An Overview of the Meisner Technique

The Underlying Theory

Improvisation is important

There is an focus on externalization

For every element, there is at least one exercise designed to reinforce it

Success stories – Robert Duval, Michelle Pfeifer, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Jarrett, et al

The Technique Itself

“Foundation of acting is the reality of doing.”  Don’t do as the character, do as yourself. Connect the actor to something outside themselves. 

The Word Repetition Game

Simple repetition (“the sky is blue”/”the sky is blue”)

From the actor’s viewpoint (“you’re looking at me”/”I’m looking at you”)

The pinch and the ouch: the importance of instinct

Repeat the Word Repetition Game but allow for instinctual change.  When the game instinctually suggests a change, take it.

Let the other actor guide your responses, don’t guide them yourself.

Don’t respond without a catalyst for the response.

The knock on the door: really do what you seem to be doing

Add the independent activity, a source of total focus, to the WRG.

The actor must concentrate totally on the independent activity.

Enhanced focus

Ultimate result: a very natural, unforced scene beyond the WRG.

Beyond repetition: working with scripts

Learn lines by rote, without emotional content or inflection

Focus on staying relaxed and, thus, receptive

Pick up impulses, not cues

Preparation (emotional)

Come into a scene emotionally prepared

The prepared emotion only lasts a moment

Either imagined or a real memory

Specific and meaningful

Contrast with “emotional memory” (Method)

Improvisation

One actor with an independent activity, another with an emotional preparation

                        More on Preparation

Analogy of the script as a ship and emotion as the river

                                    Allow yourself to overdo

                                    Emotionalize, don’t intellectualize

                                    Imagination must have reality

                                    No response is a response

                                    Make the emotion personal

                        The magic “as if” – particularization

The substitution of conditions under which a certain emotion surfaces

Don’t fight your own temperament; not every role is perfect for you

Reactions must be large enough to be observed

                   Make the part your own

                                    Find the core emotion in the line or speech

Make it personal.  Put it in your own words, based on the emotion.

                                    Judge the material with your heart, not your head

                                    Ask imaginative questions based on the text

                   Miscellaneous advice

Analogy of the text as a libretto and the actor as a composer

                                    Ignore stage directions – they interfere with instinct.

Don’t stay locked to the text.  Allow instinct to change lines and emotion.