Improvising Shakespeare is a book for college actors, directors, and others who are learning how to bring dramatic texts to the stage. It introduces students to a theatrical method of exploring a text, contrasting it with academic methods and showing how it fits in with the idea of theater as an art form. The title (derived from a remark by director Jonathan Miller) is intended to suggest the process of energetic discovery that takes place as a theater company prepares a play for performance.

Turgeon works through eight Shakespeare scenes, talking them over with the reader as one would in rehearsal. He includes fascinating examples of solutions to the texts' problems found by famous actors and directors, but he also encourages students to find their own answers. While Shakespeare texts form the core of examples in this engaging book, the techniques and processes described apply to any playscript.