Prague Playhouse

The TRUTH about the Meisner acting class (Monday, April 27th 2009)

April 28th, 2009 at 06:18pm boris

Hi everyone!

I’m Boris Wilke and member of the Prague Playhouse Meisner acting group. I blog about our class activities.

Last night’s class was all about being truthful to yourself and your partner. This article tells you why listening and being in the moment are instrumental to being truthful and why the truth is such a precious good in – of all things – the make believe world of acting.

Click on the “ACTING CLASS” button above to read more about the class itself and where we meet!

Click the “(more…)”-button to read about last night’s class!

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This Monday’s class was taught by Ben Steel, who urged us to place our attention on the truth.

The truth in a Meisner context does not differ at all from the truth in any other context, which is the strangest and most wonderful aspect of the Meisner-technique. For in acting one would not necessarily expect any type of truth. It is make-believe after all.

Focussing on the truth in a Meisner exercise means to really listen to your partner and react to the way he or she is dealing with you.

If, for example, your partner winces from anxiety and jumps back because you yelled at him or her, the truth is, that he or she is scared of you or hurt by you or terrified. It would be rather far from the truth to tell them they are coward or effeminate.

If the person in front of you gives you the feeling they want to make love to you right there and then, the truth is to tell them: “You look like you want to have sex with me!” rather than laughing the emotion off, sneering at your partner or cursing them.

The truth has a name. And it is a simple call of your partner’s behavior.

The easy part is to feel it. The hard part is to deal with it and to acknowledge it without shying away from the uneasiness that is very often attached to the truth or – worse still – to judge it and thus file it away.

Being in the moment is another prerequisite to the truth. If your partner just sneered at you and called you a slut, but you let the moment pass and the person is now smiling at you and saying: “You make me feel warm inside!”, the truth of the moment is that: You make your partner feel warm inside – not the truth of a few seconds ago, when you were called a slut.

So reacting freely and fluidly to anything that your partner does, having them make you do things, having them hit stuff out of you – in the moment and totally shamelessly truthful – is the name of the game and much more easily said than done.

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General stuff:

Our acting class consists of some ten active members, who meet every Monday and Wednesday from 6.30 pm to about 8.30. We do Meisner. And the Meisner-technique really rocks!

If you want to connect with your inmost feelings, expressing them freely in an acting environment and thus getting to know yourself better and better, feel free to join us!

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About the author:

I am Boris Wilke, a German expat in Prague. I am a writer at large and have been studying Meisner since January 2008. If any of you know of any kind of acting work, that befits a laddish, tall 40-year-old, please leave a note!

Acting,Classes,Theatre