Prague Playhouse

Meisner Acting Class Blog on letting the inner child roam free

February 4th, 2010 at 03:50pm 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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Rambo was very boring, really; so was the Terminator. They might have blown up a lot of things. They might have acted tough. They were always in control. But they were quite predictable. Those two guys had thrown their inner child into the deepest dungeon inside of them and let it languish there.

I strongly believe that art is letting the inner child roam freely.

The Meisner technique itself is not art. But it might help you become an artist.

Some people mistake a Meisner exercise for a Rambo-like hurt-fest of lashing out and yelling at their partner, i.e. of being beastly and heartless. They’d rather hurt other people than get hurt by colliding with the truth. The truth only really hurts, if it differs from one’s preconceived notion of self. When the emperor was told he was naked, he must have felt horrible as well.

Other people remain stone-faced and start to bolt into themselves, I mean their stone-faced fortress, as soon as their counterpart displays any type of feeling other than stone-facedness itself. They switch to boring Terminator-like “I-couldn’t-care-less”-mode as soon as they are confronted with the consequences of being truthful and in the moment: a reaction on the part of their partner they have no control over.

An experience similar to the following one that an unwitting patient had with his truly awfully truthful doctor, might be, what these stone-faces loathe. It boils down to this:

Patient: “What was it, that you said about star-signs the last time I consulted you?”

Doctor: “I talked about cancer, mister! YOU got cancer!”

The stone-faces of this world rather risk getting cancer by suppressing the truth than to face it, I dare-say.

When the two partners in a Meisner exercise really are ready for the truth, they will react strongly to it, though. It might make them scream and fume with rage, like Rambo. Or their face will turn gray and stone-like for a moment, like the Terminator. But they will take the truth in rather than switch to boring “I-am-offended-now”-mode immediately or to dismiss it by making it bounce off of their stone-faced façade. The truth, if ingested fully, will rummage around your insides and hit something out of you so fast, you won’t be able to control it.

The inner child is very small and vulnerable. To allow it to roam free, as I mentioned in the beginning, is an act of faith: faith in your partner that he will be truthful rather than hurtful and faith in yourself that you will be able to take it when the truth hurts.

That’s all there is to the Meisner technique, really.

And that’s all I have to say today.

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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!

There will be no class from the second week of February on until the end of the month. It will resume in March!

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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 41-year-old, please leave a note!

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