One of the reasons I believe this work is so transformational for an actor, is that in order for us to train you to be truthful in your acting, we need to get you out of your head – to disconnect your intellect so you can live truthfully in your work.
“Acting is living truthfully under given circumstances.”
— Sanford Meisner
I think that’s a pretty solid definition of what we do as actors, but how do you do that exactly? In our work, we have 5 exercises, and our first exercise, the foundational repetition exercise, covers the living truthfully part of that equation.
The exercise itself has specific rules, so do not be confused by thinking that it simply means to repeat. The exercise requires (amongst other things) that you to put all of your attention onto your fellow actor, which means getting your attention off yourself (dear actor, it’s not about you) which flies in the face of most acting training. Rather than going inward, we go outward. What’s happening in front of you – not what’s happening inside of you. This path of specificity to being able to see, enables a richness of truthful response to swell up from your inner depths – but you don’t manufacture or toy with it.
Ultimately, our work is to get you to put your attention wholly on your partner, so you can respond truthfully – free of appropriateness, politeness and socially accepted response – but rather, to respond to them with unapologetic truth.
We call each exercise a game – because it has an enormous sense of play to it. Think about the way that children play a game of make believe. They are invested in the game they’re playing, it often involves characters and made up circumstances – is this starting to look familiar? And the children play their game with no worry about how well they’re playing it or what others are thinking about them as they play, they are invested in the reality of their game without even thinking about it. This is the place we want you to be in when you’re acting. After all, it’s called a play, not a serious.
You don’t want to spend your time acting and simultaneously monitoring yourself – remembering lines, hitting your marks (yes, these are very important skills you need, but if you’re thinking about them whilst you’re acting, truth will go out the window) and you sure as heck don’t want that inner critic to pipe up and judge you as you’re going along. And so, through a series of simple (not easy) exercises, you disconnect your intellect from the emotional work you are doing and your acting will inevitably become more truthful.
An audience will always buy the truth over watching actors attempting to be “believable” or where they can see the acting/pretending happen. Believability is subjective, and comes from the audience – truth happens in the actor and the audience will then find your work ‘believable’.
First, we better start with WHO. Sanford Meisner was an American teacher, actor and director. He was one of the founding members of The Group Theatre (along with Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman), all of whom went on to revolutionise actor training in the 20th Century.
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Perhaps you’ve done some repetition in an acting class but it was out of context? Or maybe you trained in the technique elsewhere? The classes may resemble each other, but often the style and rules around the technique of repetition are different. The only true expert in the Meisner Technique was Sanford Meisner and he died over 20 years ago.
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We all know that feeling – frozen in a moment, unable to move – muscles go tight and eyes wide. It can feel like everything freezes – or you suddenly get the impulse of a ninja cat and hot foot it out of there or catch that falling object.
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If this is the first time you’ve seen actors doing this exercise, you’re likely to be wondering how on earth Sanford Meisner’s repetition makes you a better actor. The repetition exercise is designed to get you out of your head, focused on your scene partner and responding truthfully.
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I get asked a lot about what’s different about the Meisner technique compared to others. People who have nothing to do with acting are often intrigued to even know that there are different techniques at all.
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Truth is the highest value in our work – not a big emotional outpour. Emotions don’t have a hierarchy in the technique and quiet, truthful moments are just as valuable as enraged outbursts. Feelings are just feelings. We don’t rate them as good/bad or better than any other.
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The benefits of a practice like yoga, Feldenkrais - improving human life through better movement, sensation, posture and breathing - and Alexander technique - changing your habitual ways of moving to more efficient ways - are countless.
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In 1990, a documentary found its way to centre stage: "Sanford Meisner, The American Theater’s Best Kept Secret." The documentary is a series of interviews with his students and snippets from classes – with Robert Duvall, Sidney Pollack, Gregory Peck, Joanna Woodward, Mary Steenburgen, and Eli Wallach, amongst others.
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Scott encourages actors to deal with what really goes on when they engage with another in their work. Under his astute eye and caring guidance, the walls come down and the results can be messy, visceral and raw, but thrilling and alive.
Julian Garner
Actor
Operation Buffalo, Home & Away, Janet King
