- Learn the Fundamentals
The Meisner Technique is a great place to build a foundation that you can use your entire career. Skills like
- Working off your fellow actors
- Believing in the imaginary world as though it is real
- Really doing and really feeling
- Being present in the moment
- Having access to a range of emotions
- Creating honest and interesting points of view
- Discovering how to use your uniqueness to be truthful
- Ignite your Imagination
The Meisner Technique doesn’t want you go back to past experiences to connect emotionally to the imaginary circumstances of the script.
First of all that’s limiting what you can relate to to what you have actually experienced. Secondly, it’s not good for your mental health to keep opening up past emotional wounds just to play a scene. Thirdly, going into your memory can often introvert you and damage your connection to your fellow actors or the circumstances of the scene.
Our imaginations are infinitely more powerful and expansive than our own experiences. Although the Meisner Technique uses your unique feelings about relationships, issues, and characters in the script… it is ALWAYS in the context of the IMAGINARY circumstances.
That is why Meisner makes actors work out their imagination muscles in every class.
- Reduce Self-Consciousness
When an actor doesn’t know how to put their attention on what they are DOING and WHO they are connecting with, they can get trapped inside their own heads.
That is when the inner judge comes in and comments on everything they are doing. “Why did you say it that way?” “Should I look at her?” “Oh, that sounded fake.” This commenter prevents actors from being in the present moment.
The Meisner Technique teaches actors how to prevent this and work from unanticipated moment to unanticipated moment. We don’t just tell you to be in the moment, we teach you HOW to be in the moment.
