Introduction to Webpage Supplements

Adam Blatner

Welcome! This website contains a number of webpages that supplement the book, Interactive and Improvisational Drama: Varieties of Applied Theatre and Performance, edited by Adam Blatner and Daniel Wiener. The book contains over thirty chapters, each one an introduction to an approach to type of drama that is wholly or for the most part interactive and unscripted.

Interactive Drama: That which involves most if not all the people in the room.
Improvisational Drama: The type in which people make up what happens rather than works from a script. These are approaches that are alternatives to scripted, rehearsed theatre, performed by actors for passive audiences.

The field of drama that is alluded to in this book is far broader in scope than the more traditional drama that has arisen in Western cultures over the last several centuries.

Applied Theatre is an umbrella term that includes various kinds of drama in education, social drama (such as Theatre of the Oppressed), therapeutic applications of drama, drama for building a sense of community, and so forth. The term only emerged in the early 1990s or thereabouts, and continues to be defined. Perhaps the different approaches noted in the book may stretch the boundaries.

Other approaches that might be arguably included have not been for reasons of space, how busy those who might have contributed something were, and so forth. As time goes on, I’ll try to include some mention of them in these webpages.

The Audience for This Book: