Prague Playhouse

Meisner Acting Class Blog on Paradigm Shift

December 4th, 2009 at 04:30pm 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 the paradigm shift that is happening right now with our take on the Meisner technique and how that is leaving us dazed and confused at the moment.

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

The weekend seminar with god-like Marc Wakeling from the “Actor’s Temple” in London shed so much light on us mere acting mortals that we are left blinded and dumb-struck. How are we ever going to live up to this high a standard?

What seemed truthful and in the moment only a week ago, now seems utterly fake and stuck in past experiences or future expectations.

All of us, Brian included, are limping along like war veterans. And I glimpsed a fellow acting pal, when they jotted down the note: “Lies! All lies!

What the fu*k happened?

I am as confused as everyone. And we just learned six days ago that confusion is a filter which we put between us and the awful, painful or embarrassing truth. We are so used to hiding that truth from others and even from ourselves that we are mostly ignorant of it and stumble into it like one might hit a wall or a lamp-post in the pitch dark.

So we were busy avoiding the truth when resuming class on Monday and Wednesday – of course!

We had yelling fits that locked us into ourselves. We called imaginary behavior that made us feel alien to ourselves. We kept certain calls to ourselves because we didn’t know which ones are still OK and which have become “no-no’s”.

Being in this and watching it made me feel awkward, sad, blocked. I fell asleep once. Well, I was a fly in a jar of black molasses – drowning in sticky goo – in the middle of class! Another time I had a knot in my throat, the size of a brick. Then I there was anger building up in me like in a pressure cooker.

I felt awful.

It almost made me miss what happened: One class member admitted to loving another. One member called him/herself an asshole and meant it. He/she then went on about his/her former live as a crook. One shared their fear of being considered homosexual if they opened up completely. And there were only four people, who exercised in these past two classes at all. Things this intense have never been addressed before!

So despite the feeling of being lost, this is a change so big, I dare call it a paradigm shift!

I talked to my brother about this, who is a counselor. He is trained to use, what he calls “the inner team”. When a conflict or a problem needs to be solved and people come to him for counsel, he asks them for the voices they hear in their head. Each distinct voice belongs to what he calls the “team players” within you. One might want to dash forward and attack the problem head-on. One would rather back-off. Yet another one might want to mediate between the other two. And a fourth “team player” might want to inform themselves further before doing anything. This has nothing to do with a split personality or bipolarity. If you pay attention to yourself you can hear these different voices, too, when solving a problem.

My brother’s work is to help the person align their various “team players”, so they start to cooperate and really act as a team. The different voices are assigned different tasks. And this creates the synergy needed to go ahead and solve the problem. As my brother told me this, I was just wondering what that might have to do with our quandary, when he said something that utterly amazed me:

“I think a good actor has the ability to give a large number of these ‘team players’ free reign and to purify them. That enables the actor to have this amazing range of possible behavior. People will admire them, because they ask themselves: ‘How can a single person be a pedophile serial killer in one movie and a loving caring father in the next, all totally convincingly?’”

“Wow! That is so true!”, I blurted out. Then it dawned on me what this means for us seemingly clueless Meisner folks out in the dark. It means we actually are on the right track.

Yes, we need to make a leap of faith to dare look at the suppressed feelings inside of us that trouble us so. But for that to happen, certain things have to grow first that hopefully the weekend seminar has sown: For one, we need to have more trust in our fellow class members. Who can “spill their guts”, as Marc Wakeling called it, if they are afraid other class members might use the info against them later on? This building of trust needs time. Everyone has to show, they really dedicate themselves to this work now completely so that we start to form a community of true equals, of acting peers – more so! – of acting friends. Wakeling said this work is a true sign of love: In its pure form it means to accept your partner fully and unconditionally. And that is the definition of love. But to achieve that the sneers at anything that appears to be homosexual have to vanish along with the silly urge to compete. If this seems to be all “guy’s stuff” then listen up girls! You need to stop being so fu*king polite!

Brian said at one point to one of the above mentioned people during their exercise: “So you might appear queer. Is that a bad thing?” There came a halting, muffled “no”. Fine! But only when that “no” becomes a “NO!!!” and comes straight from the heart will we know the paradigm shift has actually passed over from wishful thinking into reality.

Then we can start to help build the “team players” in our respective partner by letting him or her try out those “players” freely without prejudice or pride on our part.

This prospect is worth all our painful bumping into hidden blocked feelings that we are experiencing now. And as with all things that are hard to do: Once we overcome them, the going will be so smooth.

We will be awesomely smug (and deliriously happy) with the knowledge that we actually made it through the dark!

I am loving it – even now!

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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!

Beware! This quarter will close on Monday, December 7th 2009. The new quarter will resume either on the first or second Monday in the new year of 2010. Brian will keep you informed!

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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, General