Prologue: Spontaneous acts / Rebecca Caines and Ajay Heble --
Part 1. Listening. Improvised listening: opening statements : listening to the lambs / George Lipsitz --
On listening / Jean-Luc Nancy --
Improvisation / Jacques Lecoq --
Going fragile / Mattin --
Music, language, and cultural styles: improvisation as conversation / Ingrid Monson --
Deep listening meditations: Egypt (1999) / Pauline Oliveros --
"Really listening": original art, 30 x 44", made live @ World Percussion Summit September 3, 2013 / Jeff Schlanger, Musicwitness® --
Part 2. Trust/Risk. Improvised trust: opening statements / Ellen Waterman --
Improvisation / Constantin Stanislavski --
Afterthoughts / Keith Johnstone --
Thoughts on improvisation: a comparative approach / Bruno Nettl --
Theatre of the oppressed / Augusto Boal --
Group creativity: musical performance and collaboration / Keith Sawyer --
Community performance: improvising being-together / Petra Kuppers --
"Paradise now": notes / Judith Malina and Julian Beck --
Chicanas' experience in collective theatre: ideology and form / Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano --
Spontaneous combustion: notes on dance improvisation from the sixties to the nineties / Sally Banes --
Luminous axis --
blade-form panel (Graphic score) / Wadada Leo Smith --
Part 3. Flow. Improvised flow: opening statements / Susan Leigh Foster --
A theoretical model for enjoyment / Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi --
Keynote presentation (Guelph) 2007 (Graphic score) / Anthony Braxton --
The impermanent art / Merce Cunningham --
Improvisation and ensemble / Michael Chekhov --
Theory of the dérive / Guy Debord --
"All aboard the night train": flow, layering, and rupture in postindustrial New York / Tricia Rose --
Writing improvisation into modernism / Rob Wallace --
Stone sketch (Graphic score) / Germaine Liu (with Nicholas Loess) --
Essentials of spontaneous prose / Jack Kerouac. Part 4. Dissonance. Improvised dissonance: opening statements / Jesse Stewart --
Phantoms of the other: fragments of the communal unconscious / Rustom Bharucha --
Bebop as cultural alternative / Daniel Belgrad --
Happenings in the New York scene / Allan Kaprow --
Other: from noun to verb / Nathaniel Mackey --
Playing like a girl: the queer laughter of the Feminist Improvising Group / Julie Dawn Smith --
Frozen Grand Central / Charlie Todd --
Part 5. Responsibility. Improvised responsibility: opening statements : (call and) responsibility: improvisation, ethics, co-creation / Daniel Fischlin --
Gittin' to know y'all: improvised music, interculturalism, and the racial imagination / George E. Lewis --
Kinship, intelligence, and memory as improvisation: culture and performance in New Orleans / Joseph Roach --
Swing: from verb to noun / Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) --
OAAU founding rally / Malcolm X --
Part 6. Liveness. Improvised liveness: opening statements : improvisation and the "live": playing with the audience / Clare Grant --
Liveness / Philip Auslander --
The revolution will not be televised / Gil Scott-Heron --
The present of performance / Hans-Thies Lehmann --
Time in the place of space: dialoguing improvisation with Pierre Hébert: Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, June 19, 2012 / interviewed by Nicholas Loess --
Improvisation and theatrical power: from discipline to refusal / Alan Filewod --
Part 7. Surprise. Improvised surprise: opening statements / Rebecca Caines --
Playing / Richard Schechner --
Taken by surprise: improvisation in dance and mind / Susan Leigh Foster --
Seven aspects of spontaneity / Viola Spolin --
Yoruba play and the transformation of ritual / Margaret Thompson Drewal --
Play on: collaboration and process / Tim Etchells --
Step across the border (DVD liner notes) / Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel --
DJ / Wayde Compton --
Part 8. Hope. Epilogue: Hope and improvisation / William Parker.

Improvization is a performance practice that animates and activates diverse energies of inspiration, critique, and invention. In recent years it has coalesced into an exciting and innovative new field of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry, becoming a cornerstone of both practical and theoretical approaches to performance. This title draws together the works of key artists and thinkers from a range of disciplines, including theatre, music, literature, film, and dance. Divided by keywords into eight sections, this book bridges the gaps between these fields.