Meisner Technique (taken from '13' rehearsal)

Sanford Meisner (1905-1997), an actor and theatre practitioner, developed the method acting technique known as the Meisner technique based on Stanislavsky’s system. The goal of the method is to eliminate the actor to reveal a real character onstage.

What is the difference between acting and role play?

Acting: conscious connection with character

Role play: unconscious connection with characte

In order to transcend from simply pretending to be a character to becoming a role, actors should focus on living and breathing that person onstage. In order to act, one might partake in conscious exercises, but for a character to become truly real actors should focus on: COMMITMENT to the role and the given circumstances, SENSITIVITY to the behavior other actors/characters around them and responding to them accordingly in an instinctive way and HONESTY in the portrayal of character and making offers. We are aiming to release our ideas and unconsciously become someone else.

Quotes

“Acting is the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances”

“An ounce of behavior is worth more than a pound of words”

“Silence is an absence of words, but never an absence of meaning”

Stage One

Face a partner, sat or stood in an open position, allowing for energy and connection to flow smoothly between you.

Making observations of each other about things such as clothing, hairstyle or behavior, repeat these observations to each other, accepting and acknowledging everything your partner says about you. An idea is repeated until one of you instinctively moves on to another thing they have observed.

For example, the dialogue could resemble something like this:

A: You’re wearing Doc Martins

B: I’m wearing Doc Martins

A: You’re wearing Doc Martins

B: I’m wearing Doc Martins

This first stage of Meisner’s exercise helps establish honesty between two actors but is not any type of therapy. It will only work if actors live on their instincts and think about INTELLIGENCE of response and BODY AND VOICE FLEXIBILITY.

 Nina and I were successful in this stage because we listened and spoke in to each other with full commitment and engagement, aiming for our own and each other’s emotional core. Whenever one of us was speaking, the other took a breath and emotionally prepared for the next response. Areas we could have improved on were our discipline and focus when the repetition became more trivial. Furthermore, when more personal observations were beginning to be explored, we found ourselves in the dangerous territory of manipulation and began voicing opinions instead of facts.

Stage Two

This stage is about making emotional offers and developing the ideas based on fact, to create more opinionated and rounded ideas about character. This way, the opinions are entirely based on fact and come from the root of what is given, rather than being made up ideas inside the actor’s head. Actors must stay physically open and have an emotional connection to every observation.

In this stage the dialogue may resemble something like this:

A: You’re wearing Doc Martins

B: I’m wearing Doc Martins

A: You’re wearing Doc Martins

B: I’m wearing Doc Martins

A: You’re wearing red Doc Martins

B: I’m wearing red Doc Martins

A: You like the colour red

B: I like the colour red

A: The colour red reflects your personality

B: The colour red reflects my personality

A: You’re an angry person

B: I’m an angry person

Etc.

Stage Three

Now it is possible to work a scene through the Meisner technique. We combined objectives with Meisner repetition to begin to bring a scene to life. Repeating lines to each other within a duologue until the next line feels instinctual and natural. This way the plethora of ways in which lines can be delivered and relationships can develop is revealed.

Molly and I had the chance to play out one of our duologue scenes using the Meisner technique and it helped immensely in making our relationship more natural. It was a challenge at first to fully connect with each other when attempting to play our objective and emotionally invest in our responses, but balancing these out made it much easier and more effective.

Evaluation

At the beginning of the lesson I felt that the exercise didn't achieve very much. From my previous experience of it in year 12 I have found it quite superfluous and I felt there were more productive exercises around. However, this morning showed me that Meisner's concept of scene development works not only as a rehearsal technique but also as a focusing warm up to aid actors in becoming more instinctual.

Working with Molly on one of our scenes was incredibly useful. In Acting Technique class we had also worked on this scene, applying Laban forces to the dialogue. At first it had felt very wooden and unnatural. In the few hours since that lesson, the scene has begun to come alive and breath in a human way. Combining an objective with the repetition of the Meisner technique opened up the plethora of opportunities for us to create real characters in the given circumstances. Each performance is fresh, allowing us actors to let innate, natural energy flow between characters and all silences feel natural and real.