Want to be an actor? - Sanford Meisner

Sanford Meisner is one name that inspired generations. He is listed in this list of techniques that I have accumulated over the last two years with important information thought by the acting intellectuals, such as Stanoslv... Stanslavsk... Steneirlas... it's somewhere in what I wrote...

The actor’s steps

1. First, you must build an intelectual sub consciousness – all the academic lessons, techniques, theories about acting – which cannot be in your consciousness when acting on stage – which Stanford Meisner says it takes years for an actor to assimilate, without having to think about, like playing the violin:
-Remember that you have to react to what the other is going to say to you. You have to listen to what the other has to say. This way there is no chance you are going to compose your words;
-Not only listen… believe!
-Imagine what kind of atmosphere you are going to enter in before you enter in it; unless the atmosphere is already there
-Remember that it is your movement that triggers the feeling in you, not the other way around; if you want to feel strong, do a movement that is strong;
-Only move if you have a reason to move. If not, remain still. Remember, a still actor is a good actor. Acting comes from the voice, the eyes, and little from the face.
-be completely focused on a personally significant objective, because of which all your choices will be justified
- remember that you don’t create an emotion and then do things because of that emotion: you do things to fulfill a need, and emotion naturally results from that doing
-there must be spontaneity in your words and actions, as you say or do them “for the very first time” – for that don’t think about the mechanics but about your objective – the baseball player thinks about hitting the ball, not about how he is going to swing the ball – remember what Lee Strasberg said : the hardest thing in acting is not knowing what you know.
-forget the tendency of exhibitionism
-remember that everything that happens on stage has a purpose – not running for the sake of running or suffering for the sake of suffering or act for the sake of acting – have a purpose
-remember that there cannot be action directed immediately at the arousing of a feeling for its own sake
-remember that feelings are consequence of something that happened before – you have to think of that as hard as possible
-remember that there is no such thing as “somehow”, “in general” or “approximately”
-remember that you have to be aware either of the external circumstances of the set or the chain of circumstances that you imagined in order to illustrate your part;
-remember that “talent” is in the choice
-remember that acting is about being “specific”
-you have to speak your lines knowing who you are, where you are coming from, why, what you want, where you are going, and what will you do when you get there;
-the only way to forget the audience is to be interested in what is happening on stage;
-there has to be an object of attention on the stage, in the play, the role, and the setting; the attention has to be based on feeling, not on intellect – ask yourself questions such as “Do you like it?”
-remember that you can use the technique of the circle by Stanislavski, to where is the focus of your attention; sometimes it is small, sometimes it is big;
-when dealing with an imaginary focus on the fourth wall, your eyes should be looking at an angle like you were looking at the tip of your nose – it is the only way to fix your attention;
-don’t be afraid to look foolish
-remember that a live objective and real action naturally puts nature to work
-remember that when you are using an isolated part of your body, all the rest has to be fully relaxed
-do not exaggerate truth – overplaying truth is the worst of lies
-remember that if you have difficulty in believing in the overall action, you have to reduce it to smaller proportions so that you can believe in it – and if in that proportion a detail is not enough to make you believe in it, add more details
-don’t think about your emotions, think about what you have to do
-remember that action is doing – meaningful acting is doing under emotional/imaginary circumstances
-you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your own feelings;
-remember that the surroundings have a big influence in your feelings
-try to learn to look at and see things on stage, to give up to what is going on around you
-don’t think about the feelings itself
-for there to be connection with the other, there has to be an effort in conveying to the other your thoughts and absorbing it from the other in back – when you speak to the person who is playing opposite you, learn to follow through until you are certain your thoughts have penetrated his consciousness; in turn, you must learn to take in, each time afresh, the words and thoughts of your partner
-you must seize with your eyes, ears and all senses – listen intently, smell hard, use your eyes, without unnecessary muscular tension; - such complete grasp doesn’t happen in real life but it is essential on stage
-you must adapt to circumstances, time and to each individual person – if you deal with a stupid person, you must adjust to his mentality
-all the adjustements by the director, other actors or friends have to be adapted in your own needs, your own, part of you – which is done involving a new set of given circumstances and stimuli
-there has to be a “get it?” subtext in your lines – there is no “Duh!”
-do not listen to yourself speak
-in a soliloquy, find someone you are talking to – either yourself or God
-fill out what the playwright didn’t say about the character that day the situation happens – from waking up to that moment
-preserve your super-objective and through line of action – avoid extraneous tendencies and purposes foreign to the main theme
-remember that every action meets with a reaction which in turn intensifies the first
-appreciate spontaneous occurrences, which are means of drawing you closer to the subconscious
-don’t try to achieve inspiration – inspiration comes from how much you put your thought on what arouses your motive forces for that super objective
-do not put your energy into problems aside from your main purpose



2 - Before, during and after receiving any script, in your everyday routine:
- Don’t chew gum – it tenses your jaw
- Observe people around you. Observe how they react to certain atmospheres; Observe everything with penetration; study people, until sympathy for them becomes feelings of our own
-you must add to your store – acquire material from life around you, reminiscences, books, art, science, knowledge and, above all, communicating with others;
-you must lead a full, interesting, beautiful, varied, exacting and inspiring life
-know what is going on in the big cities, in the provincial towns, villages, factories and the big cultural centres of the world
-study the life and psychology of the people who surround you
- Observe the great actors act;
- Don’t see yourself as someone who “came into this world”. As said by philosopher Alan Watts, do not be an “I myself” separated center of feeling from an “outside” world;
- when you go to bed, train yourself to go through the whole day and put it in concrete detail;
-you have to find your particular type


3. After receiving your script:
- Read the script and try to understand the most out of it. Understand what each line means. If you have questions, ask someone!
1st, read the script from the point of view of the playwright – what is the story about?
2nd, read the script as an audience member
3rd, read it as the actor

3. Construct your character:
- Determine a super objective in the entire play for your character – the super objective has to:
Derive from interesting, creative thinking
Has to be an emotional objective
Has to be based on will
- Do bookwork
• Divide the text into “units” and “beats” – in this process the units have to be small, as opposed to during the performance, where they become bigger
• think about what do you want with each one of your lines and what triggers you in the script to act that way. Think about the who, what, where, when and why you are going to get what you want. You have to want something, as the character. You must want something and think about how you are going to get it. Attention! You can’t want to feel something! It has to be something that can be done, such as persuade, get rid of, to dominate, and not “to love”, “to hate”. Define your objectives as singular, immediate and personal – SIP. Divide then objectives into:
a – immediate objective; b – beat objective; c – scene objective
rules about objectives:
objective has to be directed towards the other actors, and not towards the spectator
it has to be personal yet analogous to those of the characters the actor is portraying
it has to be creative and artistic
it has to be real, live, and human
it has to be truthful so that the other and the audience belives in you
it has to have the quality of attracting and moving you
it has to be clear cut and typical of the role the actor is playing
it has to have value and content
it has to be active
write the meaning of your objective through a verb, not a noun – an active verb
the accomplishment of an objective as to be followed by another objective


• Find “essence words” and color them in orange. These words are words that you think will make you react to them when you speak them.
• Give names to the units – that helps draw the objective of each unit
• Define what are your “needs”
• Paraphrase your lines
-Write down Schepkin’s character traits –
1. psychological: simple or complex? Fast or slow? Rigid or flexible? Precise or vague? Rational or intuitive? Global or sequential?

2. physical

3. social: childhood environment, educational background, socioeconomic or class background, work experiences


4. moral: my religion is…; I believe than when we die, we…; the greatest thing one person can do for another is…; the person I admire the most is…; I would define a good person as someone who…; the person I detest the most is…; the ugliest thing I ever saw was…; the proper role of government is…; I am superstitious about…; I want my epitaph to be…
-think of the relationships this character has with others, which determines the drama of the play
-Write down a list of questions you would make to your character and answer them yourself; The most important question, and this one is the first one to be asked – What is the main difference between you and the character?
-determine the way the character sees the world – your point of view – the way you see the other (the villain does not know he is a villain)
-Apply the “imaginary center” technique by Michael Chekhov:
* Self-satisfied, earthy, a bit heavy and even humorous – soft warm not too small center in the abdomen;
* Curious, inquisitive, prying and meddlesome – tiny, hard center on the tip of nose;
* Sly, cunning and hypocritical – tiny, hard center on one of the eyes
* Cowardly, not too honest, droll – big heavy, dull and sloppy center outside the seat of pants
* Sharp, penetrating and sagacious mind – few feet outside eyes or forehead
* Heroic, loving and courageous – warm, hot and fiery center in heart
* Bewildered – movable center that sways slowly before the forehead and circles the head from time to time
* Intoxicated – movable center that goes irregularly up and down through the body
-Apply the imaginary character’s center by Robert Benedetti, without forgetting that the centers might change:
Chest – lot of “heart” or quite sentimental, or tough and militaristic
Stomach – self indulgence, good natured, easy going, nurturing, a good parent
Genitals – sexy
Anal – severe, sexually withdrawn, stingy, dogmatic, rigid in behavior
-Create the “characterization” – the “finishing touches” – certain gestures and postures you would think typical of the character, such as the blinking of the eyes;
-Try to “hear” the character speak
-Decide what is the kind of performance you are playing:
Tragedy – you have to feel the presence of something much more powerful than you that is following you – a “Someone” or “Something”
Drama – human attitude and to be true
Comedy – to stress a predominant psychological feature, but always being true without trying to be funny; change the tempo from fast to slow; imagine that there are “rays of happiness” coming out from the audience;
-You have to fill out what the playwrights leaves unsaid about the character

4. Memorize your lines.
-Memorize out loud, not with your mind. If you memorize it in your head, you tend to compose the way you are going to say it. Ignore “commas” when you act.

5. Relaxation/warm-up before entering on stage
- This process has to happen two hours ahead
-Perform various exercises to relax your body. A tense actor is not a good actor. Once you have physical tenseness you cannot think about delicate shadings of feeling or the spiritual life of the part; there is first a superfluous tenseness which comes necessarily with each new pose taken and with the excitement of doing it in public, then the mechanical relaxation of the superfluous tension, then the justification of the pose if it does not convince the actor
-Warm up your voice and find energy. An actor needs a lot of energy!
-Good exercises: push the wall, the ka exercise, articulators, push ups, breathing, massages, etc;
-choose an object – what does it represent? How big is it? Colours? Then a small circle, no further than your own feet. Choose some physical objective. Motivate it, add first one and then other imaginative fictions. Make your action so truthful that you can believe in it! Think up various suppositions and suggest possible circumstances into which to put yourself.

6 – Act.