The Actor's Art and Craft: William Esper Teaches the Meisner Technique by William Esper & Damon Dimarco

Author:William Esper & Damon Dimarco [Esper, William]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307481146
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

Bill chuckles. “You see why I love these exercises?” Vanessa and Trevor have returned from the hallway looking as if they’ve just disembarked from a thrilling amusement park ride. Trevor snorts with laughter as he removes the last loops of toilet paper from his head. Bill points to the tangles. “What’s with the mummy outfit?”

Trevor shrugs, beaming. “I was out in the hallway, waiting to begin. You came out and gave me the all-clear. But then I thought, Wait a minute. If she sees my face and recognizes me, I’m finished, right? Doesn’t matter if I grab the money or not. So there I was standing next to the doorway to the men’s room and I had this flash: I could make a quick mask for myself using toilet tissue.”

“Good work,” says Bill. “For a moment I thought you were a goner.”

“When he bolted from the room the first time,” Cheryl says. Bill nods.

“Yeah,” Trevor says. “But then it hit me that I’d left my damn cell phone in there. It’s got all my contacts in it. Vanessa would’ve been able to figure out who it belonged to before long. So I thought, To hell with it, I’ll just go for broke, and I barged back in. That’s when I saw all the stuff lying on the table.”

“But why did you grab everything off the table?” Bill asks. “Why not just grab the envelope?”

Trevor unwinds the last loop of toilet paper. “I don’t know,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking too clearly right then. It was more like an instinct. More like: Oh, shit! Better grab it all!”

“Operating on instinct,” Bill says, repeating the phrase to accentuate it. He nods as if congratulating Trevor, and turns to the class.

“Write this down: What? Why? Where? When? And Who? That’s the formula for constructing a Criminal Action Problem. What specifically do I want—what object do I need to steal or alter? Why do I need it—in other words, why do I have to commit this crime? Where is the thing I need located? This should always be a place where you’re not supposed to be. When refers to: When is the best time for this crime to take place? The middle of the night, when the other person is asleep? Early morning, when the person who lives here isn’t home? Finally, Who refers to the relationship you have with the other actor. You might invent that you’re acquaintances. Former lovers. Old friends. Brother and sister. Employee and supervisor who don’t get along. You might even craft that you’re total strangers. Some kind of relationship has to be there, and again, the actor with the objective comes up with all this.

“Remember: The aim of Criminal Action Problems is to acquaint the actor with heightened circumstances. The exercise is based on a very simple principle: People are at their most alert and alive when they’re in the greatest danger, when the stakes are life-and-death and their adrenaline’s pumping a mile a minute. It’s all too easy to dodge the full impact of that adrenaline rush with words or intellectualizations.

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