Meisner Acting Technique:
Learn to live in the moment as an actor, and let go of any idea of result. Learn what it means to really “do” and to respond truthfully to a given moment based on what you get from your partner. Through improvisation, emotional truth and personal response learn to resonate authenticity within a given circumstance. Only in this way will you begin to understand the definition of real acting, which is “to live truthfully under the imaginary circumstances”.
The training involves a specific series of exercises that build upon each other. The successful comprehension and execution of each exercise is essential to the success of the next and so on. Everyone begins at the beginning and moves through each step laying essential groundwork for the second semester’s focus of demonstrating a clear and full understanding of emotional preparation, relationships, and objectives.
– http://www.desotellestudio.com/sanford-meisner-technique.html
With such a stripped down script and limited resources, the meisner technique was a very useful tool to engage with in order to create a very naturalistic performance. Allowing the actors to run the scene multiple times, giving room for adjustments in performance each time, had a profound effect on their familiarity with the script and gave rise to more opportunities for naturalism that it would otherwise.
I also found that having an informal discussion with the actors about the text and the characters was very effective. It was great to hear what they took from the scene and how that differed to any preconceptions we might have had as filmmakers, and as a result led to a greater understanding of the characters and their relationship while maintaining a synergy between actors and directors.
If I were to repeat the task, I think I would have spent more time playing around with different ideas regarding interacting with props, and seeing how they change the performance.
PCA Isobel Wilkinson - BA Film 