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.
Our goal is to train you through 5 simple (not easy) exercises to live truthfully and impulsively in the given circumstances of your character.
Actors often ask themselves how can I break through this block or that block or access this emotion or that emotion. My response to that is to focus on being truthful and with every brave moment that you take forward in your work, your borders will expand, gradually leading you to the vulnerable, open point of emotional expression and truthful feeling.
Emotions are felt in the body and feelings are labelled in the mind. So rather than approaching a scene with the idea that you “have difficulty with this feeling” we work towards your body experiencing a truthful emotion, which is sub-conscious, often unconscious and uncontrollable. After all, ideas and feelings are coming from your conscious mind, as you try to figure it out in your head. Your head can’t help you but your body can. Feelings can be consciously hidden. Emotions are felt regardless of what you try to get your mind to do with them.
There is no quick exercise I can give you to break through a perceived block. In my view, it’s about the permission you give yourself to go that little bit further each time you come up against that feeling you don’t experience often or that place you “don’t like to go”. Each time you come up to its edge, the border extends a little further from where it started. As your border territory grows with your courage, there will come the time you move through it – safely, without pressure from a teacher or director that berates, belittles, digs and wears you down to achieve the result.
Brené Brown said:
We are all socially conditioned to be polite (for the most part) and hold back much of our natural, truthful emotional response from the time we are young. We’ve all been and seen the upset, overloaded emotional toddler who is openly, uncontrollably expressing their emotions. And at some point, we were likely told to sshhh, stop crying, be quiet or to stop behaving in that way.
It takes courage to be vulnerable and show your emotions – especially the deep ones. The ones we don’t like to show up, the hidden ones – hidden through fear of judgment, not being accepted, not being cared for, of what might happen if it all came out. They are primal, often kept hidden for fear of what showing them might result in. Accessing these emotions is scary for many actors. The raw, truthful, powerful embodied emotions that occur and you release are a gift, not just for you, but for your audience. We view this as an actor working the muscles that they need in order to do their job as best they can, – not you, the person having an outburst, being unlikeable or having a breakdown.
We all get up each day and head into the world with our armour up and mask on so we can function. To order coffees, drive on the road, get on the tram and generally be socially accepted.
It is my job to show you the ways to gently let these armours down so that you can act – openly, truthfully and fully – with access to all of your emotion. It happens gradually, over time, as you build trust and confidence in yourself as you discover the technique and trust those you are working with.
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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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.
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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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A great, revelatory experience that refocused and revitalised my fundamental approach to acting.
Dene Kermond
Actor/Director
