As you may recall, in my last series of Blog entries, I have been
examining sense memory technique as applied to the work of my student, Daenya,
on the character of Berniece from August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. At the end of July, Daenya abruptly lost her
long-term job, when her dentist employer was diagnosed with diabetes and had to
take an early retirement. In order to survive, Daenya took a severe cut in pay
and is spending all her spare time looking for a second job to support herself
and her daughter. I hope she eventually finds decently paid employment so she
can have a better life and we can work together again. I miss her; it was a pleasure to watch
her considerable talent unfold over the years we worked together.
But
since this has happened, I will now re-focus the Blog to discuss a major aspect
of acting training that I have touched on but needs to be explored in depth. I
am referring to the integration of Method and Meisner. An appropriate synthesis
of these techniques, along with other aspects of learning to act such as voice,
speech, bodywork, etc., is essential to the kind of quick preparation required
for television and film acting as well as the long-term consistency required
for theatre roles.
As
I have said in earlier blogs, both Method and Meisner – as indeed most current
training techniques – are derived essentially from Stanislavsky’s formulation
of the Art of Acting. But Meisner
seems to have sprung from a schism with Method that engendered what amounted to
a civil war, engendering recriminations and bitterness on both sides. Perhaps
this opposition has quieted down recently - for years I remember trying to work
with students who had previously trained in one or the other and were incapable
of switching their allegiance.
These days Meisner appears to hold sway, mainly because it is suited to
larger classes and on the surface might be easier to teach. (As students often discover to their
chagrin, many classes are based on the profit motive and employ simplistic
teaching methods which profit no one.) The fact is that, as with civil wars,
eventually compromises are reached; usually both sides are right about some
things and wrong about others. But it is an individual matter, as it is with
each actor trying to find his/her own path through the thorny do’s and don’ts
of acting techniques. Of course, there are others training methods – most
notably the Stella Adler technique - that focus on specific factors, which will
enter this discussion, but the main psychological division is Method vs.
Meisner.
Instead
of starting out with a theoretical discussion, I would like to begin the
investigation of these complicated and incredibly confusing theories by using
two examples of young people with whom I have worked recently. Let us give them
the names Sam and Robbie.
My
first session was audition coaching with Sam, an actor whom I was meeting for
the first time. His agent had told me about him, praised him to the skies – and
I was not disappointed. He was everything she had described; very photogenic in
a trendy way, smart as a whip, every line of his sides were memorized, and
polite without a trace of arrogance about his looks and talent. We talked for a bit; I asked the usual
questions, about previous training and some stuff about family background. He
had attended seminars but not received any consistent training, and the family
on his mother’s side was from Belarus, which could be a clue since experience
has shown me that often Eastern Europeans bring a lot of intensity and
intuition to their work.
But
the readings of this young teenager, although solid with the text broken down
into beats, actions, and objectives, remained unimaginative and uninspired. He
took the directions I gave and adjusted quickly and professionally. The
material was suspenseful; the character was basically attempting to avenge the
death of his father with some supernatural help – a la Harry Potter. For a
moment, I thought about just tweaking the workmanlike but rather pedestrian
performance he had already achieved. Instead I found myself jumping in and
spending most of the session talking to Sam about the need for learning about
and using sense memory. He listened attentively and did his best to take in
what I was saying. In one short
hour of coaching, however, there is no way he could have even begun to
understand much beyond the fact that someone was telling him he needed to learn
a big technique he’d never heard of before and didn’t sound very appetizing.
We’ll see what happens.
Yesterday,
I saw Robbie, also a young teen, and one of the most outstanding actors I’ve
had the privilege to meet. He’s already a triple threat, with years of training
and performance as a singer/dancer under his belt. He also likes to write – so his critical thinking is
developing quickly, a skill which is absolutely essential for good acting. It’s
amazing how this kid seems to know as much about his parents as they do about
themselves. One factor contributing to his early awareness is the fact that
both parents are in the business; one is a director and the other a screen
writer.
Robbie
was preparing a monologue for a theatre program at a school. Unlike Sam, he had not attended a lot of TV and Film
audition classes, so he had not picked up ‘tips’ about how to change his
‘delivery to make him sound more interesting.’ I have a phrase for this kind of
haphazard approach to acting – ‘get rich quick schemes.’ Therefore, although Robbie is still
unskilled, his monologue was connected to his inner self. We’ve been delving
into sense memory for almost a year now, and as soon as he got the monologue,
he had already begun to find connections to ‘objects’ from his life about which
he felt deeply. It’s difficult with kids because everything is so present
tense, as opposed to adults who have more distance into the past. In my next
Blog entry, I’ll begin an analysis of connecting Robbie’s sense memory
‘objects, to the situation in the monologue through a Meisner exercise, which
involves, ‘working off the partner.’ I just found out that Robbie was told on the
spot that he got into the program he was auditioning for!
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