Lenny Hall's Page

Instant Theater is a technique/practice designed not as a form for self gratification, but as an instrument to stimulate internal centers of perception transcending normal receptivity. Instant Theater is an improvisation method that can be practiced and developed by anyone regardless of lifestyle, education, occupation, vocation, physical, emotional or mental disabilities, experience in the performing arts, or social, cultural, or economic background or conditions.

Instant Theater utilizes one's natural abilities while boosting weaker areas through positive reinforcement, in order to encourage finding the reality of yourself. Instant Theater is a study that incorporates self-observation and self-study in a genuine comfortable environment. It increases self-awareness by stripping away the outer layers of limited thinking, misconceptions, and social conditioning, to disclose the kernel that lies beneath. It reorganizes human mentation so that it is more sensitive to things that are there anyway by intuition, insight, and experience. It can involve spontaneous, modern, visual, abstract, and even orchestral art and performance.

Instant Theater begins with breathing and listening. Then to movement and sound then to movement and narrative. It is a practical method of performance study and self expression that involves improvisation techniques developed from Action Theater and Keith Johnstone combined with a hybrid blend of original concepts. The study and practice of these revolutionary techniques make the learning, developing, and discovery process fun and always interesting. Every student and participant will develop at his or her own level adding his or her unique ingredients to the performance soup. Instant Theater can be an oasis of congenial instruction for those tired or discouraged by ordinary theater, musical or improvisational study, practice or performance.

Instant Theater shakes things up and challenges your imagination. Instant Theater can add dignity of your own presence and enable you to transcend any false culture. It can be studied, developed and practiced in any space, in any environment, alone or with others, and during one’s usual daily routine within any life situation. Instant Theater means polishing life's adventure to produce a higher quality of performance. It expands and strengthens one’s capabilities and possibilities naturally and organically to the point where the ordinary can be exciting. Self-developmental theater and honest human interaction create genuine and authentic performances.

Instant Theater encourages developing original characters. Interacting and blending with other students will help create dynamics that produce natural and genuine drama and expression and enhanced sensitivity, giving life a fresh spin. Instant Theater may be experimental or it may be conventional. Instant Theater is rejuvenating. Interest, involvement and commitment to the practice of Instant Theater, like any sincere endeavor, can give your life meaning and significance.

Instant Theater can reveal the essence of reality. It is a radical approach to combining theater, improvisation and music, art and film. Building bridges between cultures and transcending regional boundaries helps develop a sense of priorities and belonging to the human community. It is plain to see how self-absorption and isolation in one’s daily life produces a dearth of activities that could connect and expand one's identity. Instant Theater brings a shift from the exclusive experience of a separate self to a more balanced and connected self. It permits a deeper experience of reality in its fundamental holistic aspect, for a healthy life with flexibility of consciousness. It shifts the guiding intent from self-centered motivations, allowing things to happen spontaneously to increase one’s knowledge of one’s larger, connected identity.

The creative impulse is something everyone possesses. Instant Theater is designed to enable students to make discoveries and develop at their own pace, with the assistance of prescribed exercises given by the instructor according to their level of interest and commitment to the study. Students will be encouraged to develop original characters that may be incorporated and integrated into a current or future productions, exhibitions, or class exercises. Instant Theater involves teaching students in a way that they can learn by non-traditional approaches. It illustrates in sometimes exaggerated form the kind of fallacious thinking that prevents more sophisticated uses of the mind, and increases the students’ ability to absorb new or undiscovered levels of creative expression. Instant Theater may relieve self-centered suffering and convert manic energy into creativity. Intuitive communication unites people through collective innovation and performance.

In Instant Theater the studies are always kept interesting, so the process has the most momentum and the students remain energized involved. Instant Theater is a study that is practiced during ordinary everyday life activities. Instant Theater is a form of self expression that includes the study of Listening, Sound, Movement, Motion,

Narrative, Storytelling, and Improvisational Music are all parts of Instant Theater. Instant Theater can help anyone looking to free up suppressed creative energy, whether they are actors, musicians, artists, or anyone involved or interested in the performing arts. Its a unique and original performance training technique that can be developed and operated by anyone regardless of social or educational background, or previous level of formal instruction in the arts. For those who feel crippled in mind and spirit, Instant Theater can take off the hard edges and enhance one’s enjoyment of life’s folly.

Sometimes primal, some times futuristic, Instant Theater is always innovative and inventive, while still operating within its social, study or practice situation. No experience is required. Instant Theater makes your reality more exciting, and helps you recognize the truth about yourself. Instant Theater gets beyond the social masks, to reveal new ideas and methods for discovery.

Shake things up. Challenge your imagination. Make what's important. Give a voice to people you wouldn't normally hear. Emerge from the culture of the false. Find the dignity of your own presence.

Lenny Hall has had extensive training in both theater and improvisation and has been involved with the theater and improvisation for over ten years. Studying at Southwick Studio for Theater Arts and Expression with Andrea Southwick, Curt Miller, Craig Foley and other notable teachers from the Boston and Greater New England Area. He has done everything from scene study and improvisation to storytelling and acting technique workshops and has appeared in several summer productions. The following are the most memorable:

Stage Performances

Rhimers of Eldridge as Josh Johnson
Traveling Show as George
Cementville as Eddie
Richard the Third as Lord Rivers
Mad Woman of Chaillot as The Sewerman
The Dining Room as Charlie and Ben
The Tempest as Caliban
The Marriage Proposal as Lomov

Improv Study/Teachers

Collinge/Pickman 1995
Mass College of Art 1996
Keith Johnstone Work Shop 1996
Marjorie Burren 1996-1998
Jeannie Lindheim (Clown Workshop) 1997
Curt Miller (Southwick Studio) 1999
Sarah Hickler (Action Theater) 1999-present
Ruth Zaporah (Action Theater) 1998-present