It is “improvisor”. Even though both Google and Answers.com say otherwise.
From the following site: The Un-Scripted Theater – Company Store. Although, they need to think about how to spell theatre.
‘-or’ and ‘-er’ are noun suffixes denoting an agent or doer; as in auditor, one who hears; donor, one who gives; obligor; elevator. It is correlative to ‘-ee’. In general ‘-or’ is appended to words of Latin, and ‘-er’ to those of English, origin.
French ‘improvisor’, from Italian ‘improvvisare’, from ‘improvviso’, unforeseen, from Latin ‘imprvisus’ : in-, not; see in+ ‘provisus’, past participle of ‘providere’, to foresee.
Therefore, to ‘improvise’, from the Latin ‘improvidus’, would thus dictate the use of the Latin ‘-or’ suffix, and thus make those who practice the art of improvisationÂ… improvisors!
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Thanks for the shout-out, Richard! As you can see, we’ve thought about this. And you’ve seen our “improvisor” bracelets, I assume. We’ve also thought about “theatre” vs. “theater” … I point you to this source (http://myst-technology.com/mysmartchannels/public/item/17841) for a reasonable
Obviously, there are many differing opinions and preferences. And we covered the vast majority of them when we were debating what to name our company. (Parts of two staff meetings, if memory serves …) So you may *disagree* with how The Un-Scripted Theater Company spells our name, but I would argue that we definitely have *thought* about it plenty.
🙂
I’m in Australia, so we use the British spelling for theatre. But improvisor has never really been defined for us, so thanks for the staff meetings and hours of thought!