Tom Salinsky is the co-founder (with his wife Deborah Frances-White) of The Spontaneity Shop. He and Deborah have performed improvisation for The Royal Court, The RSC Summer Season, The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Festival, and at the Bloomsbury Theatre. They have toured the world and performed at many comedy festivals by invitation. They teach at RADA, The Actors Centre, The National Youth Theatre, and many other colleges and institutions, as well as their own successful workshop program.

The most comprehensive, smart, helpful and inspiring guide to improve available today. Applicable to comedians, actors, public speakers and anyone who needs to think on their toes.

From The Improv Handbook:
The problem for improvisers is anxiety. faced with a lot of nameless eyes staring at us, and feeling more than anything else like prey, we are likely to want to display very consistent behavior, so that anyone who looks at us, looks away and then looks back sees the same thing. Thus we become boring, we fade into the background, and we cease to be of interest.
The Improv Handbook provides everything someone interested in improvisational comedy needs to know, as written by a husband and wife comedy duo with years of experience and teaching in the field. in addition to providing a comprehensive history of improvisational theater as a backdrop, it also looks at modern theories and practices of improvisation on a global scale, including how the form of comedy has evolved differently in different parts of the world, from Europe to the UK to the Chicago scene. The Improv Handbook also contains an essential performance segment that details different formats of improvisation. Chapter topics include Theatresports, Micetro, Gorilla Theatre, and the inventions of Keith Johnstone and Del Close as well as other popular forms of improv, like those on "Whose Line is it Anyway." The core section of the book is called simply, "How to Improvise" and delves into issues of spontaneity, the fundamentals of storytelling, working together, upping the ante, and character development. The book concludes with sections on how to improvise in front of an audience and- just as crucially- how to attract an audience in the first place.

Part One: Improvisation

History

Antiquity: Forms of improvisation from before the 20th Century
Johnstone / Calgary: Keith Johnstone, the Theatre Machine, and the Loose Moose
Close / Chicago: Del Close and the Chicago scene
Spolin: The Compass Players and Viola Spolin's continuing influence
The World Over: The spread of improvised theatre across Europe, America and the rest of the world
The Spontaneity Shop / UK: Improvisation in the UK - a personal history

Performance

TheatreSports: The grandaddy of them all
Micetro, Gorilla Theatre, LifeGame: Later inventions of Keith Johnstone
The Harold and Its Relations: Del Close's way of doing things
The Rest: Less interesting, influential, or popular forms: "Whose Line Is It Anyway"; "Improvised" films and television; TellTales; X-improvised.

Intermission: Great Teachers

Part Two: How to Improvise
Core Beliefs
Storytelling: Improvisation isn't about jokes, or about "anything goes". It's about telling a story.
Failure - on and off the stage: Why "we suck and we love to fail" is the most important thing anyone's ever said to us.

How To Use This Section

Day One
Spontaneity: Pointing at things; What are you doing?
Saying "Yes": Block/Offer/Accept; Yes and...

Day Two
Fundamentals of Storytelling: Platforms - go through an unusual door; Breaking routines; The right trouble for the right hero; Reincorporation

Day Three
Status: What status is and what it isn't; High status and low status "triggers"; Status and space; Status is relative

Day Four
Working Together: Tug of war; Word at a time; Speak in one voice; Dubbing

Day Five
Being Changed: Status switch; Gibberish; It's Tuesday

Day Six
Upping the Ante: Jump and justify; Boris; He said she said; Questions only
You can't learn mime from a book

Day Seven
Characters: Changing the body image; Characters from a hat

Day Eight: Blind Offers
Intermission: The rules and why there aren't any

Part Three: How To Improve

All Talk and No Action
Silent scenes
Gibberish
Three word sentences
Can't Define, Won't Define
Solid as a Rock
Shoe shops
It's Tuesday
The Gagmeister General
Story Woes
Continue or thank you
Shoe shops
Character
Twins
Intermission: Game Corruption
Part Four: How To Improvise In Public
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
Nuts and Bolts
The group
The venue
Press and publicity
Preparation
On the day
Next steps
Pick Your Format
Licensed formats
Unlicensed formats
Innovating formats
Intermission: Truth in Comedy in Bits and Pieces
Part Five: How To Improvise All Over the World
Getting On the Television
Getting On the Festival Circuit
Hosting Your Own Festival
Intermission: "Please don't..."
Part Six: Making Improvisation Pay
The Corporate Market
Corporate Training
Corporate Entertainment
Intermission: Why Improvisation
Part Seven: Talk the Talk - Interviews with Improvisers
Tom and Deborah interview each other
Keith Johnstone
Dan O'Connor
Patti Stiles
Paul Sills
Charna Halpern
Plus several more alumni of shows like Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, who we should be able to include
Part Eight: Final Thoughts
Glossary, bibliography, index, useful contacts