Mesiner

Born and raised in New York. Sanford Meisner was the son of two jewish immigrants, born in 1905 and living to be 92 Meisner died in 1997. From studying Stanislavski’s method Meisner developed his own technique known as  the ‘Meisner technique’. Despite being one of 28 members at ‘The Group Theatre’ Meisner did not settle into method acting as would be expected as he dismissed the use of affective memory, instead Meisner chased ‘the reality of doing’ . Going on to be the head of the acting program at the Neighborhood Playhouse and founding the Meisner Carville school of acting in Bequia and North Hollywood, alongside his partner James Carville. 

Meisner Repetition

There are four levels of repetition. This technique is designed to allow actors to be honest in the scene. the relationships will be developed through actors speaking into one another not throwing lines through one another. This further develops relationships as dynamics can be found through experimenting. 

1. In partners, facing one another on chairs or standing, state only what is seen. Do not  add opinions. The person receiving the observation must accept what has been said and repeat it back e.g ‘You have gold earrings.’ ‘I have gold earrings.’ This works when the words are spoken into one another. A really good tip is to breath in when your partner is making and observation this makes you physically available to respond and emotionally as you have listened deeply to whats been said. 

1. Introduce opinions. Using observations but adding an opinion to that observation. its important not to give opinions of what you already know about the actor your working with. allow yourself to offended, accept what has been observed. 

1. still listening to one another, talking into the other actor and accepting observations, move around the space. allow yourself to make instinctive choices and play. 

1. Apply the script. Find the truth behind the lines by repeating them until instinctively it feels as though it should move one. Find a connection to the line. 

How has Meisner technique helped me?

Act 1 Scene 17:

So Phoebe and I worked on our scene together today. Steph and Ruth have known one another since meeting at university. Its really tricky to have a scene where both of our characters are trying to relax as it seems as though the steaks are so high in the previous and following scenes. When rehearsing in the lesson it was hard to find the relationship dynamics. 

We Meisnered the scene. I felt like this was a really challenging thing because it tests how well you know your lines and from my observations its very easy to find conflict in the repetition, everyone seems to not like one another and this even occurred between Ruth and Steph who both care about one another a lot. However, once we realised we were creating conflict we were forced to experiment and play with our instincts. This is when we really began to have some sort of connection to the lines. We even found other meaning simply from applying our emphasis differently. 

Of course this scene is forever evolving but I feel that we now have this dynamic whereby both of us are allowing each other to be silly and have a drink and a laugh because most women have that and I think its really important that the repetition has helped us find that because we must use that instinctive breath every time we  run the scene.   

Act 4 Scene 8:

This scene is long and wordy. From speaking to Stuart Warden who watched the nationals version of '13' this section is where the energy dropped massively.