Josephine Forsberg (January 28, 1921 – October 3, 2011) was an American comedian, teacher and author.

Biography

Josephine Forsberg, ex-wife of film director Rolf Forsberg, was hired by

Paul Sills Paul Sills (born Paul Silverberg; November 18, 1927 – June 2, 2008) was an American director and improvisation teacher, and the original director of Chicago's The Second City. Life and career Sills was born Paul Silverberg in Chicago, Illinoi ...

and

Viola Spolin Viola Spolin (November 7, 1906 — November 22, 1994) was an American theatre academic, educator and acting coach. She is considered an important innovator in 20th century American theater for creating directorial techniques to help actors to be ...

to join the original Second City in 1959 as the female understudy and Spolin's teaching assistant. She became an expert in improvisational techniques for the theater, and by the mid 1960s she had taken over most of Spolin's and Sills's classes, as well as Spolin's children's theater company. From that point on most of the young performers that wanted to go onto the Second City stage studied with Forsberg for at least a year. These included

Bill Murray William James Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his deadpan delivery. He rose to fame on ''The National Lampoon Radio Hour'' (1973–1974) before becoming a national presence on ''Saturday Nigh ...

Harold Ramis Harold Allen Ramis (; November 21, 1944 – February 24, 2014) was an American actor, comedian, director and writer. His best-known film acting roles were as Egon Spengler in ''Ghostbusters'' (1984) and ''Ghostbusters II'' (1989), and as Russell ...

Betty Thomas Betty Thomas (born Betty Lucille Nienhauser; July 21, 1948) is an American actress, director, and producer. She is known for her Emmy Award-winning role as Sergeant Lucy Bates on the television series '' Hill Street Blues''. As of March 2018, T ...

Shelley Long Shelley Lee Long (born August 23, 1949) is an American actress, singer, and comedian. Long portrayed Diane Chambers on the hit sitcom '' Cheers'' and received five Emmy nominations, winning in 1983 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Se ...

George Wendt George Robert Wendt Jr. (born October 17, 1948) is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for playing Norm Peterson on the television sitcom '' Cheers'' (1982–1993), which earned him six consecutive nominations for the Primetime Em ...

David Mamet David Alan Mamet (; born November 30, 1947) is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays ''Glengarry Glen Ross'' (1984) and '' Speed-the-Plow'' (1988). He first gained cri ...

, and Robert Townsend. In 1971, Forsberg opened up an official school of improvisation called

Players Workshop Created in 1971 by Josephine Forsberg, The Players Workshop was Chicago's only official school of improvisation for over a decade. Although it was never officially a part of The Second City cabaret theater, The Players Workshop was often referred ...

, hiring her nephew

Martin de Maat Martin de Maat (January 12, 1949 – February 15, 2001) was a teacher and artistic director at The Second City in Chicago. He also taught at Columbia College and Players Workshop. He studied under Viola Spolin. De Maat and Del Close were the t ...

and her daughter Linnea Forsberg to teach alongside her. In terms of accepting students who were not necessarily Second City actors learning the art of improvisation, but also including students from all walks of life and professional disciplines

can arguably be called the first real school of Improvisation, with a class structure, syllabus, and graduation requirement, pre-dating loosely organized workshops created in the mid-1970s by Dudley Riggs (Minneapolis, MN USA) and Keith Johnstone (Calgary, AB, Canada). It soon grew to the largest school of improv in the country, training people for the Second City stage through a six term (12 month) course. In 1980, her son

Eric Forsberg Eric Forsberg (born December 16, 1959) is an American writer. He wrote and directed the feature film '' Mega Piranha'', as well as the writer of the feature film '' Snakes on a Train'', one of the first mockbusters produced and released by The ...

joined

as a director, where he worked with David Shepard to develop a competitive improv game which was later called The Improv Olympiad. One of Forsberg's students,

Charna Halpern Charna Halpern (born June 1, 1952) is an American comedian who is co-founder of the ImprovOlympic, now known as iO. Upon iO's founding, in 1983, with partner Del Close, she began teaching Harold to many students in the Chicago theater community ...

, joined forces with David Shepard and helped to bring the Improv Olympiad to become one of Chicago's foremost arena's for new improvisers. In the late 1980s

and

Del Close Del Close (March 9, 1934 – March 4, 1999) was an American actor, writer, and teacher who coached many of the best-known comedians and comic actors of the late twentieth century. In addition to an acting career in television and film, he was ...

transformed the Improv Olympiad into the IO, using Del's new improv format called The Harold, otherwise known as long form. Forsberg retired from teaching in 1993, leaving

to her daughter. Her nephew,

had become the creative director of the

Second City Training Center The Second City Training Center was founded in the mid-1980s to facilitate the growing demand for workshops and instruction from the world famous The Second City theatre. Training Centers are located in Chicago, Toronto and Los Angeles. Satelli ...

which was growing in leaps and bounds, offering a tremendous competition to

. In 2003

closed its doors. However, in 2007, she was approached by her old friend and student

to help teach the

New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...

improv, in the hopes of giving them an edge. At 86 years old she did just that. It was the first time that she had taught anyone in years. That year they won the Super Bowl. She returned to teach the

again in 2008. Forsberg, along with her daughter Linnea, wrote ''Improvisation for Speech and Theater'' (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2010). Forsberg died on October 3, 2011.

References

External links

Article on Josephine Forsberg
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Dudley Riggs Dudley Riggs (January 18, 1932 – September 22, 2020) was an improvisational comedian who created the Instant Theater Company in New York, which later moved to Minneapolis to become the Brave New Workshop comedy troupe. Family and early care ...

Keith Johnstone Keith Johnstone (born February 21, 1933) is a British and Canadian pioneer of improvisational theatre, best known for inventing the ''Impro System'', part of which are the Theatresports. He is also an educator, playwright, actor and theatre dir ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Forsberg, Josephine 1921 births 2011 deaths People from Chicago American women writers Comedians from Illinois 21st-century American women