Paul Sills - Director & Second City Founder, November 25, 2000 - Chicago

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• published: 29 Dec 2013
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Paul Sills speaking at Intention, Movement, Perception put on by the Chicago Institute for the Moving Image (CIMI) on November 25, 2000 at the Chicago Historical Society (now the Chicago History Museum). Paul led an improvisation workshop as part of the conference, along with presentations by Josh Flanders, CIMI's Executive Director, and Rabbi and author Douglas Goldhamer. "Achieving presence" was the focus of Paul Sills' interactive presentation on improvisation. Paul was one of the founding members and the founding director of The Second City, among many other theaters and workshops. His mother, the late Viola Spolin, wrote the textbook on improvisation games and continues to influence his life's work. They focus on improvisation games in order to free the actor from his mind. Viola's poem "Crystal Ball" from [what was in 2000] an upcoming book entitled "The Lone Actor" encapsulates this idea: "To the witch she did go, to find out what the future holds. And to the seeker the following was told: present time, you must find, and within it dwell, for there is the key that opens the door to a great mystery and the future you will see. But hark; if in present time you cannot dwell, you will have no future to foretell. Trapped in the past you will always be. So, she went forth, to dwell in present time. But alas, present time, like the divine, is most difficult to find." Present time, in other words, is achieved through action and experience. Only through being present can one open the door to the future and act spontaneously in the present. This has tremendous applications outside the theater, and it is no surprise that theater games are used in many forms of therapy, in prisons, to facilitate communication in the inner city, and many other seemingly unrelated fields. Chinese philosophers argue that mindfulness, being present and aware in the moment, leads to happiness. Paul agreed and said, "observe the roles of others' cover-ups, what comes out of every mouth, hostility, envy, competitiveness, put-downs, resentment, sarcasm; what we verbalize as our own are the controls that tie and bind, keeping us earthbound and victimized." The secret, he said, is to commune with our intuition, to reach the unknown. Like the other two speakers, Paul emphasized the importance of being in tune with both our inner and our outer worlds.