Prague Playhouse

Meisner Acting Class Blog on Auditions

November 3rd, 2009 at 06:24pm boris

Hi everyone!

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

This entry is about how the Meisner technique can help you win auditions or at least make them a fun experience.

Click on the “CLASSES” button above and then choose “ACTING FOR PROFESSIONALS” to read more about the class itself and where we meet!

Brian just put up a new post here about auditions for a play. I won’t tell you what it is: It has too foolish a title. Anyway, they are looking for English-speaking actors of all ages and types and of both sexes. Click here to read for yourself!

Since there are very few opportunities for acting work for English-speakers in Prague in general, and this year, due to the financial crisis, in particular, all of a sudden, all of the Prague-based actors and actresses will swoop down on this like vultures – me included. They will most likely be way more experienced than you and me, of course more beautiful. And they will be ready to do almost anything to get on the ticket. After all it will be a paid job. They will probably even resort to showing off various body parts or bribe the jury with innuendo, cigarettes and/or Hašlerky (Czech cough drops).

Surely the roles really have already been distributed informally to hand-picked folk well-acquainted with the director. This audition might be just a must-do event to cover the scam.

So why should I go and make a complete fool of myself in the first place? I have no fuddling chance!

Or do I? This is, when Meisner comes in:

First of all, even in the most jaded of worlds there sometimes is a need for types that the pool of cronies a director has at their disposal just fails to cover. They might be deliberately hunting for someone ugly, lanky, overweight or sickly – in short: you – or me at that! Who knows?

Then you need to take into account that despite the fact that one always seems to see the same faces, over and over again, in productions in Prague, even the most pushy and well-connected actors and actresses don’t manage to get into everything. It is because even the most jaded of directors might actually want to grab hold of some new talent they can boss around and impose their will upon. Do you know for sure, if the game is really set already? Maybe the director is sick and tired of the same faces that make it into his or her plays. A cynic would say: “Maybe they want someone new to shag with.” No matter, how you look at it: Variety is a real option here and your chance to get in! Strut your stuff! Show you are different! That might get you the part!

Thirdly and most importantly one should go to auditions for the auditions’ sake. Meisner teaches to be in the moment. An audition is a string of very scary and exciting moments, moments one usually doesn’t have in one’s everyday tedious life of routines and rut. Auditions can be fun, if you choose to look at them that way. I, for my part, love them. I revel in the challenge they present. I love to put my courage to test. I love to see how I fare.

And while doing auditions, rare as they might be after all, one starts to progress, i.e. to get better.

Meisner wants us to take in everything, the environment as well as the partner in front of you. If your partner is the scary director him- or herself, who reads a part from the script with a yawn and a stutter – and you struggle to connect with them while reading your own part, it is very hard to take in the environment: the smell and the lights of the place and the people who share it with you. But how can you shine and thus wow the director when you are all concentrated on the text before you, a mere pent-up focal point rather than an amazing multi-dimensional fluid entity? I recognized that I free more and more resources for being in the moment and available to the director’s needs on the spot, the more I go to auditions. Many non-Meisner-trained actors resort to acting-routine such as shouting, miming and gesturing in exaggerated ways. If the director gets excited about these tricks, you are not his or her candidate, anyway. Then again, if you are exactly the type she or he is craving for, you might get the role despite your lack of mechanical stagecraft. And then it is up to you to incorporate as much Meisner-work into your role as possible. But that’s a different story…

As with Meisner exercises it’s the work you do before an audition that gets you into the target zone. Since it is part of the set-up that you very often just cannot prepare for an audition, it is all the more important to bring acting experience of all sorts. And that is, why more experienced actors and actresses have a better chance to get the role.

I know that is a paradox. You as a fledgling actor or actress can only work through that paradox by getting experience. Going to auditions – against all odds – is one way to gain it.

I can only say: Do it! And do it over and over again! It will pay off eventually!

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General stuff:

Our acting class consists of some fifteen new and not so new 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! If you do, be prepared for some serious thrills!

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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,Auditions,Classes,General,Theatre