament Players. She created and directs a theater game show for Enrichment Works, a non-profit that brings theater that inspires learning into Los Angeles public schools. Aretha also gives talks on how improvisational theater in the United States emerged out of Progressive-era social reforms in Chicago via the work of Neva Boyd, Viola Spolin, and Paul Sills. She’s given keynote addresses at the California Educational Theatre Conference and the Applied Improvisation Network World Conference.
She offers improvisational theater workshops regularly in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, the Bay Area, and elsewhere around the country. Find upcoming workshops at www.violaspolin.org/workshops
To be notified about upcoming workshops, or to inquire about private coaching or workshops for your school or group, please email [email protected].
