ABSTRACT
The paradox at the heart of all improvisation (as I learnt over 30 years ago in a Commedia Dell’Arte, workshop in Auckland, NZ, with Lecoq-trained Heather Rob) is that the greatest of freedoms as a performer is created in the most highly structured of situations. In Commedia it is the so-called “string of pearls,” the series of pre-determined, narrative landing spots, that create the conditions in which the performer can conjure her riffs of action “live”; that is, in a moment of action created in the company of an audience. The more refined those pearls, the wilder the flights of the unexpected.
