Back in my graduate school days, when I had ivory-tower wishes and PhD dreams, an advisor told me to think of theory as a toolkit. You go out in the field, you encounter something puzzling, and you then select the theory that can best chisel away at the problem. A nice, utilitarian approach—and I’m definitely a utilitarian.
When it comes to immersive acting, the Meisner technique is the freaking Sonic Screwdriver in my toolkit. I would be at cosmic sea without it, and with it, well, I’m pretty much The Doctor.
Disclaimer: I am no Meisner expert. I am a beginner at best, imposter at worst. I’ve taken some 28 class periods, hardly enough to qualify as an authority who knows what I’m talking about. But whatever. It still changed everything for me, so I’ll write about it, and you can decide.
Meisner 101
Meisner wanted what we all want: recognizable human behavior on stage. But that ain’t easy.
The Meisner technique is an inside-out approach: by fixing your inner workings, specifically where you focus your attention when acting, your outer body will follow the lead and behave naturally.
Sanford Meisner told his students, “The text is your greatest enemy.” Why? Because you know what’s going to happen. You’ve memorized it. Your scene partner’s lines come as no surprise to your ears. You tune him out. And the director says you need to move here on this line every time. You anticipate it. How on earth are you supposed to retain a shred of humanity when, after a few rehearsals, you are more like an automaton?
Clinging to spontaneity is the key. We live our lives improvisationally—that’s what it is to be human. We figure it out as we go, we speak at the edge of our thoughts, and we’re rarely self-conscious. Meisner must have a huge thing for improv theatre (it’s electric, after all). His technique is all about bottling that quintessentially human electricity and unleashing it on scripted performance.
The actor has two fundamental problems…
PROBLEM #1: You aren’t listening
SOLUTION: Pay attention to your scene partner with your ears and eyes.
Life hack: we don’t just listen with our ears. We also listen with our eyes. We are extremely fluent in reading human behavior without really being consciously aware of it. Think of how many times you’ve had a gut instinct against someone. Probably nothing in the words spoken tipped you off, but something in the behavior didn’t sit right with you. Think also of how many times you’ve noticed a friend was feeling low before he even spoke. There’s a lot that we’re saying to each other that goes unsaid, but you can hear it loud and clear when you listen with your eyes.
The Meisner repetition exercise forces what is usually subtext into text. It trains you to name the behaviors you see in your scene partner and respond to those behaviors with your gut.
PROBLEM #2: you’re self-conscious
SOLUTION: Stop feeling. Start doing. Focus either on the person you’re talking to or the task you are doing (and really do it), but never focus on yourself.
Once I heard this precept, I realized that my memories of acting were of this sort of “outside viewer” viewing myself (a lot of women project a viewer of themselves in their everyday lives, by the way, but that’s a rant for a different sort of blog). I acted disembodied, focusing on how the audience must see me and making sure it all looked correct. I was horrified when I realized I never saw my Lysander—a damn fine actor. My memory should have been a memory of him. I had missed the opportunity to SEE him, truly to see him, and to work with him. Poor bloke didn’t have a scene partner at all.
When you’re really doing something, from sewing a dress to seeing your partner, you have no spare bandwidth to spend on yourself. You disappear. That’s good. That’s how humans live: un-self-consciously. You never hear someone in the real world complain that he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
And you’re not allowed to plot your emotions, nor to find your own feelings fascinating when they burst forth, like sparkling diamonds you never knew your soul could conjure. Your attention must stay outside yourself if you want to stay honest. You need to act from your gut, not your head.
Instead of “being mad” on this line, try “convincing” the person instead. Use tactics, not feelings—verbs, not adjectives—to figure out your character, because that’s how human beings live.
The repetition exercise
In his beginner’s exercise (and his most famous), Meisner slays both of these actor demons. How it works…
- Stand opposite a partner. You play no characters, and you have no scene. Your only goal is to be truthful.
- You state an observation about your partner, anything from “you’re wearing a blue shirt” to “You’re twitching your fingers” to “You look angry.” Your partner then repeats exactly what you said, changing the pronoun appropriately. You repeat this phrase some 4+ times until one of you has the impulse to change it.
- Sometimes the repetition will pile-up, and you’ll start forming opinions about your partner, based on their behavior. Listen to your gut—not your head. “I don’t trust you.”
- Sometimes these opinions will give you a gut instinct to do something. See how she responds. “I want to take a step forward.”
- Don’t try to control what happens or hold on to what was true a minute ago. Sometimes your partner’s behavior will change, and someone you just hated, you’ll now want to comfort. (A particularly useful point in immersive theatre, as that audience member who was a smartass five minutes ago may have opened up now).
Here is the best video of repetition that I can find. I’m not super happy with it, but it’ll give you a basic idea of the flow.
It’s weird, but it works. It trains your ability to observe your partner’s behavior (you have to give the behaviors words, after all) and to react truthfully to that behavior. It moves you from acting from your head to acting from your gut. You don’t think. In the end, it helps you create truthful subtext every moment on stage.
meisner inside an immersive
Now imagine if you will, please, an imaginary landscape where one half of this partnership has no idea what’s going on, has to listen to you closely because they’re hungry to understand better, and is so deeply invested in what’s happening that they betray the most honest human behavior you’ve ever seen.
That’s immersive theatre. That’s a Meisner actor’s dream. Even when a show has strict scripted rails, there is almost infinite room for spontaneity when your scene partner is literally improvising. You don’t know what they are about to do, and neither do they know what you’re about to do. It’s the perfect imaginary-circumstances storm.
It would be so easy for immersive audiences to overpower an actor untrained in Meisner. They will quickly detect an automaton actor (the kind I used to be) and will promptly check-out of the show, or worse, screw around with the actors as much as possible like they’re Buckingham Palace Guards. Either way, that’s a disastrous experience for everyone. You cannot get by with ignoring your scene partner in this kind of work.
But with Meisner training, you already know to keep your knees bent in performance. Every show should be spontaneous, and immersives just more so. You’re already trained to listen to whatever your partner says, and respond to them honestly, building a relationship on very little every time. And remember how good you are at reading behaviors? That skill becomes especially important in immersives when there’s little to no opportunity for the audience to speak. You can tell who trusts you, who is bored with you, and who is falling in love with you all without them uttering a single word.
Reading behaviors fast is essential to proper one-on-one selection. Immersive actors often have a chance to vet their audience before choosing someone for a more intimate, closed-door encounter. This vetting is often based on behavior alone, and sometimes they don’t have more than a minute to gather the information they need. Only the actor with the well-trained gut-instinct will flourish.
Our gut also helps us know where the boundaries are for our participants, if we have a scene that can push the envelope for some people. I know there are one-on-ones in Sleep No More where characters can opt to mouth-kiss their participant (which is to say NOTHING about Blackout), and they make that choice based on the participant’s behavior in the moment and the gut instincts they have in response. If your actor makes the wrong gut call…you could get sued.
No joke, though. We’re playing with fire here, so we need professionally trained fire-eaters. Which I think in this case means Meisner actors.
Of course Meisner does not hold exclusive claim as the only theory useful in immersives. I am certain outside-in approaches like Viewpoints are also brilliant for immersive performance, especially in shows that emphasize movement over speech. Actors should populate our toolkit as much as possible. But I clearly have a favorite.
Meisner for Life!
Not only as an actor, but as a person, the Meisner technique has leveled me up. Consciously listening with your eyes and reading other people’s behaviors will get you in proper tune with a person much faster. You can care for friends better, identify the cause of conflicts faster (i.e. “You raised your voice, and now I’m tense!”), and avoid true creeps with greater alacrity. A single strong gut is worth a hundred rational brains.
And if you’re ever feeling self-conscious, get off Facebook and start doing something. Really doing something.
Where to start
So you don’t have the time/money/insanity to move to New York City for a two-year intensive in Meisner technique? Neither do I. But you can still make a radical change in your acting style with even a small taste. Here’s some reading to get you jump-started in the Meisner direction…
William Esper and Damon DiMarco, The Actor’s Art and Craft: William Esper Teaches the Meisner Technique (2008)
This book simulates an Esper class, and I liked it better than the official Meisner book for its clarity throughout.
Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell, On Acting (1987)
The official book, also simulates what a Meisner class is like.
And of course if you can find someone not fraudulent, someone that you can trust to teach you Meisner, go take some classes the next time you hit a performance lull. If you’re in Houston, I highly recommend taking classes with Kim Tobin.
Tune in next time for “Meisner and the Immersive Audience,” a look at how designers can use Meisner principles to craft powerful audience experiences.