Today was the first full excursion into the land of Meisner work. I was excited to see how this work would play out with this particular group of students. I was not disappointed. There was a wonderful sense that they did not know what to expect from me and I certainly had no idea what to expect from them. We were starting from scratch together – a perfect place to be! But, warning: “This process is so subtle that if you are not in the right open state of mind the entire work will pass you by in a blink.”
I think that the problem with so much acting training that I have explored is that it fills the moment with books and ideas – and then tumbles all of those books and ideas into the student in the vain hope that the students can use them, follow them, AND achieve spontaneous results. This sounds good on paper and books written over one hundred years ago – but now I wonder. How does one stay out of their head with an acting textbook in their school bag? How is any test, quiz or essay going to get them any closer to the truth of the moment. A part of me wants to reach back to those 20+ years of acting students and apologize for all of the paperwork masquerading as a way to make them better actors. Is there a need for research to tackle a character and crack open a play? There sure is – but when it comes to the discovery of acting itself – perhaps that is best done without the book and paper – perhaps – just perhaps. The jury is still out on a lot of this.
But for today – I am loving this path with my class. Even in the first day we are owning all of the garbage and roadblocks we put between our acting partner and us. We clog up the path to intimacy. We overthink, overwork, and overwhelm what should be a very natural organic respond. We do this stuff every waking moment of the day. Why does it take on such complexity when put in imaginary circumstances? High school certainly puts us down one path: the “hard” works its way to become easier – but only at the cost of making that which SHOULD be easy – – hard.
Somehow, we have gotten lost between the pinch and the ouch. Those two moments happen with nothing in-between. They do not require thought; they require awareness – just that.