In his book Sanford Meisner On Acting, Meisner pays homage to past acting guides, like An Actor Prepares, by setting his narrative entirely within his acting classroom with one group of students over a span of eight months. While books like An Actor Prepares become bogged down in the monotony of daily classroom life and tedium of instruction, Meisner’s eloquent and gripping prose transcends these traps and invites readers to peek within the four walls of his famed classroom. The reason for Meisner’s enduring popularity is obvious: he offers a clear methodology with which to build a strong foundation for acting technique. Still, he seems to present contradictory ideas about emotion and so, as with anything, his words should be taken with a
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Unsurprisingly then, there are certain similarities between the experiences of Meisner’s students in On Acting and our own experiences as actors and students in scene study class. For example, we often struggle because we misplace our focus on being right. When we do the chair exercise, it takes us quite long to complete it because everyone, myself included, is extremely tentative to move, not wanting to break the rules of the game by moving out of turn and, therefore, be wrong. Meisner students similarly grappled with this fear of being wrong. He addresses this anxiety, telling them “you don’t have real freedom yet, as you well know because you’re always afraid of being wrong” (Meisner and Longwell 60). The fear of being wrong is terribly restrictive; it paralyzes the actor and prevents her from creating. Western society, and particularly Western education, molds people in such a way that they perceive everything within the binary of right or wrong and crave the metaphorical gold star they receive each time they are “right.” This binary breaks down in the artistic world, however, where things cannot be so simply objectively categorized. Many societal conventions that restrict us in the real world completely paralyze us in the artistic world. When we played the movement game with Rob, he noted how people would be polite and …show more content…
Meisner himself states that “the foundation of acting is the reality of doing”--placing the emphasis on that word “doing” (Meisner and Longwell 16). He also tells his students “you can’t fake emotion” (Meisner and Longwell 87), yet throughout the book, he places a confusing emphasis on emotion. At one point, he demands that an actress cry during a scene, repeatedly telling her to start crying until she finally does. This presents an obstacle for me as I try to fully understand Meisner’s methodology. If you cannot fake emotion, then how can you cry on the command of a teacher? Perhaps, Meisner himself and those more familiar with his method understand his beliefs about the relationship between emotion and acting; however, as a reader, it is unclear what exactly to think.
There is no universal acting method--disciples of Stanislavsky or Meisner will argue as vehemently for their respective idols as fervent preteen girls arguing over boybands. Then, it seems best to treat methods like Meisner’s not as the absolute word of an almighty dramaturgical God but rather as an opportunity to expand oneself
Unsurprisingly then, there are certain similarities between the experiences of Meisner’s students in On Acting and our own experiences as actors and students in scene study class. For example, we often struggle because we misplace our focus on being right. When we do the chair exercise, it takes us quite long to complete it because everyone, myself included, is extremely tentative to move, not wanting to break the rules of the game by moving out of turn and, therefore, be wrong. Meisner students similarly grappled with this fear of being wrong. He addresses this anxiety, telling them “you don’t have real freedom yet, as you well know because you’re always afraid of being wrong” (Meisner and Longwell 60). The fear of being wrong is terribly restrictive; it paralyzes the actor and prevents her from creating. Western society, and particularly Western education, molds people in such a way that they perceive everything within the binary of right or wrong and crave the metaphorical gold star they receive each time they are “right.” This binary breaks down in the artistic world, however, where things cannot be so simply objectively categorized. Many societal conventions that restrict us in the real world completely paralyze us in the artistic world. When we played the movement game with Rob, he noted how people would be polite and …show more content…
Meisner himself states that “the foundation of acting is the reality of doing”--placing the emphasis on that word “doing” (Meisner and Longwell 16). He also tells his students “you can’t fake emotion” (Meisner and Longwell 87), yet throughout the book, he places a confusing emphasis on emotion. At one point, he demands that an actress cry during a scene, repeatedly telling her to start crying until she finally does. This presents an obstacle for me as I try to fully understand Meisner’s methodology. If you cannot fake emotion, then how can you cry on the command of a teacher? Perhaps, Meisner himself and those more familiar with his method understand his beliefs about the relationship between emotion and acting; however, as a reader, it is unclear what exactly to think.
There is no universal acting method--disciples of Stanislavsky or Meisner will argue as vehemently for their respective idols as fervent preteen girls arguing over boybands. Then, it seems best to treat methods like Meisner’s not as the absolute word of an almighty dramaturgical God but rather as an opportunity to expand oneself