Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner & Dennis Longwell

Author:Sanford Meisner & Dennis Longwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780307830630
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-11-06T23:00:00+00:00

March 1

“What are you doing, Ralph? This is no good, you know?” Meisner interrupts the exercise which Ralph and Rachael began only a few minutes ago.

“Well, last night I met the Penthouse magazine ‘Pet of the Month’ at a bar, and I had her laughing all night,” Ralph says nervously. He holds a notebook and a pencil in his hands. “I told her I’d write her a funny poem about how to go from being a fold-out to real life—”

“The difficulty in that is that your imagination is without reality. That’s one problem, which I’ll discuss later. Another is that you’re forcing all sorts of dialogue to happen so that you’ll feel you’re continuously active. You keep talking, keep relating to her not on the basis of what she’s doing, but in order to perform. I don’t know how to make this clearer to you.”

“I understand. I felt that I was performing too. I was forcing it.”

“Why do you do it?”

“I don’t know. It comes down to the old thing, I guess: wanting to be the champ.”

“Exhibitionism,” Meisner says. “That’s not necessarily bad. As an actor, you must have a certain amount of exhibitionism.”

“Do you want me to say what that means to me? It means that I’m trying to show off.”

“That’s right. What’s the best way to act well?”

“The best way to act well is to live truthfully, and don’t create a phony situation.”

“Why do I have to ask you when you already know this?”

“Because my natural tendency seems to come out.”

“Your unnatural tendency.”

“Okay, my unnatural tendency. I was thinking about the preparation, and I guess I planned it too much. I was wanting to be good, instead of just—”

“Ralph, did you ever hear that phrase ‘Don’t do something until something happens …’ ”

“ ‘… to make you do it,’ ” Ralph says.

“Right. What’s that mean?”

“It means that I shouldn’t have done anything to fill the gaps.”

“That’s right,” Meisner says. “Who do you want to be, Milton Berle?”

“No.”

“Thank God!”

“Though I guess somewhere inside I do,” Ralph says, and the class laughs.

“The funniest thing—not the funniest, I’ve heard funnier—but the thing about you—I was thinking about it—is that I said something to you one day in class, and ever since then you’ve gone off balance. What was it I said?”

“Something about the fact that I’m blocked. I remember I couldn’t get angry in a scene, couldn’t prepare for it. I think that ever since then I’ve taken it to mean that I couldn’t prepare at all, and so I’ve been trying to prove that I could.”

“I never said that.”

“I know you never said that. It was my, you know …”

“I liked your entrance very much. You came in singing. But if Rachael hadn’t been there it probably would have been better. Why do I say that?”

“Because I wouldn’t have felt the imperative to push anything. I would have had to do what I had to do—namely, write that funny poem—and not try to prove in neon lights that I can work off the other person.

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