Meisner

Sanford Meisner was the son of Jewish immigrants who grew up in New York. He was born 31st August 1905 and died 2nd February 1997. He developed an acting method based on Stanislavskis method. This is known as the meisner technique. After his brothers death he became resentful of his parents and turned to playing the family piano. He went onto study at Damrosch Institute of Music now known as the Juilliard School. When the great depression hit, his father pulled him out of the school in order to help out in the workplace. He found that the only way he got through it was by remembering the classical piano tunes he learnt at school and playing them back to himself in his head. By doing this he became almost pitch perfect. Later on his life he would often close his eyes when assessing actors performance. He said he did this in order to feel when the true emotions were expressed during a performance or rehearsal.  


We did the Meisner 'repetition' exercise in our rehearsal today. I have used this method when directing and rehearsing scenes and I find it very useful. 


Repetition technique




Level 1: On chairs or standing, with a partner. Begin by stating only what you see about the other person. They must then accept this and repeat it back to you. 1 observation may go back and forth until one actor feels the instinct the change it, i.e they observe something else. For example: 'You have blonde hair' to which the other would respond 'I have blonde hair'. The key to this is to listen to the other actor, accept that they are observing what they see in that moment. Do not offer opinions. 

Level 2: Offer opinions. Start off the same as in level one but begin to allow opinions and deeper observations to come into play. Be aware that it is only what you see in that moment, not what you may or may not already know about the actor in front of you. Allow yourself to not be offended and just accept what they observe. 

Level 3: Begin to use the space around you. Stand up from the chairs, instinctively move around the space, but continue to communicate with the other actor. 

Level 4: Apply text. Using a scene between two people start to repeat the lines back to each other. Do not move on from a line until you feel the instinct to, and you have reached a connection with a line.

This technique allows actors to be honest and instinctive on stage. It forces you out of that cage of learning your lines and saying them the same way every time, despite what the other actor might be saying. In order for a relationship between to characters to develop onstage, the actors must be listening to each other onstage, and not just relying on the text to build it for them. This exercise helped me and the actor playing my daughter to develop our relationship dynamic within the scene. It allowed us to experiment with different ways of saying lines, and different moments of agreeing and conflicting.