Loved this quote from Michael Caine
>You must be able to stand there not thinking of that line. You take it off the other actor’s face. Otherwise, for your next line, you’re not listening and not free to respond naturally, to act spontaneously.
>You must be able to stand there not thinking of that line. You take it off the other actor’s face. Otherwise, for your next line, you’re not listening and not free to respond naturally, to act spontaneously.
My biggest play to memorize was as one of the leads of The Importance of Being Earnest in high school and a big part of knowing it end to end was how I memorize talks today, just repeating it until you become the part, and feel like you know “your part” not “the lines”. You’re not regurgitating lines, you’re stepping through and reacting based on a set of information to a point where you don’t even feel like you’re trying to react. This also helps a lot with improvising when things go wrong since you’re just following the flow your character would with the stimuli, rather then having to step line by line through. The worst people to act alongside were the rote memorizers who would break that flow to go back to a line that was missed or just freeze.
When I was in a classical piece I'd usually come off stage speaking iambics or couplets for a while, without ever meaning to.
The technique has two or more actors repeating the same lines back and forth at each other, based on simple observation and repetition. But what's really being said and communicated is the subtext of how the actors sense and feel - not the words at all.
Saying "you're wearing a blue shirt" might encode the thought "I don't like the tone of your voice" or "you've got a nice smile." And the other actor is meant to read that off of you and respond in kind.
It's a lot like improv in that you establish an unspoken protocol for exchanging lots of side channel information.
But unlike reading between the "yes, and" subtext to build a narrative world and rules, you're taking in raw, full sensory emotion in an intimate way by completely dropping your own filters. Brains melded, firewall open. You have to say what you see, what you understand, and what you feel. And you have to tell the truth and not lie to yourself and your partner.
It's as uncomfortable as staring into their eyes, until it stops being uncomfortable. And you don't even have to be looking at one another. You can hear it in their breathing and the cracking of their voice. You know exactly how you feel about everything with exacting precision. You're uncomfortable and vulnerable and excited and anxious, and you let them know.
Meisner removes all the social filters of the adult brain. All the platitudes and the scar tissue of decades of interacting with people in society. You stop judging and worrying and just say and do what you feel. And you hear it from them too, and you believe them because they're being honest with both you and themselves.
You know if they're lying, because you've trained and can sense it. And you'll call them out on it. They'll do the same to you when you attempt to hide. They'll really dig in. Once you're under that spotlight, there is no hiding. You can go wherever you choose to go. It feels raw and weird and more intimate than being with a lover.
With practice, "you're wearing a blue shirt" becomes "I don't like how you look at him and smile, but when you look at me you frown". And everyone cries and yells and things get thrown.
On the spectrum of our robotic "how are you? / I'm fine, and you?" programming and a raw and intense fight with a lover, Meisner is the latter. Except you get to be that authentic for the entire range of human emotions: good, bad, happy, sad. A door to everything you could potentially feel.
It's animalistic and completely cerebral. And it's real and you live it. Sometimes you come away shaking.
Neither did the crying and the yelling. I did too, just so as not to be left out (crying and yelling is always good fun), but they all took it so damn seriously that I wasn't sure where the line was between useful work and self-indulgence.
Oh, and also I think a professional actor ought to be able to drop in without having to drag someone else through ten minutes of repeating the first three words of their lines back and forth until the syllables are drained of all meaning. True story! I was as good a sport about it as I could be, but gosh... It was drizzling, and the lighting guy fucked off for tea, and I sure wished I could too.
I know more direct ways to get students to drop their inhibitions and tune into each other than repetitions. (Oh, and the audience! Everything I've seen of Meisner neglects the audience, and I think being aware of them is really important for stage work. Camera, same, for screen acting.)
Anyway, I'm sure I'm just missing something, and being grumpy. Like I say, I've seen positive results for some actors (though not the chick in the rain), so it's doing something, and I'm glad it works for you.
From my understanding, the repetition exercise has always been something taught to brand-new students in the first month of acting classes, to demonstrate the difference between reciting lines and saying things in a spontaneous, believable manner. As well as to teach what subtext is.
The idea that anyone would be doing the repetition exercise after their first month of acting school baffles me. It's not a technique that was ever intended for, or should be used by, professional actors, as far as I've ever understood it.
Like I say, I've noticed the same thing you have, so there's clearly something there. I've just never "got it", so it kinda fascinates me.
But the Meisner technique also teaches you to learn your lines by rote, practicing them in a monotone, intentionally devoid of meaning (the opposite of what this article describes), under the theory that this will free you to add spontaneous emotion in the moment.
Whereas in my experience that's a terrible approach. It makes it vastly harder to learn the material (as this article suggests), and then students tend to perform closer to a monotone because that's how they practiced it and built an unconscious habit of association -- or once they're able to bring emotion to it they forget their lines because the emotion was overwhelming and they don't have the lines "in their bodies" connected to the emotions that are going on, because they learned them by rote.
As you can tell, I'm not generally a fan of the Meisner technique overall...
Isn't this why they do stage rehearsals? Not so much to memorize the lines, but to see how each plays off the other actors. And it is while rehearsing that they can detect that something "isn't working".
To me, what Michael Caine is saying seems essential for the stage, even more so than for cinema. For cinema, you can reshoot if a line or interaction feels unnatural. For theater you don't have this luxury.
If you are saying out loud "memorized lines" you're really not paying attention to the other actor. Some theater is deliberately "artificial", but a lot isn't. And they definitely want to play off what the other actors are saying, otherwise it feels mechanical... which is what happens in unprofessional or kids' plays, everyone is "reciting" and it doesn't feel like a real play!