Fear: Fuck Everything and Run, or Feel Everything and Relax?
Fear never fully leaves, so good actors learn to work with it. Ashlie Walker on curiosity, feeling, and relaxing in the face of fear.
Meisner-based actor training
Meisner Technique: learning to stop acting
A practical, often surprising way of training that takes the attention off yourself and puts it on your scene partner.
What is Meisner Technique?
Meisner Technique is an approach to acting developed by the American actor and teacher Sanford Meisner. He famously described acting as "living truthfully under imaginary circumstances". The training builds the actor's ability to listen, respond on impulse and stay connected to their partner, rather than planning or performing an effect.
The repetition exercise
Much of the early training uses repetition. Two actors repeat an observation back and forth. It looks simple, and it reveals a lot. Over time the exercise changes, as each person learns to respond to what is really happening between them. As Ashlie wrote about the work at The Actors Temple: no two repetitions are the same, just as no two performances are the same.
Repetition is a learning tool, then a practice tool, and eventually a rehearsal tool. It brings you into direct contact with yourself and the other person. For a profession that can be very isolating, that matters.
"It's never about you"
Actors can be incredibly self-conscious. Standing up in front of strangers and speaking someone else's words isn't natural. Many arrive wanting to be interesting, good, liked. Meisner-based training confronts that head on. You learn to direct your attention away from yourself and onto your partner, or onto what you're doing. When the gold is in the other person, you stop watching yourself, and the audience gets to see a real human being.
How Ashlie teaches it
Ashlie doesn't teach Meisner as a rigid formula. Her approach is Meisner-informed: it uses the exercises because they work, and shapes the rest around what is happening in the room between student and teacher. It's a personal process, from the inside out. The aim is what she calls an actor's faith: the ability to act on impulse with a highly tuned sense of direction. That takes time, practice and a commitment to working through fear.
She brings this into 1:1 coaching, audition preparation and role work, as well as group workshops.
The Meisner experience with Ashlie was eye-opening for me not only from an actor’s point of view, but also from a human being’s point of view. Ashlie’s brilliant way to teach and how she guides away from controlling the scene is something to experience.
I am marvelled by this practice of learning how to really listen and see a fellow human being. This has made me much more aware of my own insecurities, defences, longing to connect, to be seen and heard and also my ability to really connect!
She made me feel safe 100%. It’s the only way to learn, with the guidance of a teacher who has acquired a deep understanding of the technique.
It was safe, even therapeutic to work with Ashlie, and I feel that I was able to extend both my emotional scale as well as let go of learnt patterns limiting it.
Reading
More on Meisner from Ashlie
Meisner heads for Helsinki!
Actors Temple co-founder Ellie Zeegen asks Ashlie Walker about taking Meisner-based actor training to a community of actors in Helsinki.
Let's talk about Meisner
Ashlie Walker on why Meisner-based exercises help actors stop self-monitoring, listen properly and work truthfully from moment to moment.
Let's work on what's getting in the way of your best work.
Online, in person or on set, by arrangement. Tell Ashlie where you are in your career and what you're working towards.