Carol Bleackley Sills, director of Sills/Spolin Theater Works, has been Viola Spolin’s editor since 1983. She studied with Spolin and collaborated with husband Paul Sills to create many theaters, including The Game Theater, Story Theater, The Body Politic, Century Hall, The Learning Theater and Sills & Co. She presents workshops annually at the Wisconsin Theater Game Center and has directed at universities and theaters around the country, including The Tao of Chuang Chou at New Actors Workshop in New York. She is also a painter and educator.

2023 Story Theater Intensive

The late Paul Sills, whose mother was Viola Spolin, originated The Second City and Story Theater. He was co-founder of Playwrights Theatre Club, Compass, The Game Theater, Sills & Co., and the New Actors Workshop, a graduate level acting program in Manhattan begun in 1987 with colleagues Mike Nichols and George Morrison. Paul Sills’ Story Theater: Four Shows, published by Applause Books, includes “Theater games for Story Theater” by Viola Spolin. Paul was posthumously inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2012.

Viola Spolin was an actress, educator, director, author, and the creator of theater games, a system of actor training that uses games she devised to organically teach the formal rules of the theater. Her groundbreaking book Improvisation for the Theater transformed American theater and revolutionized the way acting is taught. Originally published in 1963 by Northwestern University Press, it remains an essential theater text. She developed her methods while working as a drama supervisor in Chicago for the WPA, at her Young Actors Company in Hollywood, and as Director of Workshops at The Second City. Her son, director Paul Sills, who is credited with popularizing her work, used her theater games when he co-founded Compass, Playwrights Theatre Club, The Second City, and created Story Theater. The modern improvisational theater movement is a direct outgrowth of Spolin’s methods, discoveries, and writings. Read more about her life and work below.

For a comprehensive biography of Viola Spolin, please visit her official website.

Learn more about Improvisation for the Theater, and Spolin’s other publications here.

Rachel Sills, Associate Director of Sills/Spolin Theater Works’ career began the moment she toddled onstage at Square East in Greenwich Village during a Second City rehearsal. When she wasn't playing around with the original casts of that famed cabaret in either New York or Chicago or sitting next to her father, director Paul Sills, widely known leader of the improvisational theater movement, she was under the watchful eye of grandmother Viola Spolin, who cradled, then coached Rachel in their family's work, while writing Improvisation for the Theater at the Lincoln Hotel and running workshops for the Chicago cast of Second City.

In the summer of '68 Paul was invited by owner Pete Kelliher of 1848 N. Wells, (the old Second City had moved to North Avenue) to use that shuttered space until its demolition in September. This coincided with the arrival of the Democratic convention and on their newly built stage the Game Theater community of players, including Paul, played fairy tales for all age groups free of charge, while Rachel's Parents School met there too. Right through the police riots in August.

In the opening shot of all 26 Story Theater CTV series shows of 1971, originally broadcast in British Columbia, you can spot a young Rachel singing along to the opening credits, the Rolling Stones song "Come Let us Sing This Song All Together."

Rachel attended and observed many workshops with Paul and also Viola, before and during teenage in California. She recalls writing down Viola's thoughts, taking notes (later archived at Northwestern University), accompanying Viola hand in hand, being inseparable.

Thus, no surprise when Rachel became the youngest member of Sills & Co., alongside famed Second City and Committee actors again curated to play Viola's theater games in performance. They did so from 1983, at a wonderful space on Heliotrope Street off Melrose, newly designed by Carol. Their weekend shows became so popular that Sills &Co. had to move from its 99 seat theater to the larger Westwood Playhouse; thence to a highly acclaimed run at Lamb's Theater on Broadway, and finally to Circle in the Square in the West Village until 1987.

After Sills & Co., Rachel attended New Actors Workshop in Manhattan, a two year graduate level acting program originated by Mike Nichols and Paul Sills. Since 2008, Rachel Sills has worked with Carol Sills in coaching weeklong Story Theater Intensives at the Wisconsin Theater Game Center in Door County, WI. In 2017 Rachel co-directed Carol Sills' American Revolution in Minneapolis with fellow New Actors Workshop alumni Kathy Hendrickson and Story Theater alumni Cordis Heard.

Paul also directed Rachel in original shows that Carol designed:

Monkey (Century Hall, Milwaukee, 1976)
Caucasian Chalk Circle (Chicago, 1980)
Talking to Myself by Studs Terkel/Paul Sills, (leads, Northlight Theater, Evanston, 1988)
Rumi (leads, Los Angeles, 1998)
Ovid's Metamorphoses (Door County, 1997)
Paul Sills' Story Theater (Door County, 2007)

Readers can find scripts for Rumi and three other shows in the Applause book, Paul Sills Story Theater: Four Shows, 2000, which Rachel graces the cover of. Edited by Carol, with Theater Games for Story Theater by Viola.

Make Keene grew up watching his grandparents, Paul and Carol Sills, teach theater game intensives in the summer and stage Story Theatre productions over the holidays. The community theater, which included his mother Rachel Sills and several of his friends’ parents, left an impact on him. Carol would teach Viola Spolin’s theatre games to Make and his friends in her summer art classes. Once he was old enough, he started taking the workshops under Carol, Aretha Sills, Kathy Hendrickson, and Sparky Johnson. In 2015 and 2019 he performed in two different Story Theater productions staged by former Sills Community Theater alumni. His first workshop as an instructor was in 2023. His time as a teacher’s assistant at the Nor Door Children’s Center sparked his interest in teaching the work to young adults. This is his first year teaching Story Theater for young adults.