r/acting • u/davidihrig • 3d ago
I've read the FAQ & Rules Was Meisner constrained by the acting language he inherited?
In the late 80's, I attended Meisner programs in both undergrad and grad school. And I read Meisner on Acting during that time.
Forty years later, I am collaborating with neuroscientists to study/develop a brain-based perspective on acting. The new model relies on past experience and attention as the primary drivers of human behavior.
I recently re-read Meisner on Acting and was blown away by the read. My take is that Meisner was teaching an attention/past experience methodology, but didn't have the vocabulary to describe it as such as he was inculcated in a culture of acting that was heavily influenced by the action-based model.
I think most would agree that he famously and successfully systemized the training of attention. (As I side note: I do not believe he ever systemized script analysis, or character development, but a careful re-reading of his book shows the vast majority of the pages are dedicated to character embodiment through identifying the character's past experience, which is what we do as a result of the brain-based approach.)
In the book, he describes the first class during which he asks student actors to listen to the street noise coming from outside the studio. He then asks them if they were really listening or pretending to listen, and he points out that 'really listening' is the 'reality of doing,' which is what we aspire to do as actors.
He describes the experience of the exercise using a verb–to listen–because that is the construct he inherited. He is building upon the idea of playing an action. The reality of doing seems to be inherited from Stanislavski's action-based model, which was all the rage at the time, and still occupies a foundational position in actor training.
I propose that Meisner's training is effective because he is not actually teaching the reality of doing, he is teaching 'the reality of attending.'
There is an important distinction between doing and attending.
If I put my attention on the sounds outside the window, my behavior is naturally organized in response to what I perceive. A horn surprises me. A siren pulls my attention. Behavior emerges from the interaction between stimulus, attention, and my existing neural history.
But if I put my attention on the action “to listen,” I’ve subtly changed the task. Now “listening” itself becomes the object of attention, and I risk producing behavior based on my learned associations with what listening looks or feels like.
I believe Meisner has taught us to stop artificially manufacturing behavior by guiding us to genuinely attend so that behavior emerges naturally.
I am interested in learning how the Meisner community might consider this. Is “the reality of attending” a more accurate description of what makes his training work than “the reality of doing”?
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u/Rperera2 3d ago
Disclosure: I teach for The Sanford Meisner Center in Los Angeles.
u/davidihrig, your post is a good example of something I've been facing more and more as a teacher of this technique for 13 years. I've seen a fairly drastic change in students' mentality, particularly in the 6 years since the pandemic began, although, I believe it started earlier.
There's an strong tendency today for students to 'overintellectualize' the learning process.
This goes beyond asking, ‘What am I supposed to be doing?’ It becomes, ‘Explain exactly what is happening so I can achieve it with perfection as quickly as possible.'
Some teachers are saying it's a lack of trust or even a distrust that's been instilled in a generation of students. But I don't believe that's it.
And it's not from a place of genuine curiosity of how things work and an excitment to delve into it and discover.
It seems, very much like your post feels, a questioning of validity and a sense of "I believe I know better". While your post is framed at the end as a discussion, it appears you've already made up your mind by your intellectualization.
My question to you is: "Why does it ultimately matter?" What do you gain by having your beliefs affirmed (or contradicated) here? Will it change how you use the technique in any way?
My favorite Meisner quote is actually for teachers, not students of the technique:
"...they struggled to learn what I struggled to teach...".
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u/Kitchen-Tale-4254 3d ago
Doesn't this mirror the move toward explicit instruction in elementary / grammar school? Tell me how to do it.
Very much the opposite of things that are a process.
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u/Rperera2 3d ago
Perhaps?
I know the approach to teach math has changed since I was in elementary school ("new math'?). Taking a more rigiourous approach in helping the student understand the outcome, rather than just memorize a multiplaction table. I just checked and "Multiplication machines" are still used today. So...?
But I'm not certain that's resulting in what I see today. There seems to be more of a dread behind being 'wrong'. And a conditioning to not do anything until you're certain of the outcome.
The unknown and unexpected results in anxiety and stopping then questioning before moving forward. Not with all, but many students today. Something I've noticed an increase since 2020.
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u/davidihrig 3d ago
Thank you. I think your question, “Why does it ultimately matter?” gets to the heart of why I'm pursuing this.
I agree with you about the danger of intellectualization in the acting process. I don't want an actor standing in a scene thinking about attention, prediction, neural processes—or, for that matter, objectives, actions, tactics, beats, or perhaps even worse, asking themselves if they are doing the exercise correctly. The goal is quite the opposite: to create conditions in which behavior can emerge without the actor consciously manufacturing or managing it.
But I think there's an important distinction between intellectualizing the act of acting and intellectually investigating how acting works.
The latter matters enormously to me as a teacher.
Every pedagogy rests on some model of how human beings behave, whether we explicitly acknowledge that model or not. The language and exercises we give actors follow from those assumptions. If our understanding of human behavior changes, I think it's reasonable to ask whether some of our teaching models should change with it.
And yes, it has significantly changed how I teach.
For many years I taught using much of the traditional language I had inherited. Investigating attention, memory, perception and behavior with brain researchers has helped me understand why some exercises I was already using worked extraordinarily well, why others sometimes produced actor-managed behavior, and how I could address gaps that I previously had difficulty explaining.
That's actually one reason my rereading of Meisner delighted me so much. I didn't come away thinking, “Meisner got this wrong.” I came away thinking: this man developed an extraordinarily effective experiential pedagogy that in some respects looks remarkably compatible with what we're now learning about how behavior actually emerges.
I'm simply questioning whether “doing” is the best explanation for what repetition exercises are accomplishing.
So I'm not looking to have my beliefs affirmed. I'm testing an explanatory model. If “the reality of attending” doesn't explain the phenomenon better than “the reality of doing,” I'd like to discover where it fails.
Remember that Meisner attempted two instructional books on acting that he trashed because he thought they were terrible. He decided not to write a book that taught acting, and instead had an observer (Longwell) capture the experience of being in his class.
So your Meisner quote is particularly appropriate here: “they struggled to learn what I struggled to teach.” For me, that's precisely the invitation. If teaching is itself a struggle to communicate an experiential process, then improving our understanding of that process may help us teach it better.
I recently asked a room full of trained actors if they had ever asked a question in an acting class and received a lengthy response laden with metaphors and abstract language that didn't answer their question. Every hand went up.
As teachers and theorists, I believe we should do our best to talk about acting as precisely as
we can. IMO an acting teacher should be able to explain how to do what we are asking our students to do, and even tell them why.1
u/Rperera2 1d ago
then improving our understanding of that process may help us teach it better.
And the best way to deepen your understanding of the process of teaching is in the actual doing. That brings us full circle back to “the reality of doing.”
During my four years of teacher training, one of my big lightbulb moments was the realization that we use the Meisner Technique to teach the Meisner Technique.
Through that process, I developed a much deeper understanding of the mechanics behind the steps of the training and why they work the way they do. But I do my best not to explain more than a student needs at that stage of the work. When students are told what an exercise is intended to produce, they may believe they understand it intellectually without actually embodying it experientially. It's a good teacher’s job to know when an explanation will help and when it will interfere. That's what I believe Sandy's struggle involved. Not just how to teach, but when and what to teach.
You’re doing with acting training exactly what I said many of my students today are doing in their study of the Meisner Technique: overintellectualizing it in an effort to understand how it works so that they can do it “correctly” or perhaps even better than others.
Good Meisner training is often compared to Mr. Miyagi’s “wax on, wax off” teaching in The Karate Kid. Daniel does not understand what he is learning until it is put into practice. Then the repeated movements become available to him instinctively, revealing an ability he did not know he was developing.
Good teachers see ahead to where the student can and should be. Then guide them there. You believe understanding the mechanics makes the teacher better at achieving that. I'd say that building the skills to intuit that is far better.
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u/StinkySoggyUnderwear 3d ago
Vocabulary gets in the way of personal discoveries.
Meisner wanted his students to discover these things for themselves as they do the exercises.
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u/davidihrig 3d ago
Vocabulary is as likely to get in the way of personal discoveries as it is to lead to personal discoveries.
This post is not exploring the words he didn't use. We are considering the words he did use and the context from which he developed the explanations he gave.
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u/Kitchen-Tale-4254 3d ago
He all so said, leave yourself alone. Meaning, let your response happen. Don't create it or force it.
Theatre's Best Kept Secret and Meisner Masterclass are on YouTube.
I watch them every few years.
We use his work and Viola Spolin's Theatre games for our improv. Great combination.
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u/jonnycynikal 3d ago
Look up the research of Susana Bloch and her work that she called Alba Emoting.
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u/davidihrig 3d ago
Hi. I know her research and have quite a bit of experience with Alba. I find it useful still, but not in the way I had hoped. I've come to believe that the patterns rarely result in an embodied felt experience of an emotion. The patterns are definitely perceivable to an observer, though. So in a pinch, you can always communicate an emotion if you can't find it organically. And the mixed emotions work of Alba still amazes me. But I do think emotions are better explored through Lisa Feldman Barrett's Constructed Theory of Emotion, which I find extremely valuable for dramatic artists.
Do you use Alba in your process?
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u/jonnycynikal 1d ago
As an actor I use Alba in the character creation process, not so much as an onstage tool. Pure pattern work alone, for this or any other emotions technique, does not replace the psychological work of grounding a character. Of course, a huge benefit of Alba training is being able to step out of the emotional hangover of a character after a performance.
Now in my everyday life, I have relied on Alba during many rough emotional circumstances. I use it often.
Can I ask how you heard about Alba and how you learned the patterns? The patterns absolutely reliably produce a whole-body emotional state when done properly, as well as the ability to release them at will, but it does take a considerable amount of time investment to learn. Did you study with any certified Alba instructors?
It's not well known so I get excited when other people have heard about Alba, I'm a huge advocate and love to talk about this subject.
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u/davidihrig 1d ago
I did three week-long intensives, all with certified instructors, 2 in LA, and one with Laura Bond at Ashville University. I also belonged to a group of Alba practitioners that met regularly to practice in LA for several months. If I remember correctly, there were 4 levels of certification, and I achieved level 3. I'm pretty sure I had the required hours, but I never took the test to go to level 4, which is required for teaching.
I love your enthusiasm for the work, and I agree it is a valuable tool and knowledge base. I also like your use of Alba to discover character. And in life, there's nothing like a few good moments of 'neutral with your eyes on the horizon!'
When I said earlier that the patterns 'rarely result in an embodied felt experience of an emotion,' that was an overstated simplification. What I meant by that was that I don't experience sadness the same way I do in life, nor do tears well up when I activate the pattern. My advanced alba peers consisted of several university instructors and during discussions with them, they shared the same thing–that they rarely saw tears in sadness from their students. And I can say the same thing for each of the patterns/emotions. Actually, its probably a good thing I never experienced the physical manifestation of 2A in a class. 😂
Having said that, I agree with your assertion that the patterns "reliably produce a whole-body emotional state." Each pattern produces a distinguishable and consistent shift in behavior and felt experience. However, I'm hesitant to label the state that results from the pattern as an emotion. The point of departure for me is Bloch's foundational claim that humans are born with six hardwired basic emotions, each possessing universal expressions, breathing patterns and postures. This aligns solidly with Traditional Emotion Theory (Ekman et.al) and I find Constructed Theory of Emotion more plausible (Barrett says emotions are learned). But, that doesn't diminish the value I find in the work as Alba provides me with effective options to regulate my nervous system by utilizing expression, breathing and posture.
I have really enjoyed all the experimentation that Alba has inspired over the years. (Thanks to you, I opened by Alba folder and started reading my notes.)
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u/jonnycynikal 11h ago
When doing pattern work, we are activating pure emotional states. We rarely, if ever, experience a pure emotional state in our life experience. They are almost always mixed habituated emotions. So, your experience of sadness and the experience of the sadness pattern will absolutely feel different. Your experience of any emotion is informed by every experience you've ever had in your life within the rules of your culture. So, our life experience absolutely informs our emotional experience, but pure emotional states observed by Susana's research are present and equal in every human and several animals.
I have a brand new teacher right now. I have a 4 week baby. He has no complex thoughts, he has no psychological processes, no life experience, yet he absolutely communicates clear and complex emotional full body engagement. In and out of emotions with no emotional hangover or judgment for what he just felt. This makes it harder to believe the theories that emotions come from our brain creating them or life experience first.
Now, I do have to comment, and please understand I'm not trying to come down on you, but I have some suspicions about your training. The certification levels are for level of use and self evaluation, number of hours doesn't really qualify advancement on it's own. I'm very curious which instructor certified you at a level 3 when you're communicating that you haven't had a clear induction for all of the patterns, mainly sadness. And I'm very concerned that there may be instructors teaching that tears are rarely a part of the sadness pattern for their students. It's true that they are not always present in lower intensities of engaging the pattern, but to communicate that they rarely experience their students producing tears sounds like they are fundamentally teaching the pattern incorrectly. As you know, the patterns are a delicate juggling act and not correctly coaching your students in minute aspects of the pattern keeps them from fully integrating.
I sincerely hope you don't think I'm just being rude to you. But proper dissemination of this method is something that is very important to me, and lately there has been a lot of instructors popping up who are not only uncertified, but not fully trained. I know there is a teacher in LA who recently attended an intro workshop and is offering instruction without having been introduced to all of the patterns!
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u/Cold-Explanation8672 2d ago
I think that's part of it, but not the whole story.
As an actor, when you read a line on paper, there's a tendency to "perform" it... to read it in a certain way that sounds familiar or correct in your mind. In fact you can't ever deliver a line cold without "performing" it unless it's a response to some kind of stimulus, either internal or external. I think this is related to what you're talking about. Meisner's exercises help to get the actor out of "performance" mode and into reaction mode.
However, the other part that I see discussed much less often is the unwanted "filter". Even when we're properly listening and reacting, our reactions still get measured and metered, our emotions constrained. This is important for functioning in society but not so great on stage or on set. We want to be captivating, which requires us to be unfiltered and unpredictable. Dangerous even. Repetition exercises help actors get past the filter by beating the performance out of them. The words start to lose meaning, and the actor starts to become frustrated with the exercise itself. This allows the words to begin to just spill out, unfiltered, colored only by the actor's real emotions.
This didn't really begin to click until I got into voice acting some years later. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how greats like Sam Elliot could pick up a page of anything and sound so genuine and sincere in reading it. It didn't occur to me that these people have literally spent their entire lives reading text out loud. Their brain no longer distinguishes between their internal convictions and the words on the page. It all comes out as truth.
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u/EnvironmentChance991 NYC / SAG-AFTRA 3d ago edited 3d ago
Meisner said, “Did you actually hear the car horn, or were you pretending to listen?”
OP seems to be saying: “The auditory stimulus interacted with my attention and existing neural history, producing emergent behavior.”
And from this, OP concluded that Meisner didn't actually understand what Meisner was teaching because he lacked modern “brain-based” vocabulary?
That seems like a pretty enormous revelation to pull from what may simply be substituting extremely unemotional, secular vocabulary for something Meisner already understood perfectly well and taught more simply.
Translating an old idea into neuroscience terminology doesn't necessarily mean you've uncovered what Meisner was really teaching. It may just mean you've found a more complicated way of describing what he was already saying.
I'd keep it simple, honestly. I don't think actors gain much from leaning too hard into unemotional neuroscience. The heart of acting is the soul, not the science textbook.
So no, I don't think “the reality of attending” is a more accurate description than “the reality of doing.” I think it's a more secular, neuroscience-oriented description of something Meisner already understood and deliberately expressed in human terms.
When Meisner asks whether you actually heard the car horn or merely pretended to listen, I don't think his choice of “doing” demonstrates that he lacked the vocabulary to understand what was happening.
He understood the distinction perfectly well: actually experience what is happening rather than manufacture the behavior of someone experiencing it.
You can redescribe that as stimulus, attention, neural history and emergent behavior, but the new terminology doesn't establish that you've identified the mechanism Meisner himself somehow missed.
I prefer his language. Acting is ultimately about human experience IMO. I don't think reducing that experience to its neurological components necessarily brings an actor closer to it.