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BASICS OF THE MEISNER TECHNIQUE

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JUNE 9, 2011 (HTTP://WWW.EMASLA.COM/BASICS-OF-THE-MEISNER-TECHNIQUE/) | ELIZABETH MESTNIK

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Great Acting Requires:

Connection: You must know how to listen

and give yourself permission to be affected

by your acting partners and the imaginary cir-

cumstances of the scene.

Focus: You must learn how to focus on

something outside yourself and how to really

do what you are doing… for real, no pretend-

ing.

Expression: You must constantly work on

being free to express emotion: which means

allowing your feelings to come out in behav-

ior.

Self-Knowledge: Developing your Unique

Point of View about the world: you must

know how you feel about things, people, and the world around you and what defense

mechanisms you use in the real world to keep these feelings at bay. These defense mech-

anisms must be stripped away before any truthful behavior can be revealed.

Impulsiveness: All good acting stems from an actors instincts, by honoring impulses and

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not intellectualizing the work. We need to learn to act from our gut not our heads.

And you must have trained body and voice that is strong and dextrous enough to do all of

this.

Technique: (noun) A systematic procedure, formula or routine by which a complicated task

is accomplished; the way in which the fundamentals, as of an artistic work, are handled.

All serious artists commit themselves to learning the technique of their craft, no one is

asked to play a Bach concerto at their first piano lesson, but in many acting classes begin-

ning students are given complex scenes on the first day – asked to perform them, given a

few perfunctory notes, and this is considered acting training.

The Meisner Technique, however, takes the training of actors as seriously and as systemat-

ically as the training of dancers and musicians. As teachers of Sanford Meisner’s work, we

consider a mastery of “technique” (the SYSTEMATIC procedure needed by actors to cre-

ate great performances) absolutely necessary. The Meisner Technique is a systematic,

step-by-step process that allows for actors to gain the skill sets required to create a charac-

ter and live in the imaginary world of the play. The skills required to act go way beyond how

to memorize lines and hit your marks.

Everything we do in the Meisner Technique (http://www.emasla.com/acting_class/los_an-

geles_actingclass_meisnertechnique.html) takes us back to those 5 major skill sets – and

so how do we gain skills? How does an NBA player improve his jump shot? Not in the

game – but through drills, exercises and PRACTICE! – and that is how we improve our con-

nection, our focus, our emotional expression our self-knowledge, and hone our instincts –

PRACTICE!

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ACTING BASICS MEISNER TECHNIQUE

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