Sanford Meisner
Lessons from Sandy…
I’m sure you know by now that we’re greatly influenced by many of Sanford Meisner’s ideas. I find myself inspired by his words more and more. I found a few new quotes that I thought I would like to share with you. I will use the quotes to explore some ideas on acting and hopefully pass some of the inspiration onwards!
“Less’s more!” Mies van der Rohe and the Bauhaus may have gotten there first (well, second I think actually), but when Sanford Meisner says ‘Less is More’, I wish more actors knew this from birth. The actor should always aim for less, often much less. I spend much of my time reigning actors in, helping them cut back on their over-done faked emotion and their desire to push so hard. Less, less, always less, because more is often sickening, like too much cake.
“The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting.” Stripping back to the truth, the simplest most basic truthful sense of ourselves is often the best way to bring truth to the role. You bring your truth to the role and rather than creating character, you reveal the truth of yourself and that truth sells the audience on our well-meaning trick, the creation of the illusion of character.
“Acting is not talking, it’s living off the other fellow!!!” Of course, the basis of acting for Meisner, taking your inspiration, your fuel for the scene from your scene partners. Acting has nothing to do with talking, little in fact to do with words. The bit of the ice berg that you CAN see is the words. The rest of your acting is why lies beneath.
“You can’t learn to act unless you’re criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you’ll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done.” You do need someone to help you cut the shit, can the bull, stop letting yourself off the hook, and if its done with love and care, or the professionalism you deserve, then that object criticism will make you stronger, a better, truer performance, and perhaps a better person too.
“The only way to deal with yourself as an actor is to follow the emotional truth of what you have to do under the imaginary circumstances. And as you develop you become confident. You come to believe in what you’re doing and trust it because it’s out of you.” Trust yourself. End of.
“Transfer the point of concentration to some object outside of yourself – another person, a puzzle, a broken plate that you are gluing.” One of the first things that I learned as a director was that actors that had a focus on something other than themselves were completely different in their performance from those that were ’self’ conscious, in other words, inwardly focused. A puzzle may be fine, something that holds your attention is good, but you can’t always find a ’something to do’ in every scene, although I confess I like scenes where people do something other than just talk. However, for most scenes, you have the most interesting, attention-holding thing of all, a fascinating human being playing opposite you. Let them be your focus and you’ll fly.
“You can’t fake emotion.” I think my greatest dissatisfaction with acting in general is that I see faking that’s done as if it’s done well and audiences lapping up like it’s remarkable, when really it’s just a downright lie. Fake emotion isn’t interesting, it’s distracting to me as an audience member, it doesn’t add to the scene, it completely detracts from it. If the emotion doesn’t come to you, don’t even try to fake it, your bullshit standardised, generalised fake-ass emoting won’t fool anyone, and all you’ll get from your audience is indulgence, which is to say, a sort of pity, wrapped in applause.
To You, The Best!Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach and runs Acting Coach Scotland, a private acting studio offering acting classes in Glasgow, masterclasses, workshops and audition coaching for actors at all levels. His acting studio is based in Glasgow, Scotland, although he teaches all across the United Kingdom. All Blog Posts © Mark Westbrook 2009
History of the Meisner Technique
Back in the Thirties, Sanford Meisner was one of the members of The Group Theatre, probably the most important theatre company in the history of the American theatre. The Group’s work was based on the work of the Russian actor, director and father of modern acting, Stanislavski. At some point in their work together, Sandy Meisner fell out with Lee Strasberg over his unnecessary emphasis on the use of the personal emotions of the actor. Meisner felt that the imagination and emotion could be stimulated by the imaginary circumstances of the play/scene. Of course, Strasberg went on to make acting look like a cross between an CIA interrogation and a Freudian therapy session, but Meisner’s work slowly and quietly grew in the shade of Strasberg’s light.
Sandy defined acting as ‘living truthfully under the imaginary circumstances of the play’. His approach is rigorously based in what is known as ‘the reality of doing’.
Meisner worked out of the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, he created his own way of working, a systematic approach, still based on the teachings of Stanislavski, but focused on the principles of real human behaviour. His training included a great deal of emphasis on helping the actor to allow their own natural impulses to flow unimpeded, something that socially, as human beings, we’re not too comfortable with. Meisner trained actors to work with their real impulses and real behaviour, rather than pretending.
One of the founding exercises of Meisner’s Technique is called Repetition, of the Repetition Exercise or Game. It’s a simple game, seems on the surface to be a bit ridiculous, but over time, it becomes more and more useful to the actor. In the exercise, two actors stand opposite each other and respond truthfully to each other through a statement that is repeated. The statement is derived from something in the other actor’s behaviour, such as ‘You’re nervous’. The statement is repeated and without help from the two actor, it changes naturally in response to the behaviour of the other actor. The actor must stop thinking about about themselves, a place their attention fully and completely upon their partner. Sandy’s own focus was said to be:
“to eliminate all intellectuality from the actor’s instrument and to make him a spontaneous responder to where he is, what is happening to him, what is being done to him.”
Of course, the Meisner Technique is much more than simply Repetition, yet this remains the foundation technique that allow the student to access the ‘reality of doing’, to ‘live in the moment’, and to ‘work off the other fellow’.
My own teaching uses only a portion of Meisner’s work, Practical Aesthetics itself has some basis in Meisner, because Mamet studied briefly, for one year with Sandy, but it takes the necessary and leaves the remainder for the dedicated Meisner students. In class, we use Repetition as the foundation technique that all students use to develop ‘other awareness’ and learn to be in the moment and to work off the other actor. For many of our students, this is an extremely challenging exercise, but like playing scales at the piano, it is an exercise necessary to develop some of the skills and qualities that we believe are essential to becoming the best actor that you can be.
To You, The Best!Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach and runs Acting Coach Scotland, a private acting studio offering acting classes in Glasgow, masterclasses, workshops and audition coaching for actors at all levels. His acting studio is based in Glasgow, Scotland, although he teaches all across the United Kingdom. All Blog Posts © Mark Westbrook 2009
A few more quotes on Acting
Today, just a few great quotes, something for you think over and consider:
Never lose yourself on stage. Always act in your own person, as
an artist. You can never get away from yourself. The moment you
lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living
your part and the beginning of exaggerated false acting …
Always and forever, when you are on the stage, you must play
yourself. – Stanislavski - An Actor Prepares
And the self-concerned actor is a bore. And whether the actor is
saying, ‘I must play this scene in order to be well thought of,’or
‘I must remember and re-create the time my puppy died in order
to play this scene well,’makes no difference. In both cases his
attention is self-centred . . . and will tell us nothing.
David Mamet – True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor
“Act before you think – your instincts are more honest than your thoughts.” – Sanford Meisner
“An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words.” – Sanford Meisner
Asked how he felt about the excessive psychological identification between the actor and their character:
“Yes, (it’s) some sort of – some sort of masturbation. Now I must say, I’ve got nothing against masturbation, but when one comes upon it in the theatre, when they all sit there together, masturbating their souls… I find it… self indulgent” – Ingmar Bergman
“You must place yourself in the situation of the character” – E. Vakhtangov
To You, The Best!Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach and runs Acting Coach Scotland, a private acting studio offering acting classes in Glasgow, masterclasses, workshops and audition coaching for actors at all levels. His acting studio is based in Glasgow, Scotland, although he teaches all across the United Kingdom. All Blog Posts © Mark Westbrook 2009
More Inspiring Quotes on Acting
Thought I would offer you some more quotes that have served me well over the years. These are some of my favourites:
Acting is living truthfully, under the imaginary circumstances of the play - Sanford Meisner
Your talent is in your choice – Stella Adler
“At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, ‘When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!’” David Mamet
“Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It’s not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.” Philip Seymour Hoffman
“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.” Aristotle
FOR MY STUDENTS: “It’s not enough to have talent. You have to have a talent for your talent.” Stella Adler
FOR MARK COLEMAN: “I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of tightrope dancer, so that no incompetent would dare step onto it. – Goethe
Quotes aren’t just cool things to say to people, they’re great for reminding you of important truisms about acting and the stage. I love having them around, they act as reminders to me. Hope you enjoyed.
Democratisation of the Arts
Hello Dear Blog Readers, Actors, Acting Students or Occasional Passers-By.
I am feeling much better today, so thank you very much for your messages of the ‘get well soon’ variety, I’m here now in Dublin still feeling a bit under the weather, but sat in the lovely ‘green’ room at Rua Red in Tallaght. I’ve had an idea buzzing around my brain all morning, it wouldn’t leave me alone in the shower and I think I need to let it out. Much of this relates to the UK system where we have a Church and State divide (at the moment) between university education and conservatory training.
I was thinking about Performance, Video, Sound and other art forms that clearly derived from a university education. Malcolm Gladwell in his latest fascinating book Outliers talks about the notion of 10,000 hours. That is that it takes 10,000 hours to develop significant mastery of a skill. The difference between conservatory violin students was not talent, they had talent enough to enter the conservatory, instead, it was which of them put in the hours. It’s not a coincidence that Sanford Meisner used to say it would take an actor 20 years to be a master actor.
Anyway, thinking about all of this stuff made me think of the origins of Performance, and its university progenitor ‘Performance Studies’. It could only be conceived as part of a university education, because only in university do people need to democratise art. In order to make enough money by putting enough bums on seats you need to remove two requirements, 1) talent – which is an innate ability to be good at something or learn it faster than your competitors and 2) 10,000 hours practice. University does not require either of these. It requires good grades and a willingness to prostrate oneself to letters after someone’s name. And I say this after many years as university lecturer, with plenty of letters of my own.
If you’re willing to submit yourself to academia, you may enter devoid of talent and the 10,000 hours, you need something to do for 3 or 4 years. Knowing that they couldn’t offer the students (talented or not) the 10,000 hours, not the appropriate instruction, they needed to offer them something to do between student social events. The answer was to democratise the arts. They transformed anything they could into something that anyone could ‘have a go at’, whilst convincing themselves that 2 lectures and a seminar per week was a liberal arts education and worth the tax payer’s money.
- Acting became Performance or Performance Art
- Music became Sound and Sonic Art
- Film Making became Video Arts
- Painting became Tracy Emin’s Unmade Bed
Universities then spent time convincing enough students that this was not only a good thing to do, but that it was also worthy of investment of time and energy that as they graduated, they took it with them and made is subversive, edgy, sub genre that’s fed by arts councils everywhere. Who runs the arts councils? Well, it’s not the conservatory musicians! They’re too busy being good at what they do. It’s our old friends, the university graduates, devoid of meaningful pastime, real skills and 10,000 hours of practice, they’ve got to make a living somehow.
The final element is money. Training artists is expensive. The democratised version is cheap, literally anyone can get involved, have a go and feel like a proper ‘artist’. But it’s fake, no, it’s fraud. It’s fraud that they are ‘taught’ these lowest common denominator versions of the arts, and it’s fraud that it has been legitimised by the ‘establishment’, and legitimacy occurs twice. Once when it’s paid for by the tax payer when they are in university (and it is STILL funded by the tax payer. no matter how much tuition fees you pay, we still have to pay out too) but then AGAIN by the tax payer when they subsidise it through the arts council, or your local council, or if you’re particularly lucky, both at once, making the insult count THREE time.
Have good people come from these democritised courses, of course, I’m not saying they haven’t. I’m saying, that this mutant spawn of art isn’t necessarily a good thing, and possibly favours mediocrity over excellence.
10 Reasons I HATE Method Acting (but NOT Method Actors)
Hate is a strong word, so I’ve provided ten reasons why I’ve used the word hate and not dislike. To my mind, Method Acting isn’t bad or wrong; instead it’s simply unnecessary. Let me be precise, I’m not talking about the work of Stanislavski, the father of modern acting. I’m talking about the backwards, tangled mess of a method that developed in America after so many Russians escaped to the USA.
Please be aware, I can’t even say Method Acting without cringing, so don’t expect me to pull any punches.
Here are the ten reasons that I cannot abide Method Acting.
ONE: It’s Not About You
The Method centres on the actor, although they claim it is the character. But theatre was never about the creation of character, it was always about storytelling. The actor and their ‘creative’ skills rather than the play is the centre of the Method. This internal, inward-directed focus creates a self-conscious performance that has little to do with the play written by the author.
TWO: Anti-Practical
The tools of an acting technique should be practicable. This means you should be able to use them immediately to work on a scene. Whatever takes you away from the scene isn’t about acting the scene. If it isn’t about acting the scene, what are you doing? Take Sense Memory. There’s no practicable point. Developing your ability to pretend something imaginary is true? Isn’t that the outcome of certain forms of mental illness? Why would you want to improve your skill of self-delusion?
THREE: Unnecessary Focus on Emotion
Acting is not emotion. Acting is action. The incorrect focus on emotion comes through an embarrassingly arrogant view of Stanislavski’s work that was developed by Lee Strasberg and called The Method. We do not have control over our emotions. We have less control over them when we’re under the kind of stress that actors feel on stage. If we could control them, we’d be robots and no longer need therapy, counseling or Prozac! You can fake emotion (badly) and you can force out some tears, but that’s not much of a basis for acting. Truly great acting moves the audience, not the actor.
FOUR: Confusing Scenic Truth for Truth
Many Method schools believe they are teaching their students to be truthful and authentic. But there is nothing authentic or truthful about pretending. The Method schools believe that if you pretend hard enough, or develop strong enough pretending skills (how?) you will be able to believe that imagined circumstances and characters are real. So these schools teach that the best way to arrive at truth is to pretend. That just seems counterintuitive to me.
FIVE: Fake Work
I believe Method Acting (and a lot of Stanislavski’s work unfortunately) is fake work. It looks like very busy creative work, but it doesn’t actually have a practicable use when you get into rehearsals. It takes up lots of valuable time, it might even make people think hard about their character, the epoch or topic matter, but it won’t help the actor to play the scene. Give up the fake work.
SIX: Psychosis
The Method’s ill-educated and misguided approach to tinkering around in the mind of the actor is frightening. Stanislavski gave all of that up in favour of an approach focusing on ‘action’. Your own psychological state is not the playground of an acting teacher; you don’t know what a potentially explosive minefield of unresolved issues that you are poking around in. Messing with that stuff isn’t brave, it’s stupid.
SEVEN: Self-Indulgence
When you’re a Method-actor, you do ‘research’. You go off and learn to fire guns so that you know how a soldier feels, you learn Swahili so that you can say three lines in the film, you talk to real prostitutes about their craft to play Prostitute Number 3 or interview real criminals to play ‘Second Crook from the End’. It’s an excuse to do something fun and call it work, but:
None of this will help you play the scene. I’ll say it again, NONE OF THIS WILL HELP YOU PLAY THE SCENE.
If you need to learn REAL physical skills for a role, that’s fair enough, that makes sense. Learn to speak those three lines of Swahili beautifully and accurately with a great accent. But don’t confuse indulgent, self-pleasuring for ‘research’. This is really a time-wasting exercise that gives the actor false confidence, instead of helping them to ‘act’ the scene.
EIGHT: Cult of the Teacher
Method acting usually revolves around the cult of the teacher’s personality. Originating with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, the personality is still the driving force behind a Method class. Learning is about the student, acting is about the actor. Teacher is the guide, not the topic. The class should be about the actor’s development. It’s true the personality of the teacher helps the class, but there are some very charismatic teachers that speak utter nonsense.
NINE: Out of the Scene
Delving around in your psychological past is not only dangerous but it also takes you out of the scene. If you are acting and you have to conjure an emotion, you will have to take a minor mental break from working truthfully off your partner in order to instigate your emotional preparation. In the meantime, you’re no longer in the scene. If the emotion comes out strongly, you’ll have to work to keep it under control, if it comes out weak, you’ll be distracted by trying to force it out more and feel dissatisfied with the performance. Grotowski found that action creates emotion as a truthful by-product, leave emotion alone and focus on action – the root of Drama.
TEN: It Doesn’t Look Like Fun
If you’ve ever watched actors working with the late Lee Strasberg, it looks excruciating. Is that what you want? Do you want to take all of the fun out of acting? Acting can be great fun for committed and determined actors. Why make it so painful and such a waste of time? Enjoy your training, enjoy your process, and enjoy your performance because the profession is painful enough.
There are many brilliant Method actors alive. I simply suggest they would be brilliant without the Method too. It’s called talent and knowing how to apply it. I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m saying it’s unnecessary.
Mark Westbrook is a Professional Acting Coach based in Glasgow, Scotland.
5 Reasons Why I’m an Acting Coach and NOT an Acting Teacher
Acting is a craft, like all roles in the theatre; it requires a period of apprenticeship to learn it. Whether this is learned in the classroom, or through the practice of theatre making, it is learned entirely through doing. There is no theory of acting, only practice.
ONE: ACTING IS BEST LEARNED LIKE A SPORT
The later great improvisation expert Viola Spolin used to teach through side coaching, an especially important skill for those attempting to assist actors to learn to improvise. Just like in sports, if the acting coach needs to stop the actors every time they need to suggest something, then the scene will never happen. It’s like the sports coach who needs to stop the entire game in order to give their team instructions.
TWO: ACTING TEACHERS ARE CHARLATANS
I don’t believe in acting teachers and their acting classes, most are fraudulent and the greatest problem is that they don’t even realise it. Very few have a practicable technique of acting to teach in their acting classes, and so they essentially con their students with lots of what I call ‘fake work’. These are fun, creative exercises and games that deeply engage but leave the acting student wondering how they could ever apply that work to the process of acting.
Poor acting teachers cannot articulate their technique and when they do, they use impractical language and intangible techniques that bamboozle and frustrate the student. A coach offers solid practicable advice on which the acting student can make an immediate step towards progress and advancement in their craft.
THREE: ACTING IS ABOUT DOING
Acting is something that can be learned, but I’m not sure it can be taught. I believe as Sanford Meisner did that ‘acting is living truthfully under the imaginary circumstances of the play’. If so, acting is natural for everyone, we’re all doing it daily. The only part that needs coaching is the connection to the imaginary circumstances of the play, and that’s simply a matter of being coached in an approach that effectively connects you to the play.
FOUR: ACTING CLASSES
When people are learning to act, they need to be coached whilst they are working. If you need to stop them every time you want to make a suggestion, they’ll have to work hard to get back to where they were before they can implement the suggestion. By that time, the moment is lost. The acting classes that I coach generally use this form of coaching, but people find it very difficult to give up on their desire to stop and listen to ‘teacher’ every time I need to make a brief suggestion.
FIVE: BACK TO SPORT
Coaches mainly deal with the practicalities of physical sports. This is my view of acting and acting classes. An acting coach should deal with the training of an actor like they deal with the training of an athlete. The actor is an aesthetic athlete. Acting classes should be highly practical, very physical sessions; acting is a physical craft, the craft of physical action.
If you’d like to attend acting classes in Glasgow or find out more about getting an acting coach, why not speak Mark. › Continue reading
Search
Recent Posts
- Tackling Talent: Part 2 with ACS Assistant Coach Ian Watt
- Tackling Talent: Part 1 – A Guest Blog from ACS Assistant Coach Karli Evans
- Know your Job
- Finding Fulfilment
- Do NOT Let the Director Near the Lighting Board
- A Few Good Resources
- The Wood for the Trees
- Lessons from Sandy…
- Making Excuses
- I don’t trust Acting Schools
- Advice to the Advancing Acting Student
- New Glasgow Acting Classes Begin Tonight!
- Gatekeepers: A Secret about the Acting Industry
- The Skills of the Actor
- The Craft of the Actor
Archives
Posts
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Feb | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||