Posts filed under 'General'
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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Let me be short and concise again today!
In the last few weeks there were several incidents in class that led certain members to become slightly wary of the Meisner technique.
Some of the repetition exercises bordered on the insane, vicious or at least very insensitive.
While I am aware that that is mighty scary and leaves one unsatisfied, I must insist that this has very little to do with the technique. In fact, Brian rightly pointed out to me that the Meisner technique provides you with all the tools you need.
One example: I felt attacked and cornered once. My reaction was to withdraw into “critic mode” and to lament my partner had not played by the rules. (I was being Meisner-righteous. That’s an expression Tzvi came up with.)
But in fact, there are no rules, except this one: No physical violence.
So let me present you with a remedy to feeling bad about the technique: Be Meisneritious!
If somebody attacks you, call them on it: “You’re attacking me!” “You’re cornering me!” “You take pleasure in hunting me down!” etc.
If somebody calls on things that are not in the moment like: “You’re always so arrogant!” or “You dismiss everything I do!”, look at how they say it! Stay in the moment – at least you! Call them on the way they say it: “You are insistent!” “You are holding on to things!” “You don’t see me!” “You sound indignant!” “You are petulant!” etc.
Non-Meisner-like behavior should incite Meisneritiousness of the first order! Take it personal! Pinpoint your partner’s behavior! Don’t let them get away with it! But then drop it to be open for the next moment.
It takes two to tango. If one partner stumbles, help them by picking them up. In the Meisner-world that means, as always: Be honest, even if you think the truth will hurt! Have trust in your partner, no matter how he scares you! Feel free to react accordingly, though. There is always a door you can leave through!
I insist: Take things personal! Own them! Brian called that kind of taking things into your own hands selfish – I call it Meisneritious!
Please remember: The Meisner technique is supposed to help us broaden our palette of behavior, to act out the most outrageous states of mind.
One needs to let go of fear, rules, self-centeredness, false sensitivity.
Meisner is not for the faint-hearted. But it is for the Meisneritious!
And being Meisneritious means to me to fully make use of the technique. It is there to serve us, not the other way round!
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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! Class will not convene in the week from May 17, neither the one from May 24. And due to Mark Wakeling’s weeklong seminar we also won’t have regular classes from June 7 through 11.
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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!
May 14th, 2010
The Czech-German theatre-ensemble “POET’S CABARET” is offering a theater workshop weekend on the topic of hotel stories !
Based on improvisation studies (Keith Johnstone and others) we are going to create a crossover theater collage, accompanied by some experimental music scores.
Where?
Nekvasilova 625/2, Prague 8 – Karlín
Metro Station Invalidovna (B-line)
When?
Friday 28th – Sunday 30th of May 2010
daily between 10 to about 6 pm.
We offer valuable theater experience FOR FREE!
We’re inviting interested artists simply to email us a soon as possible.
Who you are and which artistic discipline you’re following doesn’t matter!
All actors, actresses, singers, dancers, musicians - no matter if amateur or professional! – of all ages, with or without theater experience are invited to this workshop!
You
- have some knowledge of English or German
- are open for a nonprofit artistic experience
- are possibly but not necessarily of Eastern European origin!
- if musician, you would bring your instrument with you (piano ready to play in theatre itself)
Please contact us by email markusnieden@yahoo.com
or call 774168801 (English and German speaking)
Every email will be answered!
And just have a look at www.rhiz.eu!
In the search box above right you put in: ”Hotel Red Cello”
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If you consider coming, please everybody bring some personal object related to a hotel or a private room with you that could be for example…
door key(s), book, mirror, item of clothing like jacket, shirt, cap, hat or shoes…
object from daily life like umbrella, mobile phone, letter to post, other documents, passport…
bracelets or rings, hairdryer, soap, shampoo, razor…
calendar, price list, urgent files, magazines, bottle of wine, champagne, vodka (empty, of course), suitcase…
You name it!
We need it to play with in some way.
Thanks a lot!
DONT FORGET TO CONFRIM YOUR PRESENCE BY EMAILING OR CALLING ME!
See you then and there, hopefully!
MARKUS
markusnieden@yahoo.com
774168801
May 10th, 2010
Hi everyone!
I’m Boris Wilke and member of the Prague Playhouse Meisner acting group. I blog about our class activities.
***************
Let me be short and concise today!
I am totally thrilled about Mark Wakeling’s return to Prague in a month. In case you haven’t heard of him: He is a teacher at the “Actor’s Temple” in London. He held a weekend-seminar in late November of 2009 for us Meisner students at the Prague Film School. (Click here to read about it!) Now he promised to be back from June 7 to 11.
The seminar last year rocked my soul. It helped me keep on keeping on at this difficult time, where none of my efforts at getting started as a professional actor really seem to succeed. His version of Meisner also kept me from dropping out of this class. I have been looking forward to his oncoming seminar ever Brian started to talk about it, i.e. at least four months.
If you can afford it and have the time, please register for the seminar!
Mark will try his best to confront you with the inner barriers you set up to protect yourself against intense feelings. He is relentless in a way. But since Meisner is about the truth, it is absolutely necessary to get rid of these blocks. Mr. Wakeling will get you at places you wouldn’t even have known existed. If you trust him at least a little bit, he will help you free quite a bit of the aspects you carefully held captive inside for so long. You will shine!
Meisner is about getting ready to play anything – no! to be able to live it under imaginary circumstances. If you dare use the technique to the extreme – which Mark will help you with – it will get you there.
Mr. Wakeling will give you a good kick in the butt that will let you fly in the right direction.
He will take Meisner’s image of “the pinch and the ouch!” in a totally new and really pinchey-ouchey direction.
And that is absolutely, mind-bogglingly exiting to me.
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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!
+++
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!
May 5th, 2010
Monday is the start of a new semester for the Meisner Class, as well as the new advanced acting class (scene study), which is a continuation of the work which is being done in the Meisner class. If you’re interested in joining the Meisner class, please send an email or come to audit the class. The new Meisner class will run every Monday and Wednesday 18:30-21:30 from May 3rd to August 11th.
New students are always welcome!
May 3rd, 2010
Mark Wakeling, the founder of the Actor’s Temple in London, will be returning to Prague June 7th to the 11th for what is sure to be another extremely motivating and informative workshop. Mark has been a strong supporter of what the Playhouse has been doing in terms of training and has very generously agreed to come and do this 5 day workshop for a fraction of what it would cost in London.
Workshop participants will pay just 5 000 Kc for the 5 days. Observers are welcome to join for 100 Kc per day. If you are interested in signing up for either the workshop or to come as an observer, please get in touch with me via email. There is limited space available, so don’t delay! If you have wondered about acting or what actors do to prepare, you don’t want to miss this. This is training that you won’t get anywhere else in Prague!
May 3rd, 2010
Well, folks, the 2010 Expats.cz and Prague.tv Playwriting Contest is behind us now. As I said at the Awards Ceremony, it simply would not have happened without all of the folks that donated their time to acting or directing, working behind the scenes and out with the public, to the folks that came to see it and voted for the winner of the audience award. The sponsors really came through in a big way as well and helped us with everything from a place to play, to advertising, to props, to prizes for the participants.
There are simply too many people to thank, but I want everyone to know that there is no way that any of this would happen without you!
Without further ado, I would like to congratulate Cohen Ambrose, who won the jury prize for Best Play for his piece “Hole in the Wall”. The award was based on the revised script and not the realization of the play. Julek Neumann and company won the audience award for Josh Kaston’s play “The Great Indoors”. The judging was fierce and the three finalists were really really close. Any one of the plays could have won the final prize. We are really indebted to all of the writers who submitted their work to the contest and hope that whether you won or not, you take the opportunity to push your work to the next level.
After the break, I just wanted to put down a few words about why we do the contest in the first place: why it was started and whether we will continue to do it.
Over the past four years I have been involved with the Playwriting Contest (first with the Prague Post and now with Expats.cz and Prague.tv), I have been amazed at the dedication and creativity of the writers. The contest itself came about after a discussion following the 24 hour play festival with Anne McDonough. She mentioned that there were tons of writers in Prague who were yearning to get their work out there into the public. There was some discussion as to whether that was still true (this was back in 2006) or whether the idea was a holdover from the mid-90s.
I didn’t think much of it until talking with my then-girlfriend who worked at the Prague Post about doing something that would really be an anchor in the Prague artistic community. She was looking for an opportunity for the Prague Post to get involved in the community, something that would bring it front and center within the expat calendar. So we hatched a plan: the Prague Post would do the organization and marketing of a contest and we (the Prague Playhouse) would take care of the production and artistic end. The whole goal from both sides was getting people involved.
The response was fantastic. Writers opened up their drawers, dusted off that old copy of the play they were working on and got to work. Quite a few folks who had always wanted to write a play but never had a reason sat down and put something on paper. A lot of the submissions were obviously green attempts. Quite a few of them had a germ of something but didn’t have the dramatic or theatrical bent that would make them good theater, and some of them were obviously written by people who knew exactly what they were doing. We opened up the eligibility to people from all over the world as long as they had lived in the Czech Republic at some point. And we got a lot of submissions.
That first year, the best thing about the contest for me was going around and meeting with writers. They were people that were in the community, they were a part of the community, but I, who had been in the acting/producing side of things for a few years at that point, had no idea that they were there. The writers had something to shoot for. It was a fantastic feeling when Rich Byrne, who would eventually win the contest, came over from Washington, D.C. to take part in the process. He has been a strong supporter ever since and a very strong voice for the writers community. He has repeatedly said that the cash prize was nice, but that the real benefit to him as a writer was being able to work with a director and actors on his script, was watching the script take shape on the stage and being there when an audience takes it in and makes it their own.
And every subsequent year has been like that. The real pleasure in doing this work is watching a dispirit group of artists come together and work to bring a local writer’s words to life and to watch what that process does to the writer. Sure there are disappointments along the way. There are arguments and there is drama. There is always a moment when the whole project is teetering on the edge of collapse. But we push through it and make it work.
The contest has not been without criticism. The first year, the judging process was not perfect and the work that went into the plays during rehearsal was not recognized: a change that we made in subsequent years. Often the winner of the audience award, which is voted on by the attendees, is different to the play that wins the jury prize, which is based solely on the written script. This leads to surprise in the audience when a play that they didn’t like wins the big prize. But, again, as I said on Tuesday night after the contest: the biggest prize is that the work is produced.
So. What is going to happen next year? I’m not sure. We are talking about changing the format of the contest so that instead of three half-hour plays, we produce only one full length play. The half-hour format is problematic as plays of that length don’t have much of a possibility to go on to other venues. We are also concerned as the number of writers submitting is going down. Whether that is due to writers not wanting to write and submit when they feel the process is not fair or whether they blew their wad on one year and don’t have another play, we need to have enough submissions to make the contest viable. We would also like the quality of the submitted plays to be improving over time. We love that there are first time playwrights that submit and we want to encourage that, but we also want to foster authors to use better dramatic structure, more imaginative situations, more truthful dialog, more expressiveness of themselves. In short, if the contest is to continue, we want it to be a way for the authors who submit to really work on their writing and use it as a tool to learn and improve.
We are having a meeting soon to talk about the future season and what changes need to happen. I will let you know the outcome!
April 1st, 2010
If you’ve been holding out on coming to the 2010 Expats.cz and Prague.tv Playwriting Contest performances, your last chance is Tuesday, March 30th at 18:30. We moved the time up an hour to make room for the Awards Ceremony and after party which you’re invited to. There will be free food and drink thanks to Troja Catering!
There are tickets still available, but I would highly recommend ordering beforehand online (you can pay for them at the door) as it is likely to sell out.
The show is at Divadlo Ponec (Husitska 24a in Prague 3).
Tickets for the final night are 280 Kc general / 250 Kc students and seniors.
March 29th, 2010
The 2010 Expats.cz and Prague.tv Playwriting Contest continues tonight! There are still tickets available, so get yourself down to Divadlo Ponec (Husitska 24) by 19:30 to join in this celebration of local writers. If you’re not available tonight, you still have 2 more chances: Saturday night at 19:30 (tickets for this are going fast, so book now!) and Tuesday night, which includes the closing night awards ceremony and party catered by Troja Catering. Both shows will be really well attended, so don’t be lazy about getting tickets!
I have to say that I am really proud of all of the participants in this year’s contest. We have really seen a lot of growth in the contest since the beginning 4 years ago. There have been challenges, sure, but they have been overcome and the result is a wonderful testament to local artists creating theater. Come out and support it!
March 24th, 2010
Buy your tickets now! Order them online.
There are four shows and each night you are going to see all three finalist plays. Show lasts approximately two hours including an intermission. At the end of the show audience is asked to vote for their favorite play.
Shows take place in:
Divadlo Ponec (map)
Husitská 24a
130 00 Praha 3
222 543 449
Sun 21 Mar, 2010 @ 19:30
Wed 24 Mar, 2010 @ 19:30
Sat 27 Mar, 2010 @ 19:30
Tue 30 Mar, 2010 @ 18:30, award ceremony and closing party following
General admission for Mar 21-27 is 220 Kč, students and seniors 200 Kč.
General admission for Mar 30 is 280 Kč, students and seniors 250 Kč; price of the ticket includes drinks and buffet.
To learn more about the contest, finalist plays and participants go to www.playwritingcontest.cz
March 7th, 2010
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.
**********************
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!
February 4th, 2010
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