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Open Your Heart and Live Truthfully
Good acting and a good life happen when you open your heart to what is happening around you.
Actor Training
If you are just starting your actor training, the Meisner approach is a perfect way to begin your studies. If you have studied other approaches but still feel like something is lacking in your training, perhaps Meisner is the answer you are looking for. If you are a professional actor who needs special help preparing for a role or who wants to refresh and expand your technique, a Meisner teacher may be the right solution.
SELF TAPES
THE MEISNER WAY
More Information Coming Soon.
Proven Success For 80 Years
Meisner taught acting for 60 years. His students achieved remarkable success, winning scores of awards, including 37 nominations for Oscars.
Meisner personally trained 20 teachers to carry on his approach and this group has mentored a second generation of acting teachers. Twenty years after his passing, Sanford Meisner's name is used by teachers around the world to describe their approach to teaching actors and directors.
Step By Step Approach
Meisner believed that acting should be taught like other artistic disciplines - one step at a time. This approach came from his training as a concert pianist.
Other techniques have no clear steps or direction and they too quickly overwhelm the actor with advanced scenes. Meisner developed a series of exercises that helped his students build a solid foundation of acting skills and build the actors' confidence as they master each step in the training.
Truthful Acting
Meisner agreed with Stanislavski that the best acting must be based in truth. His students learned how to "really do" whatever they were doing on stage. Emotions were never pushed out or faked. Meisner taught his students to trust their humanity.
If the actors believed in the imaginary circumstances and really did what they were doing in the imaginary circumstances, then the proper emotions would follow. Every exercise that Meisner developed reinforces and strengthens an actor's truthfulness.
The Other Person
Meisner developed a series of exercises that helped the actor focus their attention on and make use of the other person in the scene.
Meisner believed that the most truthful and spontaneous acting happened when the actor was responding to the other person from one unanticipated moment to the next. The actor became the feather and his scene partner became the wind. In Meisner's approach, the other person became the most important person on the stage.
Simplicity
Meisner always looked for the simplest and most direct way to learn acting. This approach helped spark the actor's imagination and open the actor's heart.
Any exercise or approach that was too complex or contained too many details shut down the imagination and closed the heart. This concept of simplicity and directness has continued to be one of the biggest differences between Meisner's approach and other approaches to acting.
Individual Approach
Meisner believed that each student had their own unique path to learning the art of acting. He always followed the same principles but would tailor his comments and exercises to suit the needs of each student from one class to the next.
Don’t physically hurt yourself or other people (and don’t break the furniture). In life and in your acting, you should always follow this rule.
Safety First
Have other questions about
Meisner Actor Training?
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