Dear GC Theatre lovers,
I was asked by John Nobbs of Frank Theatre to contribute a few words for his new book on my experiences of training in both Meisner Technique (2 years) and Suzuki Actor Training and Frank Theatre Performance Aesthetics (6 years and counting!). What follows is my contribution, I have no idea if it will be in the book, but I thought I would post it to see what people thought.
It’s a Game and it’s Life and Death
Acting is a serious profession and for those of us who consider it a vocation it goes beyond, “play” or a “job” or even a “craft”. It is the dedication of one’s life to a journey that has no apparent end and if there was and end, we probably wouldn’t notice it. The 20th/21st century western actor appears to be locked into a legacy of acting that is cemented in the mind and clouded with “emotion”. It is what we have come to understand as “Method” acting. This idea is strongly linked to the work of Lee Strasberg, an American acting teacher who became almost mythological for his work on “emotion memory” or “emotional recall”. However, this technique was later to be redefined by the work of Sanford Meisner, a contemporary of Strasberg, who moved away from “recall” and into a more spontaneous , but no less truthful, method of training actors. Taken on its own the Suzuki Actor Training Method and the Frank/Suzuki Performance Aesthetics can provide the actor with all the “truth” or “emotion” they need. However, for those, like myself who have been in both schools there is a proposition that the two ways of working and training actors will marry well, given the right creative context.
The concept of “emotional recall”, at its most basic, requires the actor to use some part of their own past as a trigger for an emotion required for a particular scene. If one needs to produce anger, despair or happiness in a scene, all one would need do is recall a past situation that made them feel this way and start the process of “feeling” that emotion again and then transpose it into the current scenario. In this way the actor will have produced a truthful emotion and the scene will be in a sense, more “real”. The goal is that the scene will convey ultimate truth. No easy task. The flaw in this work is that after a period of time the “memory” ceases to have the same effect on the actor. They have in a sense, dealt with the emotion surrounding the event and it becomes harder for the actor to find the trigger within the memory and so they have to go to greater lengths to “feel” the same way. This is where the actors may find themselves in very dangerous psychological territory.
Sandford Meisner rejected this technique and went on to devise his own techniques with regard to living fully under imaginary circumstances. Having been immersed in the Meisner Technique for two years and training with Frank for six years, I have found that certain Frank exercises have the Meisner technique inside them. The difference is that the Frank exercise offers total mind/body/voice development and with Meisner body and voice happen in another room, at another time.
A key concept of the Meisner Technique is “doing”, ie, actually “do” the thing you are doing rather than “act” the thing you are doing. By focusing on an objective rather than a script the actor is better placed to focus on his fellow cast and thus be more “in the moment”. In the Suzuki/Frank matrix adding certain physical constraints that places the actor in a “über” or “hyper” moment intensifies this idea of connection. When doing the “Minder/Blinder” exercise both actors are physically and emotionally connected. The actor with their eyes closed performs the extreme improvised movements while connecting to the hand of the actor who holds their waist and guides them across the space. The two actors must connect through their centres and also through the sensitivity of each other’s touch. They are, like any actors in a play, on separate but similar journeys and must be connected in order for that journey to have a transformative/performative outcome. The exercise further heightens the experience for the actor/s when text is added to the exercise. The text can be added at any time during the exercise, but will always be performed at the end. The text that is spoken, wether a training speech or from a current production, will reflect the accumulation of the entire experience of the exercise. The actor/s have used their physical, moral, and psychic energy to perform the exercise, to “do” the thing they are doing, and through this extremity the barriers of “emotionality” have been removed, revealing the essence of the actor.
If the goal of “method acting” is to produce real emotion then one must get to the one’s soul, the inner essence of the self to find it. If we attempt some form of self-psychoanalysis to get there then we run the risk of not being able to escape from “our-selves”. Therefore and exercise such as “Minder/Blinder” allows us to access the vastness of the self while at the same time providing a framework or matrix for the experience to occur safely. There is also the added benefit of the physical language that is being developed along with the unification of the voice with the body and the mind.
Another facet of Meisner Technique is the “Repetition Game”, where two actors "repeat" their observations about one another back and forth. An example of such an exchange might be: "You're smiling." "I'm smiling." "You're smiling!" "Yes, I'm smiling." Actors are asked to observe and respond to others' behavior and the subtext therein. If they can "pick up the impulse" — or work spontaneously from how their partner's behavior affects them — their own behavior will arise directly from the stimulus of the other. My own experience of this exercise was beneficial in that it taught me how to connect and respond with another actor, without the pressure of remembering lines. The goal of this exercise is to produce free and spontaneous responses based on what your partner has given you. The exercise does develop over time into a more complex scene, however the basic structure of repetition is the same.
It was while doing “Statues” in pairs at training one night that it struck me I was doing the Meisner repetition exercise, however it had been, as we like to say “Frankified”. The exercise itself is quite simple, you stand opposite a partner of approximate height and you are “bridged” together by broom handles in each hand. The “Statues” music is played and on the appropriate count a free-form statue is made. One must remain grounded and have eye contact at all times with your partner. The statues are “repeated” for around three minutes. In this exercise it is vital that you stay connected to your partner, but also respond to the statue that your partner has made. This is totally spontaneous as there is no set “kata” or pattern for the statues. You must however respond physically as opposed to verbally, to the statue your partner has made. You do not copy their statue but create your own statue based on your response to and connection your partner. The different levels of vocal production are then added to the exercise and like the Meisner version this exercise grows to become more complex. A version of recent times brings up to six or seven people into the exercise via a circle and eye contact and connection flows freely around the group creating an exciting dynamic within the ensemble.
As a teacher I am often asked about the difference between the two worlds of “Method Acting” and “Physical Theatre”, the idea being that they are mutually exclusive. There are some distinct differences but also on closer exploration some remarkable similarities, which contained with the right matrix, could create a symbiotic relationship that is facultative to both ways of working.
