Applied Meisner for the 21st-Century Actor

Kevin Otos, Kim Shively

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000387728
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

Applied Meisner for the 21st-Century Actor develops Meisner's core principles for the contemporary actor and presents a Meisner-based acting technique that empowers practitioners to take ownership of their own creative process.

In this book, the authors present the best, most applicable foundational components of Meisner's technique in a clear, pragmatic, and ethical manner, and advance Meisner's core principles with their own innovations. Drawing on the best practices of consent-based work, they outline a specific approach to creating clear boundaries for the actor and establishing an ethical acting studio. Filled with practical exercises, useful definitions and explanations of foundational principles, and helpful advice on how to recognize and overcome common acting traps and pitfalls, this book provides a replicable and flexible technique that puts the actor at the center of their training.

Applied Meisner for the 21st-Century Actor offers actors and students of acting courses a workable technique that will foster growth and discovery throughout their career.

The text also includes links to the companion website www.21CActor.com, where readers can engage with the material covered in the book and with Otos' and Shively's most up-to-date research, supplemental materials, and training opportunities.

Part I

Foundations

Chapter 1

What Is Acting?

It’s a simple and often neglected question, maybe because the answer seems obvious. But answering this question and understanding its definition are critical. If we are serious about mastering this craft, we need to know what acting is and what it is not. This will help us focus our training and assess our progress.

When we first ask our students “what is acting?” we hear all kinds of answers – it’s emotion, it’s being realistic, it’s “becoming” a character. Haphazard opinions about parts of acting can distract us from committing to what can actually improve our acting. Meisner’s definition of acting has an elegant beauty to it. It is simple, easy to remember, and an excellent point of departure.

Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

– Sanford Meisner (Meisner and Longwell, 1987)

This definition keeps us focused on what is useful because it tells us what acting is and what it is not. Note that the words “performing,” “emotion,” and “character” are not mentioned. That is because those things are byproducts of living truthfully under imaginary circumstances; they are not our core concerns. We’ve found that when there is a problem in acting it can always be traced back to the basics. Fully understanding this definition keeps us focused on where to put our attention.

Acting Is Living

What is living? This simple question is the subject of numerous books but for actors it is most useful to understand living as experiencing the continuous push and pull of individual moments. Meisner called this the pinch and the ouch (Meisner and Longwell, 1987, 35). That is, you experience behavior from another person (the pinch) and then respond with behavior of your own (the ouch). This is the pulse of living and it is continually present in our everyday lives.

Real life is fluid and alive. Your acting should be too. Life is full of pinch-ouch or the cause-to-effect reality. That is what we mean by “living.”

Pinch-Ouch

Cause-to-effect reality is how most people see and interpret their world. Something happens that then causes another thing to happen. You feel a pinch and then you ouch. When acting, the pinch must be experienced before the ouch can happen. When a pinch-ouch is happening between actors, the audience views the acting as truthful. It is the give-and-take of an alive event. When actors “ouch” without having experienced a “pinch,” the moment will not appear truthful because the “ouch” is not justified without first feeling a pinch. Listening for pinches, and then responding with ouches is the fluid moment-to-moment life necessary for truthful acting.

There are other terms that describe the pinch-ouch reality: cause-effect, action-reaction, tickle-laugh (also Meisner), and trigger-heap are some commonly used terms. Pinch-ouch, however, reminds us to train viscerally. The cause-to-effect, moment-to-moment reality should be physically experienced similar to how you physically experience an actual pinch.

Acting is Living Truthfully

Acting is living truthfully as opposed to lying, which also includes omitting parts of the truth. In everyday life you may view withholding certain parts of your truth as necessary or even helpful to your situation and that’s your choice. Know that most people do not live their complete personal truth in everyday life. When asked “How are you?” you may often respond with the socially acceptable answer, “good,” even though you are having a terrible day. If they get your order wrong at a restaurant, you may be polite to the server while inwardly fuming. These are times when you withhold your truth and society deems it acceptable and even “correct.” When acting, withholding any part of your personal, subjective truth in the moment is not useful. Commit to living truthfully within the imaginary world.

Note that there is no mention in this definition of “naturally,” “realistically,” or “believably.” We have observed that when students are consciously or unconsciously trying to accomplish those things their acting becomes flaccid and ordinary – at times almost apologetic. Words like “realistically” tend to dull our authentic edge. Focus on telling the truth, your authentic truth in the moment, and trust that those other things will take care of themselves.

Don’t confuse truthful with being necessarily dangerous or reckless. That’s not part of the definition of acting either. Respect boundaries.

Acting is Living Truthfully Under

Why the word “under”? Why not the word “in”? They’re easy to interchange in Meisner’s definition but we’ve come to appreciate “under” because it implies the pressure that a story’s imaginary circumstances put on you.

They don’t write plays about the day nothing happened.

– Brant Pope

We regularly heard this phrase from our teachers while training, and it applies to all good stories. Scripts are written about the day when something special happens – a critical event (or crisis) occurs in a life: life, death, love, betrayal and so on. These crises are not necessarily unpleasant, but they are intense and typically rare in one’s everyday life. They are the moments when our dreams or nightmares are about to unfold, are unfolding, or have just happened. As actors we get to live truthfully under this kind of heightened, story-worthy make-believe.

Some examples of the day that something special happens:

• In the classical Greek drama Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is the King of Thebes during a plague and all goes wrong in his kingdom.
• In Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun, Walter works to purchase a home within a racist and segregated society, not a progressive one.
• In Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Hedda seeks liberation within a sexist marriage rather than one built on equality.

Acting is Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances

The writer has created the script’s Imaginary Circumstances or the premise of the story (things like the characters, the conflict, the dialog), but they cannot provide everything. As actors it is our job to read between the lines and imagine additional, useful circumstances that help us justify and fully commit to the imaginary situation. These fully realized circumstances are then brought to life in our acting. We call this crafting, and you will learn to effectively craft as you work through this book.

Craft to Care

How you choose to work with imaginary circumstances is very important. The choice is simple: you either choose to make choices that help you care more or help you care less. “Craft to care” is a mantra we use in our teaching. Engage with the imaginary circumstances and craft your choices so that you can more fully care and commit to the make-believe situation.

A predicament of our 21st-century reality is that we are regularly confronted by terrible, sometimes nightmarish events occurring globally and locally. While being aware is part of good citizenship, over time this continuous onslaught of bad news can cause a kind of emotional callousing where we unintentionally cope by learning to care less. You may find yourself thinking: “After all, despite the latest disaster, my kids still need me to take them to practice.” This is an understandable habit for coping with the downside of life, but that habit is not useful when acting. “Craft to care.” Understand the writer’s imaginary circumstances and flesh them out with your imagination to help you care more and fully commit to the situation.

Chapter 2

Studio Guidelines

In the iconic diagram attributed to Stella Adler’s visit with Konstantin Stanislavski, the number one principle listed is to “work on one’s self.” This necessity is still true today.

When Stanislavski was developing what would become “the Method” in the early 1900s he was working with predominantly educated people who came from a certain amount of privilege. The actors he trained were quite homogenous by 21st-century American standards. Even when the “the Method” arrived in the United States, to “work on one’s self” insinuated that one enjoyed a level of privilege unavailable to many. Afterall, taking time off from trying to survive in order to pursue lofty endeavors like self-knowledge was a luxury. Today, however, it is widely accepted that every person deserves the opportunity to work on one’s self regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, age, socioeconomic status, and so on. The pursuit of self-knowledge is as important as ever for those pursuing a career in acting.

The Principles

The Keyboard of Humanity: Your Expanded Sense of Self

Our teacher Jim Wise would sometimes say that each of us had a keyboard within, a metaphor for the possible actions, emotions, and selves within us all. Some of these keyboard keys we know well and bring into our everyday life, others we know and keep private, and others we are totally unaware of. As actors, it is useful to accept that within each of us there are both angels and monsters and everything in between – an infinite number of selves. Jim explained that in everyday life we tend to repeatedly play the middle C key, but that when acting we need to allow greater expression from our entire keyboard. Uta Hagan wrote something similar in Respect for Acting using the image of an apple: “But I have to become aware of myself as the total apple – the firm inner flesh as well as the brown rotten spots, the stem, the seeds, the core. All of the apple is me” (Hagen, 1973).

Many master acting teachers in the 20th century taught that it was important and absolutely necessary for actors to bring this expanded sense of self into their personal lives as well. Generally, we disagree. Though mastering a craft such as acting (or accounting) will influence a person’s world view, we have found it useful to look at acting as more of an athletic event. For example, a boxer does not typically box in their everyday life. Their boxing skills are...