How I became an Acting Coach Are you a Meisner Coach?
This is a question I am often asked both on line and at the studio from actors who are auditing my Classes. The answer is yes and no . My Work is very rooted in the meisner technique and in fact I had no massive breakthroughs and giant revelations about my self as an actor, until I studied meisner. Prior to studying Meisner I had gone through the stella adler school and got the wonderful chance to work with her personally. After that I had worked with a very well known method coach who specialized in emotional exercises, but I was totally lost doing scene work in that class and realized that I was more in my head as an actor than ever and it was time to leave. Don't get me wrong , I don't regret the time lost doing these emotional exercises, because I believe this is important to understand ones emotional instrument, but that teacher thinks he is a good acting teacher and I think this coach is a good emotional tool and instrument teacher.
So ,then my agent at the time had strongly suggested that I work with a coach named Ed Kaye-Martin , he was a teacher who was once a Neighborhood Playhouse teacher trained by Sandy Meisner. I began working with him several years after he had left the Neighborhood Playhouse, by this point he had changed and modified some of sandy's work. He felt that the repetition exercise actually kept actors in their heads because the actors were constantly nodding their heads during the exercise. He believed that emotional life was on the body and that the emotional life in the original repetition exercise was not as truthful as people seemed to think it was. He also taught exactly what emotional life was and more important how to find yours. He also invented the improvs an extension of the activity work, to insure that actors were truly improvising once in text. He once said that he didn't have to spend a year of an actors training teaching them how to knock at a door. There are only a few of us who studied with Ed that actually teach this form of Meisner in the entire country, but this is not all I do in training an actor and I will speak about this in a moment..
After I began teaching, actually ten years later , I studied again myself and learned and researched the work of Uta Hagen and found it fascinating that her work was based on her own experience in the theatre and a technique that worked for her personally. At that time I realized that is exactly what each actor needs is their own technique. Each actor is so unique and works very differently from one another. I had read Respect for Acting back in high school and always loved the book, there are several aspects of Ms.Hagen's technique I adore, and do use in my Technique classes , but much of it is stage technique and not useful for today's actor. I also studied and worked with Sandy Meisner once I began teaching, I felt it was my duty as a coach to work with the direct source of what it was that I was teaching. He was not in the best of health during that period, but he knew good acting, and still called actors on their B.S ,even though it was difficult for him..
That is my studying and researching history. I have been coaching/teaching working actors for over twenty years now, I am finally working on a book ,but make no promises that my book will not change in twenty years. This is because I don't teach or coach the same way I did back then, because acting has changed so much since then. A good coach must know this, and change with the times. I am so fortunate to have worked with the teachers I had. If I had been born any later I would have not gotten that opportunity and I am only 47 years old.
I will now finally answer the question, yes I am a meisner based teacher. Many Meisner graduates of other programs really enjoy my classes because they feel it is a much more raw , modern and visceral approach, and made for the advanced actor, but they are talking about my advanced professional classes. First off I work with each student as an individual, what is good for mary may not be good for george. Everything done in my classes leads to doing scene work. I have written over 3,000 personal improv situations for my students through the years. When I work with a new actor I begin two things, getting them out of their heads and into their body . I get them doing the doings, because acting is the reality of doing. I start them on having vivid day dreams and emotional preparation These first steps the actor takes in my classes come from hagan an meisner. They are doing Raw Moments a one word repetition and human experience with their partner..They are doing physical destinations, private scenes knowing where they came from and where they are going in the scene. Independent Activities and Knock at the door entrances ,sometimes with only 10 lines to communicate with. They are learning about actable actions and when to let go of those actions based on what is actually happening to them in the moment. They are finding their own emotional vocabulary and how to use it to trigger their emotional life. My time spent with Stella Adler has helped me to communicate what is IMAGINATION and how important it is to build as an actors muscle. The improv work that I teach is about the world of the script and your realistic relationships with others , the concept being that , This is Really Happening in this moment in the here and now, and the consequences are high .Learning how to emotionally prepare for a script , and how to let preparation come out in the moment . Meisner said that any idea in acting is a bad one, and I AGREE with this theory one hundred percent . An actor can not act from an idea its logical and unactable, an actor can only act from what is specific to them personally..In my studio we deal with no generals only specifics. Training an actor to live truthfully in imaginary circumstances many coaches do, but I have found this process to be different for each actor. So I am a little bit of all my teachers, but I am mostly about the actor that is right in front of my face. How do I help them grow and and become a better actor? How can I help them make their weakness into their strengths, and a strong sense of themselves and their own instrument. How can I help them to get more acting jobs by working with their persona and their craft? ok nuff said for now I will shut up with this.
