Prague Playhouse

Meisner Acting Class Blog on how bad keeping face is for our work

January 20th, 2010 at 02:09pm boris

Hi everyone!

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

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Wow! 2010 is still a baby. But so much has happened already. Class, for one, has started with a couple of surprises: Members who I thought would certainly stay left and others joined us.

I’d like to wish everyone who cares to read this a happy new year full of pleasant surprises!

A friend of mine really had the mendacity to ask me: “Why surprises?”

Well, gurl! Get this: Life is change. And change lacks predictability, you fool! Period!

If you live a life where everything is predictable, you’re stuck. And that equals death, really.

Last Monday our two new class members had their first moments of truth in the wondrous ways of the Meisner technique. Brian stopped them both short early in their exercises and asked them about why they failed to connect with their respective partners.

One was held up with listening to his own voice, which he hates. The other felt it hard to concentrate and squirmed because he wanted very badly to know what would come next. Both preferred to stay in the realm of the predictable instead of letting go of control in order to experience a surprise, be it lovely or scary, tearful or filled with laughter.

Both looked constipated and stressed, had blushed blotched cheeks and sad eyes. They looked surprisingly unremarkable, like most folks you can see every day in the trams and subways of Prague. They remained on the dead side of things – stuck, grey and wretched.

They kept face.

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

Click on “(more…)” below to read more about keeping face.

Coming to class I saw a girl in high heels stumble on a sidewalk near St. Vencelslav Square. A vast amount of snow rushed down from a roof above and missed her by a mere 20 cm, when it hit the ground with a muffled thud. The woman failed to even turn around. She fought off the pleasant surprise of having missed being turned into a walking snowman by a split-second when this very pleasant surprise knocked on her front door with a jackhammer. She failed to let in this magical instant that a less-dead person would have spent leaping, whooping and yelping out with wide eyes and genuine laughter of gladness. This walking corpse wasted the moment.

She kept face.

Now Brian is constantly telling us that class is a sacred space where we must lay down every armour that protects us against the avalanches of every day life in order to grow. Keeping face there is anathema.

But we keep on keeping face. Why?

Mark Wakeling said during his seminar in November that doing Meisner is an act of love. Love, in my view, is part of the universe. It’s there. We can use it or leave it. We can expand in it or ignore it. Like space it has three dimensions. While space is formed by width, length and breadth, love consists of trust, truth and freedom.

We Meisner students need to become friends in order to develop the trust needed to switch off all defense mechanisms. We also have to trust ourselves when we decide it is OK to trust the other class members.

We need to see each other more often for rehearsals outside of class, so we get to know one another better. Knowledge and truth are two aspects of the same thing. And truth is one of the things we’re after when doing Meisner.

And we need to grant each other the freedom to be who we really are. Freedom is another ingredient of the Meisner technique, namely the freedom to let go of control.

I must admit that I have my qualms about certain members of class. I am afraid of them. I fail to trust them enough. I find them hostile or bland. And I feel it’s reciprocal.

All that has to go!

How else can we really develop the skills needed to live truthfully in the moment under imaginary circumstances, Meisner’s axiom of his technique?

I wish this year to be truly magical in that it will let us Meisner students witness a real conversion from slinking actor-wanna-bees with furtive eyes and the word fear written on our foreheads to fully self-accepting, loving Meisner Meisters with a spring in our step and courage and openness written all over us in giant letters that make us stand out from the grey face-keeping masses.

Keeping face is for losers.

Expanding in trust, truth and freedom, the three dimensions of love, will make us truly remarkable.

And being truly remarkable is what makes us successful actors.

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General stuff:

Our acting class consists of some twelve new and not so new active members, who meet every Monday and Wednesday from 6.30 pm to about 9.30 at the Prague Film School. 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,Classes,General