SANDY MEISNER ON HIS TECHNIQUE: PART THREE OF THREE:

IN MY OPINION:

WILLIAM REYNOLDS:

SANDY MEISNER ON HIS TECHNIQUE:

PART THREE OF THREE:

3. Actors Must Live, not Plan

“Don’t be an actor. Be a human being who works off what exists under imaginary circumstances.“Sanford Meisner was a strong proponent of improvisation, which allows the actor to bring spontaneity into the scene. Today, everybody values great improvisation skills — it’s a vitally important tool to have. This skill would give the actor enough courage to come into the scene emotionally unattached, and in turn let the emotions be guided by imaginary circumstances of the scene To explain it, Sandy used a metaphor: “The text is like a canoe, and the river on which it sits is the emotion. The text floats on the river. If the water of the river is turbulent, the words will come out like a canoe on a rough river. It all depends on the flow of the river which is your emotion.” In other words, you work off your partner, moment to moment, and that is what gives birth to your emotions. “Punctuation is emotional, not grammatical. If you say, “To be [pause] or not to be [pause] that [! pause] is the question,” there are three commas, three emotional commas, and an exclamation point in those lines, but they’re not on the paper.“ Additionally, you must have heard this advice a million times by now: “don’t judge your character.” This should be applied to acting in general. You must never try to understand the scene intellectually, from your own point of view. As Meisner said, intellect has nothing to do with acting. What drives the new emotions into an actor who is ready to absorb? Listening, instincts and impulses. When doing a scene, you do not pick up on cues, you do not wait for the line — you pick up on impulses (something in your partner’s words or behavior that makes your emotions tick). That is what real listening is all about. To understand it better, think of one of the first rules of improvisation: you cannot prepare anything — you respond to what you are given. When an actor listens to their partner, picks up on their impulses and then reacts with spontaneity, that is what brings the scene to life. “Anybody can read. But acting is living under imaginary circumstances.“