Barbara Pavlik On Her First Film And Meisner
April 25th, 2008 at 09:38am brian
Hey Everyone,
I just wanted to share with all of you the amazing experience that I had working on Kent’s film yesterday. It was my first film ever, and indeed, my first acting experience since beginning Meisner training. As difficult as it has been to get those emotional juices flowing in the context of Meisner exercises in class, I’ll have to say that… in the context of a real story… I was wowed by the power of basic repetition as a way to tap into the subtext of the story that we were working on and to bring up emotions… sometimes in totally unexpected ways… as well as to form a connection with the other characters. Kudos to Kent for finding ways to get us on track and to get us focussed and draw those emotions out. I wish you all could have seen him working with the precocious child actor who “never gets irritated.” It was really precious, and I wish that moment had been caught on film.
But, back to the topic! In the film, my character was dying of leukemia, and I was really able (at least during some of the takes) to feel that I truly was about to check out of this life, and to feel all the fear and sense of helplessness and being lost that accompanied it. That got me to thinking (as most things do), that having acted this part, take after take, and experiencing it with as much reality as I did, it’s almost as if I had really faced death in those moments… and now I feel like I know (to a certain extent) what that’s like. As these thoughts were rolling around in my head, I wondered if, after performing enough scenes of a similar nature, one would be more prepared to face their own death in real life (according to Buddhist philosophy, our most important task in life is to prepare ourselves for our own death).
I know a few of you are interested in philosophy, so I thought I’d share my thought process with you in the wake of this experience and, hopefully, get some feedback from you as to whether you’ve had similar experiences. Of course, this doesn’t just apply to death scenes. It could apply to just about any situation that you might find yourself acting…. dealing with relationship issues, showing compassion, facing an armed robber, raising a child (not that all roles are necessarily good role models for life, but assimilating the human side of these situations into our repertoire of life experience in the relatively safe environment of stage or screen…. does this help us to deal more effectively with real life situations?
I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions on this and in hearing about any experiences that you may have had (and that you’d care to share, of course) where performing a particular role has left you feeling that you were better equipped to deal with real life.
Saluuuuuuuu,
Barbara
1 Comment Add your own
1. Ben | April 25th, 2008 at 09:40
Hey Barbara,
Wow! What a great experience, and thanks for sharing it with us all,
and also what a great achievement going so deep into your work. Good
for you. The connection you had to the script/scene and what you
bought from you own life to the script/scene is one of the major
goals of the Meisner work. Having the courage to place yourself in
the imagined situation ‘as if’ it were real and believable to you.
Whether it be dying with leukemia or fighting aliens. I think a side
effect of working from this truth within yourself is that you find
deep truths about yourself. Opinions that you have, people are things
that have strong meaning to you. All these things may have an affect
on your ‘real life’. So in effect, you playing the role you have just
completed, may give you are newfound respect for all the wonderful
things in your life. An important note to clarify is that your
imagination does all the work (or should I say a lot) here, you have
the comfort at the end of the shooting day or after the take if you
need a break, that you aren’t in fact dying with leukemia. This
important but essential part of the work is your safety net from
dipping into crazyland.
I want to go off into another area here. Why do people go to the
theatre and cinema? Why are they prepared to travel outside their
homes, sometime on very cold nights, sit in silence (mostly), in the
dark and watch actors on screen or on stage? And why have people been
doing it for centuries?
The answer, to me, is because plays and movies in a way are like
dreams. Dreams are essential to our mind, soul, and body during
resting hours. Some of our dreams we wake up and understand, many we
do not. There are many theories to what function dreams have in our
life. Some say it is a way for us to process the day we just had,
make sense of the events of our lives. For me, this is also the
reason that attracts people to the theatre or cinema. And even though
we as an audience may seem to be just sitting back watching, we can
be very much participating. We are one of the heros on stage or
screen. We relate to the characters ‘I would never do that!’ We come
away from the experience sometimes not knowing how to put into words
what we saw, or to make sense of it. Sometimes it can have a clear
and profound affect on our lives.
Now the reason I went off writing about the audience is to come at
Barbara’s experience from another angle. The connection and depth you
went to while shooting is just the beginning of the life of the film.
But this vulnerability, truth, depth, and meaning is essential for
the audience. We as actors are lucky to have such an honorable job.
The truth and depth that we are in search of with every performance
we give, and every script we read are of the utmost important and can
provide a delight of meaning to our audience.
Congrats!
Ben
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed