Story Theater

In the late 60s Second City founding director Paul Sills surprised the Chicago theater scene with a new art form. Players in street garb enacted tales from the oral tradition set to contemporary music on bare, dramatically-lit stages. By 1970 Paul Sills’ Story Theatre had won critical acclaim on both coasts. “Unequivocally great,” wrote Clive Barnes in the New York Times. 

Preface: Paul Sills’ Story Theater, Four Shows (Applause Books, second ed. 2023)

Story Theater evolved at the Game Theater in Chicago. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, my wife, Carol, and I returned from New York to Chicago in search of community. We played traditional games in Lincoln Park with a group of friends, moving indoors when winter came to play Viola Spolin’s theater games. This activity led me to leave Second City and with the help of the community group open The Game Theater.

For several years we played theater games there in public on Friday and Saturday nights, taking suggestions from the audience. Viola Spolin often ran the game nights. During the week we played theater games in workshop to see where this would lead. One afternoon in 1967 the breakthrough into story theater occurred when I coached players to tell the story of Snow White while acting the roles, thus eliminating the need for a separate narrator. I began to read seriously the great traditonal stories.

Shortly after this, another story helped me see how theater could respond to what was happening in the larger world. The Democratic Party Convention was scheduled in Chicago for August 1968. The Game Theater had closed so some of us thought of opening a bar and doing a show that put the politicians on trial for getting us into Vietnam, but this battle for the soul of the people was beyond satire. Martin Luther King was assassinated in the Spring and the black community was on fire. In June Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Thousands of students were coming to the convention to protest the Vietnam war. We knew Mayor Daley was ready to use city, state, and even national power to keep order. What could theater do or say in the face of these events? Then I read The Blue Light, and saw the story happening in stage space just as it was told.

Second City had moved and we could rent the deserted space for four or five months, before a high-rise would break ground. We raised some money and transformed the old night club into a theater, built benches, hung lights, rehearsed six stories and opened in July. We charged no admission, but asked for a donation at the end. When Convention Week started and “the whole world was watching,” the police chased demonstrators out of Lincoln Park right into our gate but did not enter. Like the churches of the neighborhood, the theater was somehow a sanctuary, off-limits to police. Convention Week has been called ‘a turning point in American History’ and when our audiences saw an old soldier defeat all authority in The Blue Light, the ones most deeply touched by the spirit of liberty shouted “Right on!”

Sheherazade tells stories in The Thousand and One Nights to fascinate her husband and thereby save her life. Often in the story she tells, a fisherman or other character must tell the story of his life or be executed. The stories we must tell, like Scheherazade’s, have hidden in them something of the story of our own life. What is hidden according to Viola Spolin, is awareness of the inner self. “Story and games,” she said, “bring out self rather than ego.” Story tells of the coming forth of the self from hiddenness.

Paul Sills, 1999

Information on seasonal Story Theater Intensives may be found here.

Performance Permission Instructions may be found at Applause Books and Samuel French.

Paul Sills’ Published Scripts 

Paul Sills’ Story Theater, Four Shows (Applause Books, second ed. 2023)

The Blue Light and Other Stories, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Stories of God by Rainer Maria Rilke, and Rumi (in verse translation by Coleman Barks) are adapted for the stage by Paul Sills.

Also included are essays and introductions on directing Story Theater by Paul Sills, and “Theater Games for Story Theater” by Viola Spolin.

Story Theatre, Adapted for the Stage by Paul Sills (Samuel French, Original 1970 Broadway Production)

“Mr. Sills started in New Haven, journeyed to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and wound up on Broadway with this group of famous fables from the Grimm Brothers and Aesop. Here you will meet again Henny Penny, the Golden Goose, Venus and the Cat, the Fisherman and His Wife, The Robber Baron, the Bremen Town Musicians, and other favorites. The fables require talented actors with expressive bodies. And make no mistakes about the quality: this is top drawer adult theatre.”

“An evening of imaginative and unpretentious delight… Fun is predominant.” N.Y. Post

“Let me beat no longer about the bush. I had a great evening last night at ‘Story Theatre.’ I adored the show, which brings back magic and innocence to Broadway, raises charades to the strange eminence of an art form… Great; unequivocally great.” N.Y. Times

“If you are an adult, bring a child. It is an enchanting evening for the entire family.” Hollywood Reporter.

More from Story Theatre (Samuel French)

“Here are more theatrical fables from the author of the ever popular Story Theatre. Audiences are delighted by these easy to stage tales from such classics as The Dream of Good Fortune from The Arabian Nights, Old Hildebrand, The Clever Elsie and The Tailor in Heaven from the Grimm Brothers and other great tales from Celtic and Old English folklore. This fun show requires an inventive director and talented actors with expressive bodies. Although this is a great family show which the kids will enjoy, it is also top drawer adult theatre.”

Articles and Interviews

Interview: Paul Sills Reflects on Story Theatre
by Laurie Ann Gruhn, The Drama Teacher Teacher

Second City and Story Theater Founder Paul Sills
by William N. Stavru, The Bardian, November 1996

Spolin and Sills Laid Down The Rules. The Generations Who Came After Played by Them. That’s How Chicago Invented Itself
by Todd London, American Theatre, July/August 1990