Observing and Acceptance - The Importance of How the Meisner Repetition Exercise Begins
If you've done Meisner training, you know that you begin the repetition exercise by taking your partner in and stating something you observe about them. You don't need to go deep with this to start the exchange. A simple, "red sneakers" will do.
However, it is interesting that, even in a task that is so focused outside of ourselves, the first place we go for a response is into our heads! I have seen students (and I've done it myself) stare at one another for five, ten seconds, totally mute. Sometimes one or the other will throw his or her hands up in frustration without saying anything. I was conducting a seminar the other day, and partnered with a prospective student. I purposely put a big, expectant grin on my face before we started our repetition, just to give him something to go on.
He stared at me for a long moment and finally said, "I'm not getting anything!"
What fills this kind of pregnant pause at the start of the repetition exercise can be one of several things. First, we all ignore some of what we see. In our judgment, it's either not interesting enough, doesn't fit our rules about what the world is and is not, or is or is not something we can deal with. We've all known someone in love with a person that the rest of the planet recognizes as a jerk. And who among us has never looked back on a failed relationship and had to admit to ourselves, "The signs were there from the beginning. I just didn't want to see them?"
Ah. But the observation problem gets still worse than that. We also imagine things that aren't there. It is not at all unusual for a new Meisner student to look into the pleasant face of a classmate and snarl, "You're looking at me funny." Hilarity ensues, but . . . wow.
Then there's minimizing. I've seen students in the middle of an emotional repetition, and one will suddenly say, something like "You scratched your neck." Strictly true, but was that really the thing that is most riveting as someone screams in anguish? Most likely there is some serious selecting and minimizing going on.
As you train, it is critical to work on observing and listening as fully and with as much acceptance in your heart as you can. It's a discipline, a muscle that has to be made strong and flexible through your training. You're not working to eliminate your unique point of view on the world or alter your personality (but if you know you need to, go ahead!) You're working to reach a point where, as you move into playing roles, you can add and take away the things that your character is and is not able or willing to see. I believe most every play is about what the characters do and don't see, and how, why, and if they end up seeing the world differently by the end of the play.
Comedies will involve characters whose ability to see no more than a few things clashes hilariously with differently but equally tunnel-visioned characters. Tragedies will have tunnel-vision clashes, the results will be horrific, and the blinders come off after all is lost. Dramas will have big differences in how the characters see the world, and often one or more characters will be trying to influence the "sight" of other characters. (Twelve Angry Men, any police drama, A Streetcar Named Desire). In satires, all the characters will have viewpoints that differ absurdly from that of the audience. In other words, the joke will be on every character.
If you as the actor can open your vision through your training, then close selected parts of it down to suit the characters you play, you've got something.
So, "black pants," is sometimes all you need to say in a repetition. But if what you really need to do is yell Open fly!" please do that. In class, that is.
Love and Drama -
Jill
How nice to read your comments about your teaching. As you probably know getting the exercise down "technically" is no easy task for a student. One method of introduction of the exercise (and of course each teacher learns to do this in their own way) that may be helpful to you is to make the point that in the early stages of the exercise, since there is no relationship between the two partners, that they are in a sense two "objects," is that on each of these objects certain things exist- watch, hair, pants, shoes, earrings, etc. to which one of the partners - whichever will be starting the exercise - will have some little response to. Nothing deep.
ReplyDeleteQuite frankly I've never understood the shortened response of "red sneakers" or "black pants" because it really isn't a response - it is a little inhuman as opposed to a more fully expressed but simple "I like your shirt," "Your hair is very shiny," "Your sneakers are very red," and so on.
I like your approach! I think it's a wonderful way to help explain the start of the exercise to new students. As important, it is a way to help experienced students remember to keep it simple when in doubt.
DeleteYour thoughts about the abbreviated repetitions are widely shared, I think. I always expect and instruct that the repetitions will get "deeper," and begin to express the actor's point of view (e.g., "I like your shirt," "That meant a lot to me," etc.) That said, there is a lot to be said for stripping things down on occasion, particularly to start off a repetition. For example, more experienced students' emotions tend to flow so easily doing the Meisner work that it is sometimes helpful to remind them to not go straight for the emotional kill, but instead let the emotions come from the doing. Without that grounding, the work can get inexplicably maudlin or otherwise disconnected from the script or repetition ("playing the emotion" as it is referred to in other acting traditions, or, in my personal jargon, "When Sense Memory Kills").
Your thoughts and ideas are so helpful! Keep 'em coming!
Regards - Jill