Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner

Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training

Anjalee Deshpande Hutchinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000077520
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training offers a comprehensive analysis of the Sanford Meisner Acting Technique in comparison to the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique.

This compilation reveals the connections as well as the contradictions between these two very different approaches, while highlighting meaningful bridges and offering in-depth essays from a variety of sources, including master teachers with years of experience and new and rising stars in the field. The authors provide philosophical arguments on actor training, innovative approaches to methodology, and explorations into integration, as well as practical methods of application for the classroom or rehearsal room, or scaffolded into a curriculum.

Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training is an excellent resource for professors teaching Introductory, Intermediate or Advanced Acting Technique as well as acting program directors and department chairs seeking new, impactful research on actor training.

Part I

The Masters

1

The Meisner Approach

“Be Simple and Rediscover the World” – Dostoyevsky

Susan Coromel

The foundation of my work as a teacher has long been the Meisner Approach, which was the foundation of my actor training. Meisner suggests that an actor’s main obstacle is self-consciousness, a formidable barrier to active onstage listening. I will discuss Meisner’s approach from my personal point of view because all Meisner teachers are individual, and how we interpret or articulate the work differs based on our experiences with the approach. I will discuss what to me is essential about the work, and give examples of how these concepts can be implemented. As a practitioner of the Meisner Approach for over 30 years, and a teacher of the approach for the past 25 years, I am certain the process Meisner developed, at its core, is about simplicity. The approach is prescriptive and designed to strengthen specific skills like concentration, listening practices, and emotional connection (otherwise known as emotional preparation), and particularization.

Sanford Meisner’s early years were tragic. He was born at the beginning of the twentieth century, of immigrant parents. When he was five years old, his younger brother, only three years old, died suddenly. The guilt, mainly placed on Meisner by his parents, haunted him his whole life, and he withdrew into an isolationist lifestyle. Meisner always wanted to be an actor and, despite opposition from his practical family, he persisted and studied at the Theatre Guild School of Acting. From there, he went on to meet many influential figures in the theatre world, Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg among them. Meisner was selected by Clurman to join the Group Theatre and became a founding member. The training he received at the Group encouraged him to adopt a naturalistic approach to acting which aided both his acting and teaching careers. To him, “art expresses the human experience.” In his text Sanford Meisner: On Acting, Meisner relates the story of actress Eleonora Duse and her pure, natural, onstage blush (Meisner and Longwell, p. 11). The example of Duse’s blush is the essence of his approach. It is not only one to gape over but also to strive for. Yet, how does an actor find that deep personal connection to a circumstance outside their own life?

The most important single element to me in Stanislavski, is the reality of doing. An actor whose craft is securely rooted in the ability to live truthfully, which infers to do truthfully, under the imaginary circumstances of the play can perform in any style.

(Meisner, quoted in Soloviova et al., p. 155)

Sanford Meisner’s music training influenced the development of his approach. As a musician, he understood the rote training of exercises one does to learn an instrument, and he applied this style of pedagogy, creating a step-by-step two-year process which takes an actor from what he called “mechanical repetition” into a fully realized improvisation of a scripted scene within the first year, and deeper emotional context and character development in the second year. The approach rests on the statement “The foundation of acting is the reality of doing” (Meisner and Longwell, p. 16). An actor can apply this simple and specific definition to all areas and levels of acting. At the beginning, Meisner uses repetition exercises as a device to help an actor stay present and connected to their partner: “[Repetition] plays on the source of all organic creativity, the inner impulse” (Meisner and Longwell, p. 37). The connection between two actors made obvious by the repetition exercise is key to mastering the craft of acting. Being in response to everything that is happening on stage, and specifically to your scene partner, is crucial to “living” on stage and keeps the actor from intellectualizing their performance. Meisner said there is no “mentality” in good acting (Meisner and Longwell, p. 36). Trusting impulse sets the student on a course to discover the unknown. The unknown is where creativity can grow and develop. Repetition trains us to work off our partner and allows us to let the partner’s behavior adjust how we play the scene, which reinforces the notion that what we do on stage does not depend on us, it depends on what we get from our partner.

“What makes us say the lines is the impulse to respond, and impulse comes from our availability to everything that is coming our way” (Silverberg, 1994, p. 67). Working this way trains the actor to respond accordingly and organically to what their partner is giving them. The challenge is that, because of our social constructs, we habitually respond with logic and bury our subtext. We live in an environment where we are constantly monitoring our reactions to one another as well as striving for social acceptance. In my experience, learning to trust impulse and listen for subtext is the focus of most class time during the first year. Trusting yourself, trusting the moment and giving over to your partner are difficult skills to learn, and being present is probably the most difficult to learn. The mind desperately tries to step in and “play” with the repetition exercise. But as the mind begins to let go, the heart becomes more and more used to speaking up. The heart, and our impulsive behaviors, provide endless possibilities between actors.

Once a student has grasped the repetition exercise on a basic level, the next step in the approach is to add an independent activity. Independent activities are physical activities that are extremely difficult to accomplish. The activity also has what William Esper called a “standard of perfection” (Esper and DiMarco, p. 79). The standard of perfection keeps the actor from treating the activity with generality. The standard of perfection informs the actor how well they are accomplishing their task. Along with the activity, the student creates a compelling reason to accomplish the activity. This reason is created out of the student’s imagination and must be based on personal truth. The activity, with the circumstance, serves as a component to support Meisner’s definition of acting, which is “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances” (Meisner and Longwell, p. 30). Adding a compelling reason for why the activity must be accomplished reflects a similar structure found in a play script. Working with given circumstances thus offers the actor an opportunity to create situations that engage their imaginations. The element of personal truth strengthens the actor’s ability to accept the imaginary circumstances. Working with imaginary circumstances, based on an element of truth, also helps the actor explore the concept that Meisner refers to as “working from a place of knowing” (Silverberg, 2012, p. 136). For example, if I create a circumstance surrounding someone I care about, I do not need to “think” of how I would feel about that person because I already know. This gives the actor a place to start the improvisational exercise. It gives them an invitation to work from personal meaning, which in turn fuels their emotional life.

The ability to accept the imaginary circumstance of an exercise or a play is what Meisner calls “the actor’s faith” (Meisner and Longwell, p. 61). An actor accepts the imaginary circumstance of the play and agrees to not know what happens next. This creates the possibility to work off instincts and your fellow actor’s impulses. The exercise becomes more complex when you add a partner to the physical activity. For example, partner A is in their room pursuing a physically difficult task. The reason for completing the task is imaginary and created from a meaningful and truthful element of partner A’s life. The knock at the door is partner B, who is coming to the door with a simple and specific reason, something they can only get from partner A. Both actors engage their actor’s faith and pursue their “objectives.” For partner A, it is the accomplishment of their important task for the reason they have set up in their imagination. For partner B, it is whatever has brought them to partner A’s door, and is considered simple and specific. Partner B could be coming to the door because they left a library book at partner A’s apartment. If partner A has created a strong foundation to build their exercise the pressures of completing their task will churn around with the pressures partner B naturally imposes on them. From this exercise, Meisner instructs, “What we do doesn’t depend on us, it depends on the other fellow” (Meisner and Longwell, p. 33). So just as in the basic repetition exercise where we learned to hear and take personally our partner’s subtext, we now are open to how our partner’s behavior is affecting us emotionally in the exercise. Partner B must be in response to what partner A is doing to them. Working in this moment-to-moment authentic way, and accepting the given circumstances which have a truthful influence on the actor, teaches them how to work deeply and consistently. The goal is to provide a new series of habits, which will keep the actor connected on a deeper level.

The stakes of the independent activity exercise become higher and higher, stretching and expanding the idea of “the we, we don’t know” (Silverberg, 1994, p. 85). In Larry Silverberg’s text The Sanford Meisner Approach: An Actor’s Workbook, he talks about learning to live in the unknown. He writes that we “live our lives as if we know, and the fact is, as much as we’d like to think otherwise, we don’t know” (p. 85). Finding the joy in living in the unknown is crucial for all actors.

At this stage, Meisner introduces “emotional preparation.” “Preparation is that device which allows you to start the scene in a condition of emotional aliveness” (Meisner and Longwell, p. 78). Meisner reminds us to avoid the temptation to show, or project, a state of being. Meisner also posits that while emotional memory (part of the Stanislavski system, that involves remembering a time in your past in which you felt a similar emotion) may be strong, what you can imagine is ultimately stronger and richer and allows for more possibilities. Preparation is a personal process, and how each actor does it is specific and meaningful only to them. Finding effective methods of preparation requires much exploration and discovery. However, whatever an actor does for preparation only lasts for the first moment of the scene. After that, they begin responding to their partner and what actually happens in the scene they must respond to. The goal is to get into the scene alive and full. As Meisner says, “preparation is really very simple. It just takes a few years to learn” (Meisner and Longwell, p. 95).

Emotion is the part of the actor’s toolkit that takes some time to develop, and is often the most misunderstood part of the training. Whether working on an improvisational exercise with created imaginary given circumstances or working with dramatic text which provides the given circumstances, the actor must define the emotional pitch that is necessary to begin the scene. I do not mean that an actor makes the decision to cry, yell, or have some clichéd emotional outcome, but rather the actor sets up a “daydream” or “fantasy” which brings them to an emotional fullness after which they then begin the scene.

Here is an example of emotional preparation based on the role of Linda in Death of a Salesman. Near the end of the play, Biff and Happy, after an ugly fight with their father, leave Willy in a restaurant and go out with two girls. Later that night, Linda waits up for the boys to return. The script indicates that Linda is furious, and she plans to tell her sons to leave and never return. What goes into the preparation of this scene will be unique to the actor playing Linda. The first step is to determine the character’s point of view. The “point of view,” according to Meisner, relates to what the character thinks about their life and their relationships in the play. Taking the example of this scene, we cull down to a very specific descriptive word or phrase that will describe the essential meaning of the scene based on Linda’s point of view. This meaning could be betrayal, or loss of loyalty or a breach of trust. The significance of the betrayal or loss of loyalty becomes deeper when applied to the specific relationship she has with her sons. In this scene, she is ripping them out of her life so as to save her husband’s life. Once the actor determines the emotional direction, they then must ask themselves, “what would betrayal of this magnitude mean in my life?” The preparation comes from a fantasy, or a daydream based on that question. The fantasy will take the actor in a direction, an emotional direction, which will feed the first moments of the scene. Once in the scene, the actors work off what they are given by their fellow actors.

This is a very basic description of the kind of work I do using the Meisner Approach with students who are at the beginning of their training. Many young actors struggle with self-consciousness, listening skills, and maintaining connections with fellow actors on stage. A foundation in Meisner’s approach to acting is the strongest application I know to help a student go from self-consciousness to other-consciousness, and it is for this reason I have designed an acting curriculum that begins with the Meisner Approach. Meisner’s hyper focus on “doing” as a way of opening up the actor’s emotional life creates positive results in the classroom. Where students most struggle in this approach is in the area of emotional preparation. In my next chapter I will discuss the fusion I have developed between the Meisner Approach and the Chekhov Technique and how it strengthens the actor’s ability to perform with greater authenticity and complexity.

References

Esper, William, and Damon DiMarco. The Actor’s Art and Craft: William Esper Teaches the Meisner Technique. Anchor, 2013.

Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on Acting. Vintage, 1987.

Silverberg, Larry. The Sanford Meisner Approach: An Actor’s Workbook. Smith and Kraus, 1994.

Silverberg, Larry. True Acting Tips: A Path to Aliveness, Freedom, Passion, and Vitality. Limelight, 2012.

Soloviova, Vera, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, and Paul Gray. “The Reality of Doing,” Tulane Drama Review, Fall 1964, pp. 136–155.

2

The Relevance of the Meisner Technique in Today’s Actor Training

Thomas Prior

Actors have to be brave

Actors have to be tenacious

Actors have to be vulnerable

Actors have to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances

Actors have to find the person inside that they don’t know

My name is Thomas Prior and I am a professor of Theatre at Sam Houston State University near Houston, Texas. I teach classes in Shakespeare, acting for the camera, play analysis, and advanced acting using the Meisner technique. For the past 30 years, I have been a professional actor and a member of Actors’ Equity, and I have been teaching for the past 16. I am a teacher...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword by Larry Silverberg
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Case for a New Sacred in Actor Training
• PART I: The Masters
• PART II: Expeditions in Deep Training
• PART III: Methods in Convergence
• PART IV: Techniques in Practice
• PART V: Continued Collisions and Strategies for the Future
• Index