Posts filed under 'Acting'
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 getting inspired is a necessary and fun way to improve one’s Meisner technique .
Click on the “CLASSES” button above and then choose “ACTING FOR PROFESSIONALS” to read more about the class itself and where we meet!
I came back from a twelve-day-trip on Tuesday and failed to prepare myself well enough to “do” a really good activity. Still, I enjoyed it, as I slowly seem to get the hang of what the whole tedium of “doors and activities” really is about. I’m sure, I wrote something similar before. But my grasp of and on the technique seems to tighten somewhat. And seeing two only slightly more advanced members from class do a scene last Wednesday: nearly effortlessly, fluidly, with verve and so interesting to watch, I am more than convinced now of the “Meisner Way”!
Preparation is key. Then trust in the work that was done before class! I mentioned the tennis-player before, who exercises to prepare for the match. While playing a match, he does everything but exercises, of course. The better his preparation, though, the better his performance. This is also valid for our work, even if it so far “only” amounts in an exercise itself, albeit one in front of our teacher and acting colleagues. What is important in that situation is to let go and trust in one’s own preparedness – which takes thorough preparation in the first place, of course.
Preparation can be boring. The fun bit about it, though, is getting inspired:
Our teacher Brian often asks us, what we did to inspire ourselves. “What are you doing artistically right now?”, is a typical question, we hear from him. At first, I felt pressured to some cultural activity. And I failed to see the connection between consuming art and producing it. But it is obvious and quite pleasant: We are the sum of what we perceive. So what we take in with our senses is the only thing we can work with to express ourselves. An artist thus needs to get inspiration. And the great thing about that is: I can choose, how to inspire myself.
Even though I failed to do actual Meisner work for myself during my trip – and it showed in class – it was a wonderful way to get inspired. Spain is so beautiful and warm in the early fall. And I just loved taking it all in: the different smells and tastes, sights and sounds! In the Prado I saw one of the most famous works by the artist Hieronymus Bosch: “The garden of earthly delights”. I was moved by it to the point that I had to linger in front of it for quite a while. I also went to see it a second time. We had a book with close-ups of scenes from that picture at home. But an original is an original: It just inspired me so much! I started immediately to think about how a human being can come up with these weird things and how it is possible to depict them so expertly. You can find more on this enigmatic 15th-century-painter here!
Right-click on the image below and chose then to see it in full detail!
El Greco moved me even more, as he lived in the late 16th and early 17th century but drew subjectively and psychologically, often with little regard to the outward reality of things, in such a way that one would expect only in the late 19th century. He might be less striking than Bosch. But many of his paintings speak directly to my soul. More on him here!
Right-click on the image below and chose then to see it in full detail!
Getting inspired is essential and a great pleasure to me these days! I love it. And I get inspired by the smallest things, like a red leaf flickering on a tree in the wind or a stripe of sunlight on a sidewalk.
Reading is quite inspiring, too. I also love to watch TV with a Meisner eye!
So, everything is out there. It just takes keen senses and an open mind to get inspired by almost anything!
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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!
October 10th, 2009
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 getting affected is key to doing the Meisner work.
Click on the “CLASSES” button above and then choose “ACTING FOR PROFESSIONALS” to read more about the class itself and where we meet!
I have just been sent an email by a class member who stated my English had “a certain Germanic flavour” which would cause it to collapse sometimes. To start with, I would spell flavor the American way, like color and labor. Then – being a foreigner himself – who is he to… But there we go: I got affected. And from a Meisner perspective, that is a great thing!
You start class with good intentions: Yes, you believe in Meisner, whatever that means. Yes, you are dedicated to the “work”. Yes, you are willing to go where Brian, our brilliant teacher, is taking you. And all of a sudden you are in front of a sweating, twitching individual (just like you) who tells you stuff like: “You are defensive!” or – horror of horrors! – “you are pathetic!” (or, in my case: “Your English sucks!”)
Of course, this should affect you. But strangely, it fails to do so. Why? Because you are not yet ready for it.
Now, it takes courage to let things affect you. And some students will get there faster than others. But I came to realize that it is not the speed that tells you about your progress: It is the effort you are willing to make that ultimately propels you to new levels.
So if getting affected means for you to first fight and deny it, so be it. If it means, you feel bad and would love to skip over these bloody rounds of seemingly endless repetition, you are where you need to be. That alone means, you are already getting affected – one way or the other. And that is all there is to do. Expose yourself. And the rest will follow suit.
That’s all, folks!
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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! But beware! This quarter is all new and full of promises. So buckle up and get ready 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!
September 22nd, 2009
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 new quarter started with new students at a new location with new possibilities.
Click on the “CLASSES” button above and then choose “ACTING FOR PROFESSIONALS” to read more about the class itself and where we meet!
Welcome back!
Times and ways of teaching and learning remain the same. Basically the magic of mastering the Meisner technique still lies with us students and our willingness to really dedicate ourselves to “the work”. But we are paying four times as much, which has a certain “ouch!”-factor.
The good thing is that we will be at a warm place in winter and a cool place in summer. Nobody will get gassed or burned to death. And we certainly won’t trip over cables or slip in the dark on wet or icy steep and broken steps. For we are now congregating in a real class room in a real building with real lighting and real heating. Awesome!
The start of the new quarter already brought new thrills. First of all there are quite a few new members, most of which are women. I daresay, that we might have reached parity genderwise. That’ll provide for less testosterone-driven yelling spells and more estrogen-bound soul-searching, I presume. I am looking forward to a good mix of both male and female energy!
We also lost a member from class due to a too high amount of misunderstandings. It’s a shame. But Meisner is no laughing matter, a thing that Brian aptly pinpointed when he said: “Sorry guys! But this is no fun acting class where we try out things in a light way. This is Meisner. And Meisner takes discipline and dedication.”
Which takes me to the term “beginnings”:
I think none of us members from class, who are slightly more experienced, really have taken that discipline and dedication into the summer. One can have different opinions about that. I, for my part, badly needed a break. I gave slack and reaped some fruits of my labors of the previous quarters by having had the chance to play in my first two TV commercials.
But now with the summer a thing of the past, and that we are paying more, reside at a much better place to do “the work” and have loads of “newbees” to impress, I am getting the feeling that slack is not an option for the new quarter.
I have two metaphors for that:
1) Meisner is a lot like throwing clay at a wall. You throw and throw. The lumps seem to always fall back down. But then, when you do not expect it any more, the clay sticks and dries. And you can occupy yourself with a new lump. It will fall off the wall again a 1000 times. But that one, too, will eventually stick. If you do not dedicate yourself to the tedium of mundane things like repetition, if you don’t have the patience to go through weeks and months of seemingly being stuck, you won’t progress at all.
2) Meisner is like sailing. In order to move forward, you need a taught sail. And for that you need two forces that keep it in place: Intuition and letting go on the one hand and focus and a clearly set mind on the other. When you do Meisner, all your attention is supposed to be on your partner. But for doing that you must be truly centered in yourself. Seeing the two forces at work is a beautiful sight to behold. And when they are, the sails of the Meisner vessel can take you quite far quite fast.
I wish everyone in the boat a fast and groovy journey!
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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! But beware! This quarter is all new and full of promises. So buckle up and get ready 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!
September 17th, 2009
Hi everyone!
I’m Boris Wilke and member of the Prague Playhouse Meisner acting group. I blog about our class activities.
The weekend before last (i.e. June 26 through 28), we traveled to Germany’s capital Berlin to have a two-day acting seminar with Brian Caspe’s former teacher Andrea Helene. It was exhilarating to do “the work” with someone even more experienced than our teacher.
Click on the “CLASSES/COACHING” button above and then choose “MEISNER ACTING CLASS” to read more about the class itself and where we meet!
Click the “(more…)”-button below to read about the acting seminar with Andrea Helene!
When we went to Berlin, we met Brian’s teacher Andrea, who’s a lively, wiry, tall redhead with a German mother. I related very well and easily to her. I could speak German with her after all!
While Brian stepped down from his teacher’s pedestal to become one of us lowly students, we could see the same passion for the technique burning in Andrea, who visibly enjoyed working with us. She used very similar ways to get Meisner across to us, too. But a two-day intensive workshop is more demanding and at the same time more rewarding than the usual fix of four hours a week, that we have to make do with in Prague.
We did scene work. And everybody seemed to enjoy it greatly except for me: I hated it, as usual. I loath it, when words get in my way and put me in my head. Andrea tried to help me wriggle out of it by giving me funny things to do – such as: be a latin lover or a boss doing a job interview. But to me those directions felt like extra Meisner balls, that I was supposed to juggle. So I fumbled and felt miserable, again.
Besides, the script hit home psychologically. I felt very embarrassed by it. I’m sure, if I worked through the fear and self-hatred, that the script generated in me, I’d get much more out of it, than just mastering the scene.
It’s good that our host Mike Bernardin, who’s running the Meisner school in Berlin and who let us use his rooms, showed up at a certain point and couldn’t keep himself from saying something very meaningful.
Mike said, that “the technique” is to us actors, what sit-ups and other strengthening exercises are to a tennis player. He won’t do them during a tournament. But he has to do a lot of them before stepping onto the court and facing the game.
Thus doing “Meisner”, will get your “acting muscle” strong, as Andrea and Brian called it. But it is just one element in a whole array of elements, that one needs to deal with, in order to become a successful actor. And that alone can feel like a heavy load.
“If you think, that you’ve got the hang of it, you are definitely doing something wrong“, is a thought, that came to my mind and out of my mouth today, facing a fellow member from class after an especially dull and dead-feeling round of rehearsal.
That relieved both of us somewhat.
For the Meisner technique is a twenty-year-project, thus supposed to keep you busy for that amount of time. If you think, you know, what it’s about after a fraction of those two decades, you fail to acknowledge the complexity of the process.
In our last class at the end of the spring quarter last Monday, Brian told me to “be stupid”. It’s a funny concept to just let go of trying to make sense of it all by grasping it intellectually. To forego the arrogance of believing, one knows it all, is very hard to do for an “intello” as the French call my cerebral breed. To me my brain is a means of self-protection. I trust my brain. To let go of that means to learn to trust one’s emotions, to let your gut dictate your actions, to become helplessly entangled in it – like a baby: Just taking it as if it were all new and reacting to it moment to moment.
Oh, how I wish, it were as easy as it sounds!
Then again, there is this saying, which I read in Barbara Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”. I’ll paraphrase like this: Dear universal energy, that makes us all hobble through life, one way or the other! Please take care of the quality of what I am doing, while I provide for the quantity!
I use these high-flying words, while Andrea – and Brian just left me with this: Take the next step!
That’s the quantity of one. And one step at a time is enough. Let’s see, what quality this step-taking eventually entails.
And yes, it is up to other forces than little me to determine that. One thing less to worry about! Yippee!
Have a great summer! May you be truthful and in the moment, always!
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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! But beware! This quarter is over! We’ll resume in a slightly new format and in new and fancy rooms on September 14th, 2009. Brian will let you know about all these exciting changes in due time on this site.
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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!
July 8th, 2009
We just finished up our last Meisner acting class of the quarter and are starting our summer break. Class starts up again September 14 and there is space available, so if you’re interested in getting serious about your acting, get in touch. We’d love to have you!
I’m including here an email that I sent out to the acting class to give you all an idea of what you can do to keep sharp on your acting (or art in general, really), when the days are long and we’d all rather lay around in the park.
- Rehearse! just because there isn’t class doesn’t mean that you can’t rehearse. The more regularly you can meet, the more you can keep exploring the technique, your opinions, working off of the other person. Most (95%) of the work happens in rehearsal, so make plans to meet with each other and KEEP THEM!
- Keep an Artist’s Journal. Journaling is a great way to explore your opinions, meanings, doors and activities, the technique in general. Getting in the habit of writing down your ideas, really working out the specific details in writing, using your writing as a personal sounding board (where you can test out how you feel about the ideas you’re exploring in your writing). Get writing, write down every idea, every exploration, every problem you have to work out or are wrestling with, every insight into the technique or thought about art in general. Use the writing to find your voice.
- Reading plays/scenes/acting books. Reading is the primary way we learn. Period. If you’re not reading books that are good for you as an actor and an artist, then you’re reading the wrong things. If you have trouble finding good books for acting, let me know and I’ll give you a list of books. Reading plays and scenes is Absolutely necessary for those of you that are working on scenes. Over the next few weeks, I will start making copies/scans of the plays that I have and soliciting other thespians in the community for their plays so that I can develop a library of plays which you will be able to access. You must read plays to get a feeling for story, character, pacing and dialog. Read GOOD plays by experienced and celebrated playwrights. If you need help finding good plays, you can order them from Dramatists Play Service. They have lists of Tony and Pulitzer prize winners: http://www.dramatists.com/text/pulitzers.html http://www.dramatists.com/text/tonys.html. READ PLAYS!!
- Support groups – The Artists Way and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. A great way to change habits (the habit of procrastination, for instance) is to do it in a group. Let group peer pressure work for you. There are two books which offer solutions in 1) being creative (The Artists Way) and 2) being effective. You will need both skills as professional artists. Being effective means that you actually do the things you plan or want to do. Being creative means that you have access to your fantasy, imagination and are able to welcome new ideas and instincts without dismissing them or prejudging them. Support groups, group meetings where you work through each of these books chapter by chapter, are a great way to tackle what can be a daunting paradigm change. Like the Sunday Church meetings, create a stable meeting where once a week you meet, discuss the previous week’s chapter, share any of the homework or worksheets that the previous week asked for and one person teaches the next chapter to the group (the next week, someone else teaches the next chapter). Teaching is a wonderful way to learn something deeply and each of you should get experience in it! I would focus on one book per quarter. And just rotate through them.
July 7th, 2009
New Master Class: Screen Acting Technique
Casting Director, Nancy Bishop, C.S.A. offers a new on-camera master class taught in English for actors. New and returning students alike are welcome to attend this two day intensive course. Unlike previous workshops, this class will focus on screen acting techniques, rather than casting technique.
Day 1. Screen Acting Technique: Actors participate in a series of practical exercises that develop effective methods for screen acting. Material covered will include learning how to calibrate a performance for close-up vs. wide shot, playing an inner monologue, playing reaction shots and playing in the eyes.
Day 2. Strategies for Screen Casting. Actors will apply the techniques they learned on Day One to perform scenes from a variety of genres. The scenes, chosen from actual film scripts, will include a variety of genres ranging from historical drama, to action/thriller to sci-fi. Each participant will get one-on-one coaching in front of the camera with Nancy.
Emmy-award nominated, American Casting Director, Nancy Bishop, has cast over fifty American and British films, from her base in Prague. She is a member of The Casting Society of America, and the International Network of Casting Directors. She has cast for major feature films including Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist, Hellboy, Bourne Identity, and the recently released Wanted and Prince Caspian. In addition to being a casting director, Nancy is committed to actor training and has developed a proven method for casting technique. She has been teaching casting workshops throughout Europe, the UK, and the US, and she is starting an Acting for Film Department at the Prague Film School that begins Sept, 09. Her book, Secrets from the Casting Couch, will be published by Methuen drama in August, 09.
Time: 11:00AM – 5:30PM
Date: Thurs-Friday, 30-31 July, 2009
Place: Studio Storm, Biskupsky Dvur 4, Prague 1
Cost: 4,000Kc for two days, or 160 EUR
How to register: The class is limited to 14 participants so please register soon.
Please send photo and CV to: workshops@nancybishopcasting.com
See: www.nancybishopcasting.com for more information
July 6th, 2009
this is a test excerpt
Continue Reading June 22nd, 2009
Hi everyone!
I’m Boris Wilke and member of the Prague Playhouse Meisner acting group. I blog about our class activities.
Yesterday Monday, June 15th, was a truly astonishing class, as some members did “Home Alone” activities, a thing I had never seen before. I’ll talk about that after Wednesday’s class, though… 
Besides, yesterday’s class made me think about motivation. And that is, what I will write about today.
Click on the “ACTING CLASS” button above to read more about the class itself and where we meet!
Click the “(more…)”-button below to read about motivation!
I was gone on vacation for a week. Before that I had a couple of classes, that I failed to find interesting enough to blog about. And last week, I suffered from “Acting Fatigue”, which is a euphemism for “lack of interest”.
Now, what is it, that keeps me from going to class sometimes?
The answer lies in the nature of the course. Friends of mine have asked me about it, time and again. And their questions all ran like this:
“So you go to this acting group. What play do you work on?”
“None.”
“None? Are there at least skits or scenes, you are doing?”
“Scenes, from time to time. But they are used merely as exercises, as the rest of the time in class.”
“What? You only exercise? What is the use of that? Why don’t you create something? When can we see you on stage?”
“When I make an audition, I mean, IF I make one. Then we rehearse and then we perform. But that has nothing to do with the Meisner acting class.”
“I don’t get, what you are doing there…”
And so on…
Yeah, I sometimes also don’t “get”, what I am doing in class. Activities and doors take hours to prepare. They involve you emotionally. Otherwise they tank. You are supposed to rehearse with them as well. I am a writer and have time. But I still cannot get myself to do enough for class. How do people fare, who actually WORK all day?
And that is the thing about the Meisner technique: It is really cruel. It throws you back on yourself, over and over again. You are supposed to delve deeper and deeper into your inmost feelings and baring them in this stupid space in front of these near-strangers called class-mates, who gawk at the awkwardness and geeky situations of embarrassment, that you present them with; until it is their turn, that is. And it so shows, when you come badly prepared. It also hurts, when you see people, who have been in class way shorter than you, pass you on their way to become “Meisner trained”, just because they rehearse more.
When you put on a show in class and try to remain chief of the situation, you are reprimanded by your teacher, and rightly so, for being fake and not letting out your true opinions, thus failing to transport your true feelings. When you become defensive, because you have become really vulnerable and fear getting hurt emotionally during an exercise, you get flared for not letting go, for being too polite, for focussing on other things than your partner alone.
Meisner is harsh and takes a lot of dedication.
How can one motivate oneself to muster the energy to come up with the necessary level of dedication?
Many of us did make an audition and did get to perform in real plays, TV-series and films. They have had a certain reward for their suffering in and around class.
I have only been in student films thus far and am really sick and tired of just going to class.
But I need this high level of dedication as well. Otherwise I can quit, right here, right now. But I will do ANYTHING than that!
How do I motivate myself for just going to class, then?
I go to class despite it and because of it. I try to love it, to just go for its own sake. Meisner class, to me, is a little laboratory of life itself. I might have mentioned this idea already before. But it is all the more important to stress it:
In class people laugh, cry, despair, fight, scream, cuddle, smile and sing, just like in real life, or better even, just like they SHOULD in real life but fail to, because of political correctness and other mechanisms, that inhibit them.
I test myself every time I do an exercise. I put myself forward and see what I am like. That is absolutely worth all the pain and strain and despair and lack of energy and humiliation, that go along with it.
Paradoxically enough, all that is my motivation: Even during those times, when I give in to NOT going to class – because it wears me out, it unnerves me, I hate its participants too much, I cannot muster the energy to come up with yet ANOTHER door and activity, I feel above or below it, I don’t see the point of it… – I dedicate myself to the process of the Meisner way.
If he didn’t say it, I am sure, he placed it between the lines somewhere: “As life is not about happiness but fullness, so is Meisner training.”
There is no easy way to it. And that’s what I love about it. Easy is boring.
Meisner is exiting!
And that is that.
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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! But beware, this quarter is going to end in about two weeks! Check this site for details as to when the summer break will end!
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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!
June 16th, 2009
Hi everyone!
I’m Boris Wilke and member of the Prague Playhouse Meisner acting group. I blog about our class activities.
On Monday, May 18th, our teacher Ben Steel reminded us to mind about connection in Meisner exercises.
Click on the “ACTING CLASS” button above to read more about the class itself and where we meet!
Click the “(more…)”-button below to read about last night’s class!
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Last night I finally had an exercise that felt good, worked well and was appreciated by our teacher, too.
Whot hath gone right?
First of all, my exercise had meaning. It wrenches my heart out to think about it even now. It had a strong connection to the most important of my real life worries. It had an imaginary element. It was physically difficult. And I let it drop enough to connect to my partner.
Now, connection: What is that exactly?
First timers in Meisner class connect by looking at their respective partners and commenting on something existing, non-mental, such as: “Your pants are torn.” or: “You have a scar across your biceps.”
When one repeats those obvious facts, the connection consists of your partner’s reaction to these trivialities, which is mostly smiling, blushing, going blank or stiff.
The words don’t carry any meaning, really. One uses them just as a transfer medium, as a bridge to your partner. This is the most important and basic means of connection.
When one starts to comment on one’s partner’s behavior, a few steps higher on the 20-year-or-more-staircase of Meisner training, the words flavor this basic connection. They add an element of feeling. It does make a difference if your partner tells you: “Your hair is green.” or if they yell at you: “You are green with envy!”
But connection remains something non-verbal. You still just use the words as a medium that carries connection.
Try to repeat with eyes closed. You will see, that a lot has to do with your senses. With your eyesight gone for a moment, your hearing and sense of space all of a sudden become really important. Blind repetition is a valuable addition to exercises, in that it strengthens your connection. The link through words is even stronger. But you might find out, that their meaning really only flavors the link, rather than, that the link consists of the words.
I wonder what it would be like to constrain oneself to a non-sensical call such as: “Unni wenno, whooz.” or anything that comes to mind and does not carry any meaning whatsoever. How hard would it be to connect? And what would the connection be like? I bet, the way, one would say “Unni wenno, whooz.” would alter dramatically during the exercise. One would laugh, get angry, frustrated or worried just like with “real” words.
Ben mentioned silence as well. Taking the above example to extremes would mean, not to say anything at all during an exercise. And silence can carry meaning. One can remain connected during a period of silence. It works in real life when you run out of words to say or just get tired saying them, when you are too happy to speak or overwhelmed with some other feeling.
Go figure that this works in acting, too!
Go figure what a great moment silence can be to an audience, when this silence is bristling with the most intense connection between the partners on stage.
Now that is awesome and leaves the audience breathless and connected to the play.
That is Meisner magic!
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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!
May 19th, 2009
Hi everyone!
I’m Boris Wilke and member of the Prague Playhouse Meisner acting group. I blog about our class activities.
On Wednesday, May 13th, our teacher Brian Caspe had us think about meaning in Meisner exercises.
Click on the “ACTING CLASS” button above to read more about the class itself and where we meet!
Click the “(more…)”-button below to read about tonight’s class’s resemblance to aliens having just found a new home here on Earth!
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Imagine you met someone, who thought, life was a Meisner exercise – say, an alien, who looks like a human being, but really isn’t human at all and sees this plane of existence as an option rather than the real thing.
If he ran over your beloved poodle with the stupid wheel-barrel, he tends to walk around with, crushed Fido dead and then shrugged it off with a laugh, you’d be really offended, would you not?
He’d be lacking meaning in the things that he did. Running around with a wheel-barrel has no meaning, unless you transport something with it. And even if you did transport something, you as a human, would consider other modes of transport, depending on what exactly it was, that you are transporting.
Crushing a poodle with a wheel-barrel is really hard to do. Or you would have to be using it like people used ramrods in the dark ages. Our alien would certainly look awkward, doing the barrel-crush: goofy and too forceful at the same time. It would lack any sense. It would lack meaning.
Now, laughing about leaving a bloody mess of your beloved pet tops it. The alien would look totally nice and friendly. But he would lack any type of sympathy for the creature he just thrust over the threshold of this world. It wouldn’t mean anything to him: life and death, love, passion, pain, loss…
This is, how a Meisner exercise can look and feel like, if the door or activity you’re doing, is lacking meaning.
I juggled balls today. I literally did. And I fumbled in more than one way…
I had come up with this activity within ten minutes, because I somehow sensed I would need one. The door I had, was stronger, had more meaning.
Besides I had been posting stuff onto this site, instead of preparing well for class.
So in Meisner world I wheel-barreled around, bounding funnily, recklessly up and down. I failed to crush a poodle this time. But I wouldn’t have cared much, if I had. My partner was in a similar mood. Following the analogy of the alien, he probably had neon-pink curlers in his three-meter-long hair, trying to unroll his outrageous locks while keeping his eyes closed.
Is there any meaning in that? Would we have been this strange to one another outside of Meisner world? No!
Lesson: Take your time coming up with a door or activity that actually means something to you. Doing it twice a week – or more, if you also rehearse outside of class with doors and activities, is hard, though.
You need to believe in the circumstances you created. It has to be something quite specific, you are going to be striving for. You need to get all upset, happy, concerned, sad, mad or angry about the thing you came up with. It should hit you in the stomach. At the same time it needs at least a kernel of truth, because it has to be that good, so that smart you is going to believe in it, while in the exercise.
In short, coming up with a good activity is hard work. The same goes to a teeny-weenily lesser extent for doors.
Funny though, that it is you yourself you’re fooling, when you try to circumvent the working and time-consuming aspect of finding meaning! And that goes for real life outside of the Meisner world as well.
By trying to fool others you end up fooling yourself.
It might take longer to stick, but once you got it, you got it.
I love this aspect of the Meisner world. In a nutshell it represents the real world. It helps me understand myself interacting with reality really well. It helps me become a better person.
And if I could tell Meisner that, I know, he’d be happy.
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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!
May 13th, 2009
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