Sanford Meisner's acting technique

From Stanislavski, we moved along the timeline of his system's development and we came to Meisner, who was an American actor and acting teacher, a friend of Stanislavski, who developed a form of Method acting that is known as Meisner's technique.
The goal of the Meisner technique has often been described as getting actors to "live truthfully under imaginary circumstances." The technique emphasizes that in order to carry out an action truthfully on stage, it is necessary to let emotion and subtext build based on the truth of the action and on the other characters around them, rather than simply playing the action or playing the emotion.

Repetition exercise

This is one of the best known exercises of the Meisner technique, basically this exercise is that one person spontaneously makes a comment based on his or her partner, and the comment is repeated back and forth between the two actors in the same manner, until it changes on its own. The object is always to react truthfully, allowing the repetition to change naturally rather than by manipulation. It is a nightmare when we did that for the first time, as it is very, very annoying, but eventually, it will become more comfortable and I can stay true to my own reflex, not an emotion that I want to fake.

Realism vs. Naturalism

I was assigned to do a research homework for the difference between realism and naturalism, here is what I got:


From http://www.unm.edu/~hookster/Definitions%20of%20Realism%20and%20Naturalism.pdf

• Realism is used by literary critics in two chief ways: (1) to identify a literary movement; and (2) to designate a recurrent mode of representing human life and experience in literature
• Naturalism is sometimes claimed to be an even more accurate picture of life than is realism. But naturalism is not only, like realism, a special selection of subject matter and a special literary manner; it is a mode of fiction that was developed by a school of writers in accordance with a particular philosophical thesis.

Seems a little bit vague? Yes I agree, so I did more research and put it in simple words:

• Realism is simply  an idea to portray the world exactly as what they are. Its aim is to treat the subject truthfully.
• Naturalism was born from realism. It seeks to portray the world as what they really are. Naturalists view humans in a very objective way; they are very concerned with the underlying forces behind one's behavior and believe that one's environment and heredity shape a person's character.

Constantin Stanislavski's system

In the second term of my first year, we started looking at a theatre performing system for actors by Constantin Stanislavski, who was a Russian actor and theatre director, down below are some parts of his system:

Subtext and Proxemics

• Subtext to signify the dramatic implications beneath the language of the text. The subtext concerns ideas and emotions that are totally independent of the language of the text.
• Proxemics are the spatial relationships among characters within the mise en scene and the apparent distance of the camera from the subject photographed.

Tension and Relaxation

• Stanislavski’s thoughts on relaxation were based on the premise that in order to achieve control of all motor and intellectual faculties, the actor needed to relax his muscles

Public Solitude

• The smallest circle of concentration was what he called ‘Solitude in Public.’ The actor, in the center of the small circle was secure within this circle, even before large audiences. This small circle could, then travel on stage with the actor, enveloping the actor ‘like a snail in its shell’. As the circle grew larger, the actor learned to concentrate or focus on relatively larger areas of light, still excluding whatever was not in the circle.

Magic If

• The actor tried to answer the question, “If I were in the character’s position, what would I do?” Thus, the character’s objectives drove the actor’s physical action choices. Through the stimulus of the powerful ‘if,' an actor could make strong theatrical choices that would appear to the audience as real, true and believable.

Given Circumstances

• Stanislavski required the actor to posses a rich source of imagination. The more fertile the actor’s imagination, the more interesting would be the choices made in terms of objectives, physical action and creating the given circumstances around the character.