Sanford Meisner

The Meisner method is designed to help you get into character and to have an unconscious release of character. You have to say what you can see and accept what your partner says, breathing in what they say and allowing yourself to have intense emotions. You have to work with your instinct for this method to work. It allows you to establish deep connections with others. To do this method well you need to have:

1. Trust
2. Honesty
3. Intelligence
4. Body
5. Voice
6. Flexibility

The Meisner method involves you and your partner sitting opposite each other keeping eye contact. You breathe in and comment on what you can see, the partner breathes in this line and repeats back. This carries on with the comments switching seamlessly between each person in the pair. An example is:

"You have blue eyes"

"I have blue eyes"

As you get used to it you start to put opinions to what you're saying:

"You're closed off"

"I am closed off"

"You like to be alone"

The Meisner method brings the actor back to their instincts and works them through the instinctual emotional journey. The goal of this method is to "eliminate the actor on stage, leaving a character that exists completely on stage"

Using Meisner within a scene was interesting  It was helpful as it expands your emotional and physical capacity within the scene, prepared you for every situation, develops relationships with characters, brings lines to life, freshens the text and opens up possibilities for where the scene could go.

I found this method useful as it gets rid of stale acting, helps to develop relationships and releases the natural energy of the lines, makes a scene more realistic, helps you to not waste a line, or waste a line if that's needed, and it fills out any silences within the scene and makes them natural. However I did find it challenging as I found it difficult to get into, and I felt very vulnerable. I also feel you could easily overwork a scene.

Some quotes from Meisner that heightens his thoughts on theatre making:

"There's no such thing as doing nothing on stage"

"Silence has a myriad of meaning. In theatre silence is an absence of words but never an absence of meaning"