Showing posts with label Sanford Meisner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sanford Meisner. Show all posts
Sunday, August 08, 2010
rehearsal clothes, "priming", and the land of make-believe
This scornful question greeted me once when I was in the midst of a
"Rehearsal clothes" figured into the calculation because, to my mind, any scene study class worth its salt will expect students to bring clothes to wear for their scene, i.e. "costumes". And getting into those clothes takes time, unless you want people to sit around in their clothes for the scene for the whole class, which is undesirable for reasons I'll get to below. At the Drama School, in the design department, with legendary costume designers like Jane Greenwood and Jess Goldstein at the helm, it was the practice to refer to the costumes for shows in which actors were dressed in a contemporary, more or less realistic idiom as "clothes" rather than costumes. A designer was said to be "doing the clothes" for a show or film if the costumes were contemporary, realistic ensembles. That turn of phrase has stayed with me, and I used it in the context on the message board. Hence the confusion and consternation of the person who wrote "What the hell are rehearsal clothes?" (I imagine they must have been picturing something along the lines of uniforms for martial arts classes).
Anyway, I have always insisted that students pick out rehearsal clothes for their scene, and that they bring them to class and change into them. Further, I urged them to do this when they rehearsed outside of class: bring the rehearsal clothes and change into them, do not wear them to class, do not wear them to rehearsal. This had the effect of making life a little more difficult for the less motivated students in the class: they might be inclined to show up in street clothes, and, if their scene permitted, to claim that these were what they were going to wear for the scene. However, with my edict, even if they were wearing street clothes for the scene, they still needed to bring clothes to change into.
But aside from that, why put people out in this way? Why demand that they find special clothes to do their scene, even if the character might dress similarly to the way the actor dressed in everyday life. Well, there are a few reasons for this. First of all, I am a firm believer that the actors greatest enemy, in terms of his/her preparation anyway, is the temptation to ignore some aspect of the character's life or experience, rather than shining the light of awareness on it. I sometimes call this the "get it off my desk" syndrome. There is always pressure from the part of our minds that fears challenge and change to assume that its better to let sleeping dogs lie, not look under that rock, and just assume that some particular aspect of the role does not call for inspection or reflection. Actors have to work hard to counteract this, and developing the awareness of this danger (for that is what it is) and cultivating the habit of examining every conceivable facet of the role takes hard work and dedication.
The clothes worn by the character, or by the "Who-am-I" as we say in the class, are one more instance of this. Clothes make the man, as the maxim goes. What we wear is an important part of our self-presentation, of the way we play the role(s) that we play in the various contexts that we move in and out of. Reflecting on what kind of clothes the character would be wearing, given the situation of the scene, is both good for the scene AND for the actor's developing practice of considering ALL aspects of the role.
But I am getting at something beyond all of this. It has always been my conviction that changing into the clothes for the scene can assume a kind of ceremonial significance: in putting on these clothes, I am now entering another persona in another world. Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances, as Sanford Meisner said. It's entering a land of make-believe. And changing into the clothes can become a ritual that speaks to the whole person of the actor, body, nervous system, and mind, and says: "Now we are becoming Blanche DuBois" or whoever.
It turns out that the latest brain science bears me out. As I mentioned in previous posts, I am reading a book called Mindsight by Dr. Dan Siegel, which proposes that an understanding of how the brain works can be combined with mindfulness and other mental practices to promote mental health. Last night, I came across the following:
Finally, implicit memory creates something called "priming," in which the brain readies itself to respond in a certain fashion. When his mother arrives home, the boy anticipates a hug. Not only is his internal world primed for receiving that loving gesture, he'll move his arms in anticipation when he hears her car in the driveway. As we get older, priming continues to operate with more complex behaviors. If you've learned to swim, when you get your bathing suit on, your behavioral repertoire for swimming is primed and readied to engage when you jump in the pool.
And when the actor puts on her rehearsal clothes, her whole being primes itself for what is about to happen. This only happens, of course, if the act of doing the scene is repeatedly associated with putting on the clothes: actors who don't wear the rehearsal clothes when the rehearse, only when they perform, will have no such experience.
Note that Dr. Siegel talks about priming in the context of "implicit memory". Briefly, implicit memory is the recall of things in which the act of recalling is not consciously registered. He uses the example of how once we learn to ride a bike, we don't have to remember how to ride the bike each time we do it. We recall it without intention or conscious effort. So with priming, the behavior that happens to prepare for some encounter or activity happens unconsciously. You could say that as the clothes are donned, they speak to the actor's nervous system and prepare it to play the role in question.
The same goes for creating an environment for the scene. Recently, I had a student who was doing a scene in which his character was in a conference room at a hotel in which he had just finished giving a lecture. The student informed me of his intention to go out and purchase a bunch of chairs for Friends and Family Night, and then return them the next day. I gently explained that the environment was to be created for the rehearsal process, so that by setting up the environment every time they rehearsed, gaining familiarity with it and using the setup as a springboard into the land of make believe, they would be getting themselves ready to act. Bringing a bunch of chairs for the performance only was not going to help anyone act, and would probably undermine him and his partner, since it would be introducing a new element on the day of the performance.
When actors act in projects, in films or in theater, they aren't going to be setting up the environment, but they do need to be attuned to it. The practice of creating an environment for a scene and setting up each time they rehearse, allowing that arrangement of rehearsal furniture to become an altogether different place where the actor leads an imaginary life, is a great way of developing the awareness that provides for that kind of attunement when they walk onto a movie set.
Here's a talk that Dan Siegel gave with Goldie Hawn about his work. The first part of the video is Goldie talking, he comes in about halfway through. He gives a good overview of what he's about.
Friday, March 13, 2009
the trouble with Meisner
I'm a Meisner-trained actor looking for
a scene study class with a minimal focus on technique. Coming
from a Meisner background, I want the class to be more about the
interaction between the actors, and staying truthful
moment-to-moment and less about script analysis.
This person's Meisner teacher had instilled in him a suspicion, a fear, a paranoia even, of "technique" and "text analysis." The first thing to say about this is Meisner is itself a technique. Techniques are nothing more than ways of approaching things, and they are nothing to be afraid of.
But beyond that, this teacher had imprinted upon him a prejudice about text analysis that is more disturbing. I once spoke to one of my mentors at Yale, Evan Yionooulis, about Meisner. Evan chaired the acting program at Yale for five years. What she said is that Meisner is great for learning to "take it off of the other person", but not so great for learning organizing principles of working on a scene or a role. "Organizing principles" has an abstract sound to it, but what she meant by that term was this: a set of priorities, when approaching a scene or a role. Or, a set of questions which point you toward the significant and urgent elements of the character's situation, elements that will unquestionably impact how you play the scene, such as: what do I most need? What do I expect to happen next, best-case and worst-case? What are my strengths? What are my vulnerabilities? What are the greatest losses or failures I have suffered? Who is the person I am interacting with to me? etc. Such questions often strike students initially in my class as not terribly challenging, but as we discover in the scene work again and again, being able to frame compellingly and appropriately for yourself things like who you are in a scene, what you expect, and what happened in the past are critical in rising to the challenge presented by any scene and embracing the imaginary circumstances involved.
The phobia about "text analysis" bespeaks the actor's perennial fear of being "in her head". And certainly, text analysis undertaken wrongly, as, for example, an exercise in literary criticism, will land an actor in her head. But that is exactly why it is appropriate for an actor's training to include a procedure for how to approach the text involved in a scene and a role, and how to work towards identifying what is essential to it.
I have had students in my class who are either taking Meisner classes concurrently or have taken them in the past. They complain about the way in which certain words are used in Meisner classes almost talismanically, without explanation, like "listening" or "doing". The idea is that a good actor "really listens" and "really does", but to say more about what is meant by this is to betray or profane a sacred mystery. Some students are fine with refusal to explicate, and can learn what is meant by these terms by following the way an instructor praises or doesn't praise students' work in the repetition exercises. And to be fair, the teaching of acting is always going to be in part an experiential affair: books on acting can be great, but they can never suffice all by themselves. Helping the observers in the class see the important things and understand them is inevitable part of a good class, no matter how you slice it. But there is a difference between refusing to explain ANYTHING and a willingness to enlighten when and where it is possible. I think many Meisner teachers tend towards the former.
Another quagmire that can develop in Meisner classes is that as the repetition exercises unfold, INITIALLY the emphasis is on receiving from the partner and answering him or her, but then, as the weeks go by, a premium starts to be placed on repetition exercises where an emotional escalation takes place. Students then begin to work for this type of display, and the focus becomes totally wrong. Any acting teacher worth his salt, Meisner or not, will tell you that the emotion in an actor's work is a by-product of engagement with others. When the emotion experienced by the actor becomes the focus of the actor's attention, she is experiencing HERSELF having the emotion, rather than experiencing the partner and the scene. The histrionic displays can be impressive, but they are a colossal red herring. That is just not what it's about.
Meisner is a great approach to study, no two ways about it. Properly taught, it is a great way to learn to put your attention on your partner. However, it has limitations and dangers, like any technique, and in the hands of an untalented teacher, it can be worse that no technique at all.
I met a Los Angeles talent agent not long ago who said that he didn't need his people to be good, he just needed them to be able to "carry on a conversation in front of the camera". That was what it took to get work in the acting chops department. And Meisner can be a great way for people to learn to talk and listen naturally. But there is a lot more to acting than talking and listening naturally. You don't get memorable and inspiring performances without a solid measure of boldness, insight and imagination as well. A technique that helps orient the actor toward the secrets of the scene carefully planted by the writer in plain sight, and invites the actor to use these secrets to enliven his imagination, helps him become not just a credible presence in front of the camera or on stage, but a luminous one.
(This post is from the blog of the Mother of Invention Acting School in Los Angeles and San Francisco (www.utteracting.com): an acting class in Los Angeles and San Francisco for serious, motivated students.
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