Two Hours with Improv Great: Jo Forsberg
From protégé of Viola Spolin to founder of America's first improv school
Josephine Forsberg was the founder of The Players Workshop, America’s first dedicated improv training center. Watch Jo’s masterclass on stage reality, present-moment awareness, and ensemble work. Below is a summary and discussion of her core philosophy, actor mechanics, and side-coaching tools based on the video.
Curated and adapted by David Alger from a recorded 1998 lecture by Josephine Forsberg.
Part I: The Core Philosophy
1. The Empty Space and the Instrument
You are an instrument of expression—mental, emotional, sensual, and physical centers held in proper proportion to what you are depicting. You work in empty space because it is empty: you can be anywhere, be anyone, do anything. Nothing else can be there except what you create.
2. Believing the Illusion — Not Pretending
When a student reframed "believe the illusion" as "be silly and goofy," Forsberg's answer was a flat "NO!" Belief isn't permission to be loose—it is a full commitment to the reality you are building. You can't pretend a scene isn't happening; it is happening, and you are up on stage feeling it.
3. Elevating the Audience
You give the audience art—you do not go down to meet them where they are. Take them on a trip; bring them up to where you are. This doesn't require forced upbeat endings: audiences seek stimulation, diversion, identification, or catharsis, and an improv scene can leave them moved, unsettled, or sad and still succeed.
Bad Suggestions: If an audience hands you a dreadful or unfamiliar suggestion, don't force it—say "I don't know!" and get another one.
The Only Bad Audience: "There is no such thing as a bad audience except a drunken one." Every other audience is workable if you read them and lead them.
Can Truthful Be Boring? Jo leaves this as an open tension: truth alone doesn't guarantee engagement, which is why the performer must actively hold and elevate the room.
4. Ensemble, Not Stand-Up
Improvisation is an interdependent ensemble art form, not stand-up comedy. Comedians tell jokes; improvisers discover what is in the room, the situation, and the relationship. Trying to be witty is a trap; wit and humor are innate, but timing and presence are what make them land.
5. Life and Art Intersect
Improvisation is a life skill that extends far beyond the stage. Don't rationalize or excuse your way out of doing.Take the chance, risk it, and be brave on stage and off. True artistic freedom arrives when hard work feels like play: no desperation, no judging, and no self-evaluation while you are working.
6. Belief Shapes Your Life
You are what you think, and your life is what you think—you are the creator of your own life, the same way you're the creator of what happens in the empty space on stage. If a belief is standing in the way of what you want to do, change it. Beliefs are tools, not fixed facts.
Part II: The Actor's Mindset & Inner Mechanics
7. Subjectivity and Objectivity (Player and Character Together)
The player and the character go on stage together.
Subjectivity is the content of the illusion—your complete belief in what you are creating.
Objectivity is your artistic skill and internal awareness that you are performing—the way a violinist knows they are playing the violin without that awareness interrupting the music.
Both run simultaneously. This isn't Brechtian distancing aimed outward at the audience; it is an inward, felt awareness of your own doing.
8. Physical Presence vs. Other/Self Consciousness
Other-consciousness (the "me, me, me" ego) is the only thing an audience actually perceives as "blocked." Checking your ego at the door doesn't mean eliminating yourself; it means directing your focus outward into the space. Being conscious of yourself is natural. Focusing on it is the problem.
Space Awareness: As you move through physical space, the space must move aside for you. If you aren't in present time, you aren't actually walking through the space you inhabit.
Quieting the Mind: Meditation calms the noise and silences the "I can'ts." Concentration on something outside your own thoughts—an object, your partner, or the physical space—quiets the internal critic so the intuitive response can surface.
9. Fear as Excitement
Fear is natural and keeps you alive, but it doesn't belong in art. Reinterpret fear as excitement—the physiological signal in the body is identical; only the label you attach to it changes.
10. Synthesis: Choice as a Subtractive Act
(Analytical note based on Jo's framework): A choice doesn't add decoration on top of instinct—it strips away the layers of acting, indicating, and performing that sit on top of a true impulse. Making a choice reveals pure doing and intention.
Part III: On-Stage Mechanics & Craft
11. Transactions Create Character — Respond, Don't React
Characters are formed in transaction with each other, never in isolation.
Responding is present-moment listening, considering, and acting.
Reacting is behavior driven by something a moment reminded you of from your past—it pulls you out of present time.
Always look at what line has already been drawn on the painting before adding your own.
12. "Do Something! Do Anything!"
Passing down Viola Spolin's foundational instruction for when an actor freezes: open a window, find something under the table, straighten your skirt. The specific action matters far less than the physical movement itself—action breaks the mental loop.
13. Only the Character Is Invited
Ego and personal self-consciousness do not belong on stage. As Jo put it directly to a student: "I'm invited to come up here on this stage—what are you doing here? Only the character was invited."
14. Call Your Partner Through Character
If a scene partner is overloading the scene with questions or talking over you, call them out directly through your character rather than breaking the scene or silently enduring it (e.g., "What's with all the questions today?" or "Are you going to listen to anything I have to say?").
15. Observation and Character Work
Nobody is the same—everyone is unique and extraordinary, and that's the raw material of character work. Her practical instruction: observe, watch your relatives, watch your friends. You already have more experience of human behavior than you realize, including behavior you've never personally lived through.
16. Beats and Structure in Long-Form
A beat is a transition—a shift in action, thought, or emotion. Long-form work demands tracking these structural beats and remaining rigorously present from scene to scene.
17. The Flexible Fourth Wall
Whether you break the fourth wall depends on the piece. You can keep the illusion contained entirely within the stage space, or reach out and place elements directly into the audience. Match the wall to the needs of the performance.
Part IV: Lineage, History, & Observations
18. The Climbing-Tree Metaphor
Passing along Viola Spolin's classic metaphor: Improv is like climbing a tree. At some point, you swing out on a branch. You might fall, but nothing happens to you. You walk away unharmed, capable of learning from the accident.
19. The "Don'ts" That Keep You Alive
Jo explicitly defended her heavy use of "don'ts." The rules given in childhood ("don't step in front of a car") are protective boundary lines that keep you alive. Her instructional "don'ts" function the same way: as survival rules for stage art.
20. Structure, Discipline, and Self-Teaching
A teacher cannot "teach" you how to be an artist; they can only expose you to structure and discipline. Ultimately, you teach yourself. Once you master the tools, you choose how to deploy them.
21. Teaching Timing vs. Innate Wit
You cannot teach someone to be funny—wit and humor are innate gifts. What you can teach is timing: the structural frame that allows an actor's natural instrument to land cleanly.
22. The STOP! Breakthrough
Coaching in real time often requires hard stops. Halting a scene mid-progress—"STOP! Get out of your head! Stop trying to be funny!"—forces the actor to abandon the chase for a laugh. The resulting work becomes organic, subtle, poignant, and naturally funny.
23. Natural Gifts and Craft
Some performers arrive with mastery that training alone cannot account for (e.g., Robin Williams, John Bolt). Jo noted that these "naturals" often carry personal flaws elsewhere in life, and expressed a belief that such rare mastery reflects skill cultivated over multiple lifetimes.
24. Nichols & May vs. Fine Line
Nichols & May: Mike Nichols was a natural; Elaine May was an intellectual. They succeeded because they gave to each other as business partners, not romantic partners.
Fine Line (Sheryl Rose & Doug Wood): Highlighted the need for active directorial intervention when one actor hogs space while the other retreats.
25. Her Vision for Improv
Jo stated her overarching ambition plainly: "I want a theater on every corner." Her goal for the art form was simple: return to its true roots as an honest, collaborative, life-changing performing art.
Summary Takeaways for Performers
1. Stop mid-scene self-evaluation: Self-consciousness is the only thing an audience perceives as "blocked."
2. Respond, don't react: Stay in present time rather than acting out past triggers.
3. Choice is subtractive: Strip away performance layers to reveal true intention.
4. Subjectivity and Objectivity run together: Believe the illusion fully while maintaining inner artistic awareness.
5. Call out scene imbalances: Address partner behavior directly through your character.
6. Reframe fear: Treat stage anxiety as pure excitement.
7. Reject bad suggestions: Say "I don't know" and get a better one from the room.
8. Action breaks paralysis: When stuck, do something physical immediately.
9. Truth over laughs: Humor is a byproduct of presence, not a target to chase.
10. Establish Where and What: You cannot respond truthfully from nowhere.
Director's Side-Coaching Toolkit
Keep these short, 2-to-5 word verbatim ready to call out during live scene work:
To Break Stagnation & Head-Space
"Do something! Do anything!"
"Get out of your head!"
"Stop trying to be funny!"
"What are you doing physically?"
"Where are you?"
To Drive Present-Moment Connection
"Look at what's already on the painting!"
"Respond to now—don't react!"
"Call them on it through your character!"
"Only the character is on stage!"
"Give up your desperation!"
To Adjust Stage Presence & Reality
"Believe the illusion!"
"Let the space move aside for you!"
"Elevate the room!"
"Feel the branch—take the risk!"
"Check your ego in the hat check room!"
Additional Notes / Ideas — David
1. The Meursault Model (The Stranger): Choice as a Subtractive Act
Meursault as the Test Case: Bringing in Meursault from Albert Camus’s The Stranger provides the ideal model—agency without deliberative, self-editing narration. Meursault narrates his life, but he doesn't attempt to justify, explain, or alter who he is or what he does. He simply witnesses himself experiencing sensations and taking action in real time.
The Witness vs. The Editor: Being self-aware like Meursault is fine. You are witnessing what you do as the character, not editing it. The internal editor sits outside evaluating ("Is this funny? Is this working?"), whereas the witness stays inside the act—experiencing the choice at the exact speed and proportion of the character without interrupting or fixing it.
Choice as Subtraction, Not Addition: The choice made is the self stripped away. When you make a choice on stage, it doesn't add performance layers, accents, or bits on top of instinct—it strips away the beginner's urge to "act," leaving behind only raw intention, pure doing, and unvarnished presence.
Subtracting the Performance Layer: Sanford Meisner's repetition work isn't building toward an empty, unmonitored self—it's stripping the performed layers (the "acting" a beginner reaches for instinctively) until what's left is intention and doing, unadorned. A split-second turn or a dirty look on stage isn't an absence of self; it's the self with the performance layer peeled off, leaving only the actual want driving the action.
Character Speed & Proportion: Acting in essence is deciding and choosing action at the speed of the character—or as Jo said, in proportion. Acting at character-speed eliminates the delay where the actor's internal editor steps in to calculate a "funny" or "clever" choice. When the choice happens at the character's rate of experience and in proper proportion to the reality depicted, the performance layer evaporates and only pure doing remains.
The Convergence of Lineages: Meisner and Forsberg aren't opposed on inward vs. outward awareness—they agree the watching is always inward, felt from inside the act itself (impulse, hands, breath), never aimed at the audience or the performance as an object. Meisner names this inward awareness through impulse ("truthful response"), while Forsberg names it through craft ("the artist knows the difference"). Same watching, same direction—two lineages, two words for the exact same self-experience. Craft is not adding performance on top of instinct; craft is the capacity to keep stripping until only intention remains.
2. Omitted Historical Anecdotes & Examples
Long-Form to Script (The Gathering): Jo cited The Gathering as a primary example of a serious long-form improv that was developed and refined directly into a scripted play.
Viola Spolin’s Direct Coaching Style: Jo noted that Viola wasn’t kind in her side-coaching, often barking: "What are you doing! Stop doing it! Stop trying to be funny!” Jo embraced this directness: don’t put up with anything, don’t explain, expose them to the exercises, and force the head to stop thinking.
The Glass of Water Initiation: To show how simple presence and charisma work in empty space, Jo described a man sitting on stage, obviously drinking a glass of water, who had the entire audience completely enthralled.
The "Witter" / "Wittier" Exchange: When a student asked if being good at improv meant being "witter" (wittier), Jo immediately shut it down: wit and humor are innate gifts, not the target. You teach timing; presence and discipline do the rest.
Jo's Personal Practice: Jo explicitly confirmed that she still practiced meditation herself to calm the mind, stop the "I can'ts," and keep from going crazy.
Adapted from a recorded 1998 lecture by Josephine Forsberg, Chicago, filmed by John Porubsky.
Direct quotes are hers; synthesis, organization, and curation by David Alger, Pan Theater.
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