Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves.
—Viola Spolin

In the weekend intensive in Centerbrook, CT with side coach Ira Sakolsky, players will explore the groundbreaking exercises and theatrical concepts found in Viola’s Spolin’s seminal text Improvisation for the Theater.

Actors, educators, directors, improvisers, and all who wish to play are invited to experience Viola Spolin’s transformative improvisational theater techniques and learn how to incorporate them into their practice through play.

Side-coached by Ira Sakolsky, the workshop is designed to introduce the key principles of Viola Spolin’s revolutionary acting, directing, and teaching methods in two days (10 hours of play). The weekend intensive will help players be more fully present onstage and off.

Beginners and experienced players are welcome. Class size is limited.

About side coach Ira Sakolsky: Actor, director, writer, composer, and music producer Ira Sakolsky has been active in improvisational theater for his entire career. He worked with Second City founding director Paul Sills performing Story Theater, and studied improvisation with George Morrison and with Aretha Sills. As an actor, Ira has worked in film, television, radio, Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theater. As a director and writer, Ira’s Off-Broadway adaptation of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth earned him the rights to produce a Broadway musical version of this children’s favorite. He has written and directs The North Pole Express, a hit show for the Essex Steam Train & Riverboat, entering its 22nd season. Other directing/writing and producing credits include a ‘moving stage’ version of the PBS-TV show Lomax the Hound of Music in collaboration with Sesame Street’s Chris Cerf and Norman Stiles and the Valley Railroad. He was a resident composer/actor for National Theatre of the Deaf. A Grammy-nominated producer and composer, Ira owns the Riverway Recording Studio in East Haddam, CT, founded in 2002 with his late wife Monica Sakolsky. 

Ira has taught improvisation and acting technique to teachers, at universities and schools, and for corporations, and theatre groups, as well as songwriting workshops for hospice and bereavement groups. Ira incorporates Spolin’s improvisational techniques into all of his creative practices and is excited to share the method.

We'll meet: Saturday & Sunday, January 17 & 18, 2026, from 10am to 4pm with an hour lunch break each day.

Location: The Witch Hazel Works Building, 6 Main St, Centerbrook, CT

Tuition: $205.00. Tuition is non-refundable, but you can transfer your space to someone else with prior approval, or in the event someone on the waitlist can purchase your space. Please email ira@riverwaystudio.com with any questions before registering.

Workshop email notifications: You’ll get a confirmation email and subsequent correspondence from workshops@violaspolin.org and ira@riverwaystudio.com. Please add these addresses to your contacts, and if you don’t hear back, check your spam folder for missing correspondence.