Adam Creighton, Voice & Film Actor (Ramblings): Meisner learnings ...

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Adam Creighton, Voice & Film Actor (Ramblings) (Subscribe)

People, by nature, have some interesting things to say. Here are some of my things. Some about acting. All about living ...

Friday, March 16, 2007

Meisner learnings ...

Been a good couple of weeks on the Meisner training front.

By "good", I mean "growing"; not "pleasant".

First, through practices I learned the importance of being comprehensive in the reasons for my "activities" and their urgency. One week, I was doing storyboarding, and had a great moment of panic where I had to throw my partner out of my life. After I threw her out, I realized I was going to fail my task. But the consequences lost weight as I started intellectualizing why I was writing out dialog (as opposed to cutting and pasting it from the scripts before I printed the blank storyboard panels). There are scenarios where that would have worked, but I hadn't prepped them before doing the exercise, and it killed the scene.

Secondly, when I come to the door, I'm supposed to be coming from something huge, and coming to that person for a reason. So I've been working hard on finding a simple hook at that moment when I find out who my partner is -- and I'm getting decently good at it, which has improved my door work.

Along those same lines, I was struck with an in-practice conversation about what's "easier" -- door or activity. I came to the conclusion if either is easier than the other, it's because I'm not putting the appropriate thought, work, and preparation into it.

So, in class this week where I was doing door work, I went deeper.

She left me.

Which was brutally hard and emotionally debilitating and stirred up new things for me.

It also got me lost, because I wasn't focusing on my partner -- loving her and believing everything she said.

So, cool, I've experienced another area (about which I already knew intellectually) in which I need work -- staying connected and doing something while the emotion lives in me.

Good, growing couple of weeks.

Labels: acting, acting process, meisner, training