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PRIN CIPLE S OF TRUTHFU L ACTING: A THEOR ETICALDISCOURSE ON SANFORD MEISNER'S PR ACT ICE

byLOUISE MALLORY STINESPRING, B.A. , M.A.

A DISSERTATIONIN

FINE ARTSS u b m i t te d t o t h e G r a d u a t e F a c u l t y

of Texas Tech Universi ty inPar t i a l Fu l f i l lment o ft h e Re q u i r e m e n t s f o rthe Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Approved

Accep ted

Dear f to f the Gradu^e School

May, 1999

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Copyright 1999, Louise M allory Stinesp ring

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dr. Amie Thomasson c ontributed an extrao rdinary am ou nt oftime an d energ y to this project. She has an amazing mind an d sh eshared her every thought with me in an effort to test our theories.Like a great scientist. Dr. Thomasson is relentless in her pursuit ofexcellence and to work with her has been a rare and deeplyrewarding experience.

Dr. Dean Wilcox helped me in so man y ways. Above all, he hasan intellectual enthu siasm which is truly contagious. Tha nks to him,I found the passion to continue my work, when it seemed the mostdifficult.

Dr. Daniel Nathan has been a m en tor and a friend. Above all.Dr. Nathan h as the kind of hum anity o ne looks for in a true friend.He is such a wonderful teacher, so kind, so patien t an d so steadfast inhis commitment to helping students traverse some of the moretreacherous territory in the world of philosophy. I will always begrateful to him for his kindness and sup po rt.

Dr. Linda Donahue for her support and helpful suggestions.Professor Fred Christoffel for his compelling questions at the

defense an d for his supp ort though out m y gradu ate career.Dr. William Westney tau gh t me tha t art is art . Not only is he aprofou nd m an, he is a great artist. Than ks to Dr. W estney, I hav e

been ab le to see how Sanford M eisner's work m ight apply to music.

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Dr. John Stinespring m arried m e. He helped me think clearlywhen I just wanted to be emotional. He is my favorite professorbecause I am in love with him.

Dr. George Sorensen continues to inspire me. He stands to bethe finest single teacher I have ever had the privilege to learn from.Laura Mallory and Tom M allory have been patien t andunselfish while their mother continually had to say, "Sorry, nottoday, 1 have to work on my dissertation." Thank you.

To Marilyn Gilchrist, who has taught me how to live.And, finally my mother, Virginia Turner for helping me in

every way possible. Thank you. And my dad . Dr. Harold Turner, forhis artistic and intellectual greatness.

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TABLE OF CONTENTSACKNOWLEDGMENTS iiCHAPTER

I. TRUTHFUL ACTING VERSUS FALSE ACTING . . . . 1Int roduct ion 1False Acting 26Tru thful Acting 47

11. THE PRELIMINARY EXERCISES AND THE WORDREPETTTION GAME 67

Introduct ion 67Prelim inary Exercises 76The W ord Repeti tion Game 84

A Bridge Exercise: Enter Th e Pa rtn er . . 84The M echanical Rep etition Exercise 89Introduction to the Repeti t ion FromO ne's Own Point of View 99The Bridge From Th e M echanicalRepetition To Rep etition From One 'sOwn Point of View 10 4The Repetition from One's Own Pointof View 11 0

I I I . THE EXERCISE 121Introduct ion 121

IV

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Th e Exercise-Level One 123The Ind ep en den t Activity 123The Knock 136

Th e Exercise-Level Two 145The Knock With T heEmotional Preparation 145The Imag inary Relationship 155

IV. TEXT AND CHARACTER 167Introduction 167Principle 2 170Principle 3 173Principle 4 176The Spoon River Exercise 178Reading The Text: The MechanicalReading Exercise an d The Easy Reading . . 190Scene Work 199

Textua l Analysis 200Emotional Prep aration 206Acting 213

Conclusion 221ENDNOTES 223BIBLIOGRAPHY 238

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CHAPTER ITRUTHFUL ACTING VERSUS FALSE ACTING

IntroductionAsk an actor why he acts and his answer will confound theclearest mind. Ask an actor how he acts and expect the same

confusion. Th ere are no simple answ ers to questions conce m ing thear t of acting . Any surv ey of textbooks on the subject will confirmth e rea lity t ha t a discussion of the ar t of acting, like a discussion ofthe art of living exists on the surface of an u nde rlying m aelstrom : aswirling pool of ideas , feelings a nd insights which n eve r finallycoalesce into a cohe rent w hole.

Maureen Stapleton, considered one of the finest actresses of thetwentieth century, when asked "Why do you act?" simply responded,"If I knew the answer to that!"-^ Countless examples of this kind ofrespon se to the question of why an actor acts could be used h ere tosup port th e point that often actors do not und erstand what motivatesthem to pursue this line of work. They also do n't seem to be able todiscuss how they act, to explicate their techniques for acting, withan y kind of precise language. One famous acto r even eschews th enecessity for acto r train ing . Sir Joh n Gielgud begins his Preface toThe Stanislaskv System, written by Stanislavsky's student andpro m ine nt Stanislavsky scholar, Sonia Moore, with th e statem ent, "Ihave n eve r really believed th at acting can be taught."^

If we listened to John Gielgud as th e au tho rity on actortraining, we might p ut the entire profession of "acting teacher" o ut of

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busine ss. Luckily, th ere are m any acting teach ers wo rking inAmerica today who are strongly committed to the principle thatacting, like dan cing an d playing a musical instru m ent, requ iresspecific tec hn ique s. Non etheless, problem s arise wh en actingteachers are asked to discuss their approaches to training the actor.Often, acting teachers do not have the time or the interest in sharingtheir techniqu es with those seeking to unde rstand the theoreticalaspec ts of acto r educa tion. If actors are una ble or unwilling todiscuss their method ologies and acting teach ers often take the sameposition, the n it becomes clear that th ere is a lack of subs tantivetheoretical m aterial on the ar t of acting.

In a recent article on actor education in America in The NewYork Times, Estelle Parsons, a well-known contemporary Broadwayactress, is quo ted as saying, "That's the problem in the Am ericantheaterw e d on 't re cord the way we train actors, so we can'trep rod uc e it."^ Ms. Parsons is correct in he r assessm ent of thisproblem . Although a survey of litera ture on acting training will yieldprim ary sources w ritten by acting teac hers on the subject of acting,the re is, non etheless, a continuing ne ed for more information abo utthe precise theoretical und erpinn ings of techniques for teachingacting.

The focus of this disserta tion is the exploration of one actingteach er's me thodology . This teacher, Sanford M eisner, has beenwell-known for years among professional thea tre circles, an d m orerecently, since his death on February 2 ,1 99 7, the wider academicthe atre c om m un ity is becoming aware of his con tribution to the field

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of actor edu cation . As one of his former stu de nts I can on ly lookback with amazement at the genius which informs this approach toacting.

History will be more than kind to this twentieth-century actoran d acting teacher who bequeathed his generation an d subsequ entgene rations a body of work already recognized by many as perha psthe single most imp ortan t contribution to the acto r's art. For m orethan fifty years Sanford Meisner sat behind a desk in his classroomat The Neighborhood Playhouse in Ma nhattan co m mitting himself tothe painstaking w ork of engaging his studen ts in the technicaltraining of the craft of acting.

Th ree years before his dea th, Sanford Meisner played the roleof a critically ill, somewhat obstreperous patient, on the well-knownco nte m po rar y television series, ER Peter Flint, concludes hisob itua ry of Sanford Meisner in The New York Times w ith StevenSpielberg's touch ing acco lade to M eisner's acting in this episod e ofER "It's a pleasure to see tha t after so m any years of teachingacting, the teacher finally gets to show the students that he's thebest.""^

It is easy to imagine Meisner's legacy in the form of countlessstudents, glued to their television screens, enraptured by histelevision perform anc e. At eighty-eigh t years old, M eisner's frailapp eara nce only contribu ted to his ability to realistically po rtray thecha racte r of an "old man." But the streng th of his perform ance wasno t in his physical likeness to the charac ter, bu t in his truthfulbehav ior as the cha racter. If the re is a touch of poigna ncy em bed de d

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in Meisner's final performance, captured by the realism that onlytwentieth century technology has perfected, then there is also aprofo und recogn ition of a master at work. Meisner used his craft totouch th e he arts of former stud en ts, as well as the television viewingAmerican public, as he revealed himself through the character heportrayed.

Bom in 1905 to parents of Jewish, Hungarian descent,^ SanfordMeisner had a childhoo d laced with trage dy an d art. I recall histelling ou r class at th e N eighborhood Playhouse abo ut th e dea th ofhis you nge r b roth er Jacob. Meisner is cited as telling aninterviewer,

I have ha d cons iderable ex perience in psychoanalysis, so Iknow qu ite clearly that the de ath of my bro the r when I wasfive and he was thre e was the do m inan t emo tional influence inmy life from which I have never, after all these years,escaped.^Sanford Meisner spent an u nha ppy , isolated you th, based on

the guilt he felt upon being blamed by his parents for his brother'sde ath . The family had planned a trip to the Catskills to "improvethree-year-old Sandy's health," and the younger brother died twoyea rs later from bovine tuberculosis, a disease he con tracted fromthe unpasteurized milk which was mistakenly given to him duringthe fam ily's stay outs ide of New York City. In M eisner's w ords

W hen I w ent to scho ol-after school, any time~ I lived in a stateof isolation as if I was some kind of moral leper, because myparents, who were good people but not too bright, told me thatif it h ad n' t b een for me, they wou ldn't have h ad to go to th ecountry, where my younger brother got ill, and from whichillness he died. The guilt tha t this caused was ho rren do us . In

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my ch ildh oo d I rare ly ha d friends. I lived, as I'm afraid I stilldo, in a world of fantasy.^Th rou gh out his yo uth M eisner found solace an d "emotional

release" thro ug h playing the piano.^ It is interesing tha t later in hiscareer as an acting teacher Meisner seemed particularly fond ofassociating the a cto r's skills with those of the pianist. It is ap pa ren tthat Meisner saw valuable connections between the ways an actormust practice his exercises, and the ways that the pianist mustpractice his scales.^ After graduating from high school in 1923, heattended Damrosch Institute of Music where he continued to studythe piano.-^^ But his oth er interes t, acting, had been on his m indsince he was in the frrst grade.-^-^

He ha d always w anted to be a professional a ctor, an d fmally atnineteen he began his professional career as an actor with theTh eatre Guild. He recalls his interview with Theresa H elbum , th eExecutive Director-^ an d Philip Loeb, the Casting Director^^ at theGuild at that time. They gave Meisner his first professional theatrejob as an ex tra in Sidney Howard's They Knew What They W anted,sta rrin g a ren ow ne d ac tres s of the time , Pauline Lord. "^ M eisner wasgranted a scholarship for study at the Theatre Guild School of Acting,directed by Winifred Le nih an .^ Already noticing the limitations ofthe Guild, Meisner recou nts his opinion of the director an d the schoolsaying th at Lenihan was "a stock-company technician" an d th e schoolwas "a very mediocre place."^^

In respo nse to his unre st with the G uild, Meisner we nt on tobecome one of the founding me m bers of the Group Th eatre (1931-

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194 0) a t th e age of twenty-five.-^^ His ye ars as an ac to r with th eGroup Theatre provided him with the experience and training whichhe would later pu t to practice as a full-time acting teach er. Am onghis acting credits accrue d un de r the auspices of the Group ar e SamFeinsch reiber in Clifford Odets' Awake an d Sine, an d the role of Juliein Odets' Paradise Lost.-^^

Although the Group disbanded at the end of the 1930's,Meisner's professional acting career continued through the 1940'san d the 195 0's. Prior to his 1994 Eg, app eara nce M eisner's lastprofessional role was in 1958 as Norman Mandel in S.N. Behrman'sThe Cold Wind an d the W arm, directed by Harold Clurman. ^^ Inrecou nting his past, Meisner boldly states tha t it was teaching, no tacting, which gave him the greatest satisfaction, saying, "The onlytime I am free and enjoying myself is when I'm teaching."^^Therefore, what audiences may have lost when Sanford Meisner leftthe stage was certainly m ore tha n reco uped by the beneficiaries ofhis choice to pur su e teaching full-time, namely his acting stu de nts .

Years earlier, Sanford Meisner launched his teaching career in1936, wh en h e was hired to teach acting at the NeighborhoodPlayhouse in New York.-^^ He left the Neighborhood Playhouse in1959, "after a rift with the ad m inis tratio n," ^ to begin a film careerin Los Angeles when he was hired to be the director of the NewTalent Division of 20th C en tury -Fo x^ He retu rne d to New York in1962, and headed the acting department of the American MusicalTheatre Academy for two years, and then resumed his position as

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hea d of acting at the N eighborhood Playhouse in 1964 , a position heheld until 1989.2"^

In 1989 Sanford Meisner left the Neighborhood Playhouse andNew York to take u p pe rm an en t residen ce in his two hom es, one inSherman Oaks, California, and the other on the island of Bequia in theC arrib ea n.^ He tau gh t at the Meisner/Carville School of Acting inNorth H ollywood, a school which he founded with his com panionJam es Carville, un til he retired from teaching in 1994.^^ M eisnerdied a t the age of 91, on February 2,1 99 7, in his hom e in Sherm anOaks. 27

If Sanford Meisner will be remembered for his contribution toAmerican acting in the twentieth century, then a look back at whatacting in America was like early in th e centu ry will be helpful forunderstanding how American acting has evolved since that time.The young Sanford Meisner, eager to pursue a professional actingcareer, received his earliest opportunities from one of the foremostthe atre organ izations in New York at tha t time, the The atre Guild.

Oscar Brockett, noted theatre scholar and historian, tells us thatthe Th ea tre G uild, which officially inco rpo rated in 191 9, was "a fullyprofessional company with the avowed purpose of presenting playsof m erit no t likely to intere st com merical m anagers. "^^ During itsfirst decade of productions, the Theatre Guild offered a wonderfulvariety of important new plays by both European and Americanplayw rights such as Toller, Strindbe rg, Shaw, O'Neill an d R ice .^ Th elist of foremost a ctors who app eared in these prod uctio ns is also

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impressive and includes such well-known names as Pauline Lord,Helen Hayes, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.^

In his informative chronicle of the Theatre Guild's first tenyea rs, Walter Eaton writes, "In a single deca de this orga nization hasgrown from an extremely humble and, indeed, semi-amateurbeginning to the undisputed leadership of the American theatre."^^If the Theatre Guild can boast of such success, then the obviousquestion remains, what type of acting was being done in theseputative performances?

A partial answ er to this question can be found in the sem inaltext on acting the ory . Actors On Acting. The editors, Toby Cole andHelen Krich Chinoy w rite, "Twentieth centu ry acting an d the atre is ahisto ry of the revolts against incipient commercialism a nd thespiritual emp tiness of the the atre. "^^ Furthe rm ore the y state that,

Thu s, it was that althoug h acting during the second half of thenin ethe en th cen tury in the U nited States as elsewhere wasturning toward realism, histrionic art remained a contest ofindividual stars pitted against each other in a traditionalrep erto ry. ^Th e Th eatre Guild continued this same tradition well into the

twentieth century by producing plays which starred well-knownactors of the tim e whose nam es would co ntribu te to the box-officedraw . Individual American actors excelled in their perform ancesthro ug ho ut th e eighteenth, nineteenth an d into the first part of thetwe ntieth c en tury . The history of acting in America boasts suchnam es as Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Laurette Taylor and Minnie

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Madden Fiske, to name a few of the actors whose performances werereceived with great acclaim.

Although the Theatre Guild presented plays by seminaldramatists, with the leading stars of the era, the American actor hadno access to a systematic app roac h to acting at the time of theinception of the Th eatre Guild in 1919 .

As m entio ned above, Sanford Meisner had little respect for theTh eatre Guild, accusing the Th eatre Guild school he atten de d of beinga "very medioc re place." His opinion is sha red by Harold Clurm an, aforemost Am erican direc tor and the atre critic, who also associatedhimself with the Thea tre Guild durin g th e 1920's. He refers to th eTh eatre Guild as the "new theatre" in his ensuing assessm ent of itsmerits:

The only fundamental difference between the new theatre andthe o ld is tha t th e former sells bette r stuff. These theatresalways will begin with a play, and never with a group of actorsthat may be appropriately considered part of it. They will tak ea co m pan y of actors, usually trained in the pe tty realism of theaverage com mercial play, and ask them to do French poetic-rhetorical dra m a, a mod ern German tragedy in the classicm ann er, or something equally foreign to th e m .^M orris Cam ovsk y, who was also an a ctor with th e Guild, offers

some wonderful insights into why the Thea tre Guild did not providehim with the tools he nee ded to act. In an interview which ap pe arsin Actors Talk About Acting. Camovsky credits the Theatre Guild forproviding him w ith "a continu ity of practice amon g actors,"^^ bu tthe n h e goes on to describe tha t it was du ring his yea rs with the

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Group T hea tre th at he finally got hold of a techn ique for working asan actor. Camovsky tells the interviewer:

After sbc yea rs with the G uild, an d even m ore with the atre sbefore th at, I myself came to the same kind of conclusion th atthe m ajority of our Group actors came to. Namely, we've got tobe basic; we've got to go back to the fundam ental rules. Findout what they are, because we were working in a kind of hit-or-miss way. Many actors, you know, go on to the stage or a replunged onto it or they're thrown onto it, because they'reeither good-looking or in some other way they have the rightkind of quality, as you know, for certain pa rts. And in this waythey get to have a certain excellence, a certain tec hniq ue ofprojecting themselves, but the y do not grapp le with acting asan art, wh ich it has a right to be considered. ^It can be reasonably deduced that although the Theatre Guild

was a major force in theatre organizations, and in its capacity topresent plays imbued with high merit, nonetheless, many actors ofthe d ay were no t satisfied with the T hea tre Guild's prod uctions fromthe po int of view of the acting. Although the Th eatre Guild may n othav e fulfilled the d esires of individual t he atr e artists in quest of asystematic technique for acting, yet, this organization did, in itssecond d ecad e, lend financial su pp ort to what was to become thesinglemost important theatrical venture of the twentieth century forthe dissem ination of a technique for acting, namely the GroupTheatre.

In ord er to fully ap preciate the G roup Th eatre's contribu tion tofurthering a systematic appro ach to the art of acting in America, itbehooves us to come to an un ders tand ing of realism: a newtheatrical style, alread y germ inating in Europe at the en d of thenineteenth century and soon to hold American theatre firmly in its

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grip for the en tire twen tieth centu ry. Of interest he re will be thewestern realist tradition of acting which spawned Sanford Meisneran d s ha pe d th e traditio n from w hich his work emerges. A look firstat a working definition of realism and the western realist traditionwill be helpful for an understanding of how realism affected thetren ds in actor training throug hout the twentieth cen tury in America.

According to Oscar Brockett, realism found its beginnings as am ove m ent in France in the 185 0's. He writes.

The m ain tenets of the new movem ent were: Art m ust depicttruthfully the real, physical world, and, since only thecon tem porary world can be observed directly, truth can beattained only through impersonal, objective observation andrep rese ntatio n of the world aro un d us.^^The Oxford Companion to the Theatre places Ibsen, the late

nin ete en th c en tury Norwegian playwright, at the forefront of them ovem ent in Theatre an d describes how realism "...spread rapidlyacross Europe, upsetting the established theatre, and demanding theevolution of a new type of actor to interpret the new playwrights."^^

If the movement of realism can be historically pinpointed, asBrockett attem pts to do , and so precisely defined in theatrical term s,it is nevertheless necessary to keep in mind that a term such as"realism" can be easily applied to many oth er historical periods inwhich "realistic" theatr e prevailed. For instance, a case for realism asa component of early Greek Theatre and as inspiration for the greatfather of Oed ipus, namely Sophocles, could easily be sup porte d.After all, if this famous character, born of one of the first greatplaywrights, Sophocles, and borrowed by the renowned Freud as a

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label for certain psychological tende ncies in th e developing male canlive in ou r im aginations from his incipience in 450 B.C., the n thepresence of Oedipus in our contem porary tho ught m ight sup port thepoint that realistic plays were being written prior to the end of thenineteeth century.

Yet, for purp ose s of historical accuracy and an u nd ers tand ing ofthe western realist tradition, it is necessary to make peace with thisterm , "realism," as one which generally began at th e end of thenineteenth century and continues to find usage today in itsapplication to con tem po rary Am erican the atre . By "western realisttradition," w hat is m ean t is the occ urrence of realistic plays andperform ance s in the trad ition of Ibsen which evolved in Americaearly in the twentieth century and found its strongest support amongsuch playwrights as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and WilliamInge, all of who m were writing for the the atre during the post WorldWar II era. This traditio n can best be unde rstoo d as a des criptor foran evolving tend enc y am ong those in the west, namely, Am ericans,who hungered for a taste of reality in their art.

William Gillette, an American playwright and actor (1855-1937), provid es us with some interesting insights into the challengesfaced by Am erican actors in the early twen tieth cen tury. W hen th egrowing trend of realism forced them to contend with its demands,acto rs found them selves lacking in tech nique . Gillette begins hisessay, "T he Illusion of the First Time in Acting," as it app ea rs inActors on Acting, with th e following pa rag rap h:

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So far as painted, manufactured and mechanical elements (ofthe play) are concerned, there is comparatively little trouble.To keep these things precisely as much in the background asthey would appear were a similar episode in actual life underobserva t ion-a / id nomore-As th e pro no un ce d difficulty- Butwhen it comes to the Human Beings required to assume theCh aracters which th e Directions indicate, an d no t only toassume them but to breathe into them the Breath of Life-andnot the Breath of Life alone bu t all ot he r elem ents a nd detailsan d items of life so far as they can be simulated, m any an dserious d iscourag em ents arise.^^Gillette raises the question of how actors will grapple with this

new realism by finding ways to perform their characters in such away as to yield real-life h um an beings on the stage. In his argu m entfor "th e illusion of th e first time," he explains the m any difficultiesinh ere nt in the art of acting, which emerge as the ac tor grapples w iththis tall or de r to act as if wh at is hap pen ing on the stage is actuallyoccurrin g the way it would in real life, since, in real life, ev en tssimply hap pen . The art of acting, with its dime nsions of character,text and aud ience , is further complicated by these elem ents whichdemand the actor's expertise and full attention in his preparation forperformance.

The challenges addre ssed by Gillette are m et by hiscontemporary, Constantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938), the Russianactor, directo r an d teach er to whom the history of acting in Am ericaowes its grea test de bt. As co-founder of the Moscow Art The atrewith Nem irovich D anchenko in 1898, Stanislavsky change d thecourse of theatre and acting history in ways that scholars are stilluncov ering. For the purp ose s of un de rstan din g Stanislavsky's directinfluence on Sanford Meisner's approach to acting, it is only

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necessary here to re-assert the standard claim that Stanislavsky'sco ntrib utio n to acting is intricately linked to realism a s it informs theactor 's work.

"Psychological Realism" is a general term often applied to thesystem of training which Stanislavsky developed over the course ofhis lifetime. By psychological realism, wha t is m eant is simp ly th econce pt th at th e actor must bring a certain psychological dim ensionto his character which will yield results which can be labelled"realistic acting ." Sonia Moore offers us a useful descrip tion ofStanislavsky's approach:

Stanislavsky saw that, probably because of the artificialatm os ph ere of the stage, in front of a mass of people an acto r'ssenses are often pro ne to paralysis. The actor the n loses thefeeling of real life and forgets how to do the simplest thingsth at he does naturally and spo ntaneo usly in life. Stanislavskyrealized th at an ac tor has to learn anew to see an d no t just topretend to see, to hear and not just to pretend to listen, that hehas to talk to his fellow actors and not just to read lines, that hehas to think and feel."^Stanislavsky set about to create a technique to deal with these

concerns. Sonia Moore explains tha t his system of acting revolvesaro un d the concep t that th e inne r psychological truth of the actor canonly be exp ressed th ro ug h "physical action.""^^ Stan islavsky 's"system" is based on the premise tha t the psychology of th echaracter is revealed through physical manifestations.

If "psychological realism" can be linked to the actor's ability to"think and feel," as Ms. Moore explains it, then the question remains,"how did Americans, specifically, Sanford Meisner, learn fromStanislavsky a way to teach a ctors to 'think a nd feel' on the stage as

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if the y were thinkin g a nd feeling in real life?" A brief look at t heGroup Theatre, the seminal fountain from which the Method pouredforth, will illumina te how Stanislavsky's techn iques took roo t in t hefertile soil of Sanford Meisner's creative explorations.

A mixture of theatre practitioners and intellectuals, them em bers of the G roup The atre sought a new app roach to the art ofacting. Dissatisfied w ith the very formal, stilted acting style whichwas prevalent on the Broadway stage in the 1920's, including thepro du ction s of the The atre Guild, the early mem bers of the Group,including Sanford Meisner, were comm itted to learning everyth ingthey could about about how to act as if they were living real life onthe stage.

Although th e Group Theatre did no t perform its firstpro du ction until 1 93 1, the re is no question tha t its inception can betraced to the impa ct of one singular theatrical event which occ urredeigh t ye ars earlier: the arrival in the Un ited States of a tou ringcompany from the Moscow Art Theatre.^^ Wendy Smith, in herthoro ugh history of the Group The atre tells us.

On Ja nu ary 8, 192 3, Stanislavsky's com pany bu rst like athu nd erc lap on th e New York theatrical world, which had nev erseen an y thing like its productions of The Cherry Orchard, TheThree Sisters, The Lower Depths, andTfte Brothers K aramazov.The intense psychological realism of the acting, the sense of thecharacter's inner life resonating in every line and movement,thrilled New York audienc es. Used to watching on e or two starssurrounded by supporting players, they marveled at theRussian's devo tion to an ensemb le in which all the actorssub ordina ted their personalit ies to the dem and s of thech arac te rs an d the play."^^

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Actors, directors and playwrights, some of whom were tobecome members of the Group were extremely excited by this newkind of acting wh ich em erge d from Russia. W endy Smith tells usth at Lee Strasberg w as "overwhelmed.""^ Harold Clurman , wh o wasthrilled by the performances and intrigued by the StanislavskySystem wrote that, "The first effect of the Stanislavsky System on theactors (of the Group) was a miracle.""^^

Clurma n w as one of the New Yorkers who y earn ed for a newensem ble of thea tre practit ioners who could speak to the m anypolitical and social needs of America at the beginning of a newdec ade . He began his famous series of impassioned talks abo ut h isvision for a new theatre in New York City during the winter of 1930-31."^ These well-attended verbal outpourings culminated inClurm an's founding of the Group Theatre along with h is two co-lead ers, Lee Strasbe rg and Cheryl Crawford. Sanford Meisner, afounding m em ber of the G roup The atre, joined his fellow groupmembers for its first training season which took place over thesummer of 1931 in Brookfield, Connecticut.'^^

A friendship between Harold Clurman and Sanford M eisner ha dbegun ea rlier when Aaron Copland, the young composer, in trodu cedthe two because he realized that Clurman was "as passionate aboutthe theater as Meisner was."^ Meisner also befriended LeeStrasberg at tha t time, as he recou nts in his introduc tion to his texton acting. In spite of the know n differences in app roac hes to actingwhich would eventually cause a decided rift between Meisner andStrasberg, Meisner writes glowingly of his first impression of

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Strasberg, stating, "Strasberg had a great, uplifting influence onme."^^

One can picture a twenty-five-year-old Sanford Meisnerembarking on this first Group venture in Connecticut with all thepassion which h e eventually b roug ht to his teaching of acting, apassion tha t was undim inished w hen I studied with him from 1971to 1 97 3. But forty y ears earlier, Meisner was not a teacher, b ut anactor, in desperate search not just for acting work, but moreimportantly for a way to work as an actor. Stating the im portan ce ofthe study of acting for the actor, he recalls, "Without the Group, Iwould have been in the fur b usin ess." ^

This statement could probably be reiterated by many Groupmembers (with the possible substitute of other professions besidesthe fur business, as Meisner's choice was probably based on the factth at his father was a furrier). The Group actors, whose co m m itmentsspran g from their aw areness of the new kind of acting training whichwas finally accessible to them, were artists eager to explore atechn ique of acting which bore such galvanizing results.

Particularly noteworthy is the Group's evolution in the summerof 1934 w hen Stella Adler retu rne d from Russia, wh ere she engagedin an intensive period of private study with Stanislavsky.^^According to Sanford Meisner, Ms. Adler's contribution rested in theclarification of certain acting problems related to "affective memory."Stanislavsky introduced the term "affective memory" ui histeachings. It refers to th e actor's use of his perso nal p ast h istory as ameans of calling up the appropriate emotion for a character in a play.

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According to Sonia Moore, Stanislavsky borrow ed the term from "thefamous French psychologist, T.A. Ribot"^^ She explains tha t in the1930's Stanislavsky replaced the term "affective memory" with"em otional mem ory."^^

Yet, th e term s "em otion m emory" an d "affective me mo ry" a rein fact used interch ang eab ly by Stanislavsky in an article en titled,"The Art of the Actor and the Art of the Director," written in the late192 0's for the Encyclopedia Brittanica.^ Stanislavsky uses theph rase , "affective (emotion) m emory," probably in an atte m pt to letthe reader know that both terms describe this same aspect of histechnique.

In the first chapter of his text on acting Meisner refers tohimself in the th ird person as he describes what Adler learned fromStanislavsky an d how th e Group inco rporated this new knowledge:

In the spring of 1934 Harold Clurman and Stella Adler metwith the Russian director, who was convalescing in Paris, andfor more than five weeks Miss Adler worked with him toclarify those aspects of the System (in the version taught to herby Strasberg) that caused difficulty for her and other membersof the G roup. The result of her work, which she rep orte d to theGroup th e following sum mer, was to deem phasize theimportance Strasberg had placed on "affective memory"-whichmigh t be defined as the conscious attem pt on th e pa rt of theactor to rem em ber the circumstances surround ing an emotionfilled even t from his real past in ord er to stimulate an em otionwh ich he could use on th e stage. Rather, Miss Adler said,Stanislavsky now thought that the key to true emotion was tobe found in a full understanding of the "given circumstances"-the human problems-contained in the play itself. This shift ofem pha sis was critical, and it led directly to a dim inution ofStrasberg's hold on the acting company a nd to his eve ntualresignation from the Group in 1935. On this issue, Meisner

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sided w ith Stella Adler, who was later to becom e a no ted actingteacher and close friend, and affective or emotional memoryplays no role in the system Meisner has evolved.^^

This early disagreement about whether the actor should use eventsfrom his real past in ord er to stimulate himself em otionally caused ape rm an en t rift betw een Sanford M eisner an d Lee Strasberg. It alsobecame a point of division for the many Group members, BobbyLewis, Stella Adler, Lee Strasbe rg, to nam e a few, who w ent on toteach acting in the 1940's and 1950's after the Group disbanded.These acting te ach ers ha ve all been associated w ith th e acting stylewhich emanated from the Group Theatre, commonly known as the"Method."

It is difficult to precisely pin dow n a definition for th e M ethod,as Steve Vineberg points out in his preface to his text entitled,Method A ctors Three Gen erations Of An American Acting Style. Hewrites, "From the time Americans began to practice it professionally,in the 1930s, the re has been strenuous argu m ent abou t exactly whatthe Method is."^^ Generally speaking, the term, the Method refers tothe system of acting which was developed by the members of theGroup Th eatre , based o n th e teachings of Stanislavsky and whichinclud es some of the following basic elem ents: sense m em ory,emotional memory, improvisation, imaginative personalizations andsubstitutions.^^

As a gen eral te rm for acting which ha s evolved from em issariesfrom the Group Theatre, the precise theoretical underpinnings of theM ethod rema in an enigm a. Each teacher of the Method will bring h isor her own artistic merit to the work, and each teacher will describe

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his wo rk in different terminology. In his me mo ir. Slings an d A rrows,Bobby Lewis describes his own app roa ch to teaching th e M ethod, bysaying:

I took the tra inin g I gratefully received from Lee Strasb erg inthe Group Thea tre days and m ade it my own by keeping wh at Ineeded, discarding what I did n't, an d altering all to conformwith m y own developing co nceptions as actor, director, an dteach er. So, too, I told th e people studying w ith m e that Iwould consider my best pupils to be those who gradually andgracefully forgot what they heard in class for the reason thatwhat they needed had become part of their own artisticmechanism: an d what they did n't had been discarded. My onefear in training was dogmatism~a sense that there is only oneway to do it, and that is your way.^^Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner would each take a slightly

different ap pro ach. Sanford Meisner's m ethodology , altho ughinformed by Stanislavsky, stands alone as a distinctive appro ach tothe tea chin g of acting . In on e of the ra re interviews Meisner gaveduring his lifetime, he spoke candidly to his interviewer, Paul Gray,about his own perspectives on the creativity involved in teachingacting:

Stanislavski evolved a set of principle s an d sta nd ar ds . Hisun ique p erson al application of his values con stituted hismethod. A current and prolific Russian translator of Russianthea tre books anno unce d that nowh ere in the entire U nitedStates is the Stanislavski System t ruly prac ticed. He is ofcourse absolutely right. We are Am ericans. We are no tnin etee nth -ce ntu ry Russians. We create from o urselves an dfrom ou r wo rld. W here the Stanislavsky System has bee ntaken over literally from his books, it has failed, as allimitations always do . Stanislavski's essential formu lations areeithe r universal or they are not. They are. If they w ere n'tthey would never have been useful to us.

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The creative teacher in America finds his own style, thatis to say his own method, as indeed every artist must.Otherwise he is a copyist. Copyists an d crea tors are m utuallyexclusive . "^^As th e cre ator of one of the m ost effective m etho ds of acto r

train ing , it is clear that M eisner was no "copyist." Pe rhap s this iswh y in 199 9, almo st exactly two years after his de ath , he is rising toa level of prom inen ce unsu rpassed by his colleagues. It is interestingto no te tha t for man y years, people outside of the professionalth ea tre w orld were not familiar with the na m e "Sanford Meisner."This could well be because durin g his lifetime Meisner retain ed an dencou raged a certain m ystery about why his technique should w orkand an anti-theoretic stance that discouraged any such discussion.

I clearly recall Meisner's railings against the idea that heshou ld w rite a book abo ut acting. It was 197 1 at the time and I wasa mere twenty-three-year-old aspiring actress seated in hisclassroom at The Neighborhood Playhouse in M anhattan. Heexp ressed his view th at it is difficult, at best, to talk ab ou t acting a ndsimp ly im possible to write abo ut acting. He tried to get us tounderstand his perspective which was that acting can only beexpe rienced , it can no t be dissected. He w anted u s to see tha t th eonly way an actor can leam his craft and ultimately understand hisown ar t is thro ug h the doing of it, no t speaking abo ut it. Herepeate dly re assure d us that h e would never write a book abou t howto teach acting because it would be of no service to the actor.

Ironically M eisner changed his m ind, and in collaboration withDennis Longwell, he w rote on e book a bou t acting, entitled, Sanford

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M eisner On Acting, published in 198 7. In the Prologue, Meisnerdiscusses the very issue of his earlier resistance to putting his ideason pa per. He makes mention of two aban don ed a ttem pts to write abook on acting saying, "I decided tha t a creative textbook a bou tacting was a contrad iction in terms, an d tha t it was foolish, evenw rong, to atte m pt to write one."^^ And indeed, Sanford Meisner OnActing is less a textbook than a teacher discussing his method ology inan anecdotal format which obscures any substantive explicitformulas for his technique.

M eisner discusses wha t could be seen as an apology of sorts forhis cu rre n t offering. He provide s a disclaimer for his decision toexpose his tech niqu e to his reading public through a discussion of th eac tor 's a rt as on e of self-revelation. One can deduce th at it wasdifficult for San ford M eisner to expose himself as an a rtist, a te ach eran d a theorist. He reinforces this concept by explaining to the re ad erth at h e will ap pe ar in the book, in the th ird person, referred to as"he"^^ He seems to wan t his reader to unde rstand that as author hehas committed himself to revealing much about himself and hisstudents in an attempt to give an accurate portrayal of what thehum an being, w heth er he be teacher or student, m ust reveal abouthimself in or de r to learn this technique,

Reading this book is akin to reliving my past, because it soacc urate ly cap tu res th e feeling of the Meisner classroom . M eisner'swriting style is bo th colloquial an d conve rsationa l. Sanford M eisnerhad a sharp wit and a rather biting perspective on life, and his textreveals these aspects of his personality. But for the pe rson not

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trained in the M eisner techn ique, this text offers little by way ofanalysis of how and why M eisner's principles work to produ ce"truthful acting." This tmthful acting is the kind of acting for whichthe Moscow Art Theatre in Russia, and the G roup Thea tre in Americaare so well-known as well as the kind of acting which is associatedwith many of Sanford Meisner's more famous studen ts includingDiane Keaton, Robert Duvall, Gregory Peck, Tony Randall, Jon Voight,and Joanne Woodward.

My inten tion in writing this dissertation has been to demystifythe Meisner technique by subjecting it to a form of analysis whichyields precise principles embedded in this technique. To facilitatethis analysis I have developed the "four principles of acting" whichare introduced in Chapter I and referred to in subsequent chapters.Although the wording of these principles corresponds with Meisner'sterms, Meisner never reached this level of analysis and theoreticaldiscussion. Some of Meisner's language has been appropria ted foruse in the principles, while some is culled from oth er sources. At theheart of Meisner's work is his definition of acting as, "livingtruthfully un de r imaginary circumstances. " ^ Therefore this idea hasbeen incorporated in the wording of Principles 1 and 2. The writingof Principles 3 and 4 departs from Meisner's terminology to moreclearly illuminate his process.

Following the general chronological ord er of when the exercisesare taught, I have sifted through every exercise in an attempt touncover th e discrete principle, or part of the principle, which informseach segment of each exercise and then I have determined exactly

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which p rinciples are at work during th e course of trainin g. Eachexercise has come un de r trem end ous scrutiny in an atte m pt to pindown the precise workings of each principle in practice.

The goal of this docu m ent is to unpack M eisner's techn ique inord er to uncover why this technique works to produc e truthfulac ting . In Cha pte r I, I will offer definitions of "false" acting a nd"truthful" acting. These definitions a re based on observa tion ofSanford Meisner's course work and his text with regards to the kindof acting tha t would result from studying his techn ique s. Thedefinition of "false" acting is based on the kinds of acting w hichMeisner set himself and his methodology against

W ithin the bo dy of the text I explain wha t principles of actingcan be used to de m on stra te how truthful acting occurs. For acting tobe truthful, it must yield results which bear evidence that the actorbeh ave s as if he were living real life. To su pp or t this, 1 discuss someof the ways that Meisner's technique is designed to teach actors thatthe a rt of acting is merely th e art of living real life on the stage. Ofcourse, Gillette, Stanislavsky and Meisner realized, the phrase "on thestage" holds all the challenges and difficulties which the actor mustface, considering that an actor's being on stage implies that he isbefore a live audie nce. And the rein lies all the difference. A seriesof exp lanation s will be offered as a means to unc over how M eisner'steaching, thro ug h the principles of truthful acting, wo rks to p rodu cetruthful acting.

Chapters II, III and IV cover specific exercises which compriseMeisner's methodology designed to teach tmthful acting, as

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desc ribed in Cha pter I. For each of M eisner's exercises the re is adescription of that exercise and an explanation of why Meisner hadhis stu de nts perform these exercises precisely tha t at this jun ctu rein their training. Th rou gho ut th e body of the text the followingqu estion s will be add resse d: how does this exercise co ntrib ute to t hestudents' development towards fulfilling the principles of truthfulacting, why ar e the y doing this at this time in their training, and howdoes the exercise build on and yet also contribute something new totheir training?

As a theatre artist, Meisner felt a calling to lead actors awayfrom con ven tiona l, hab itual, false styles of acting. His goals were todiscover a way to help actors find a mean s "to live truthfully un de rimaginary circumstances."^ A consideration of the essence of falseacting an d all the a ctors' hab its entailed, will open the d oo r to th epossibility of discovering th e palpable compo nents in he ren t in th ewo rk of acto rs who thrill their audiences thro ugh their acting.

The purpose of this study is to determine how and whySanford M eisner's acting tec hnique w orks to produ ce a kind of actingwh ich is a lot like real life. Countless luminaries in th e field of actingand directing attest to the fact that Sanford Meisner, as a foremostacting teacher, has profoundly affected the art of acting in Americaduring the latter half of the twentieth century. A look at th e well-respected actors who attest to this technique and its influence ontheir ability to act well becomes one indication of the success ofM eisner's ap pro ach to acting. Meisner's techniqu e of acting iscurrently enjoying national attention in both professional and

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academic theatre circles because it is well-known that his techniquepro du ces " truthful acting" in his stu de nts . If the M eisner exercisesprod uce tm thful acting, then it becomes necessary to determ ine theco m po ne nts of truthful acting so we can see wh at it is tha t histechniqu es are designed to produce. And certainly, one easy way tounderstand tmthful acting is to first take a thorough look at theco m po ne nts of "false acting."

An understanding of the distinctions between false acting andtruthful acting will be enhanced by first looking at a common idea ofthe definition of acting , so labelled he re "false acting." Recognizableby its simplicity alone, the definition would be fine in the hands ofthe scholar, and certainly suitable for the playwright and thedire cto r. Yet, it will be seen tha t convention al tho ug ht on this sub jecthas exten ded itself into widely accepted theoretical an d practicalperspec tives on th e art of acting and the impact of this theoretic h asbeen d ead ly. Not only has it infected th e ar t of acting with a diseaseof misconceptions, it has also stultified the minds of the practitionersof this art form, nam ely actors.

False ActingThe com m on idea of acting, so labelled he re as "false acting," is:

An ac tor is rep rese nting a cha racter distinct from himself guided bya text for a live au die nc e. (Parenthetically, it m ust be m ade clearhe re th at this bro ad, general definition is no t mea nt to take intoacco unt stylistic modifications such as Brechtian or Postm odem istictren ds . Rathe r this definition is offered as a m eans to un de rstan din g

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acting as it is commonly perceived on the most general spectrum,especially as practiced in the we stern realist tradition.)

The three features which emerge from this definition of falseacting are as follows: the acto r rep rese nts a cha racte r distinct fromthe actor, the actor is guided by a text and the actor po rtrays thech ara cte r for a live aud ience . Each of thes e features h olds within itthe possibility for misuse and misunderstanding and each can belinked to an acting flaw.

The first feature of the definition is that t he actor rep res en ts acha racte r distinct from the actor. The acting mistake which can occurhere Is indication. To represe nt a cha racter is to indicate a cha racter,if indicating means to show the character rather than to be thecharacter.

A grave, but com m on misconception abo ut acting lies in theconce pt th at acting is a form of repre senta tion, which leads to th eobvious question, does an actor represent the character she isplaying? Certainly not. The very word, "represent" belies the n atu reof the art of acting. To repre sen t a cha racter would place the a ctor'swork in some context of removal or detachment.

The concept of representation implies that the actor wouldperceive his ch ara cte r as sepa rate or distinct from himself. Hereinlies the ve nu e for false acting to occur. If the ch ara cte r is perceivedas an entity at least one step removed from the actor who portraysthe character, then the actor will approach his character work withsome form of a men tal outline or bluep rint for the charac ter. Forinstance, an actor cast in the role of Hamlet, who considers himself in

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th e position of "represe nting" Hamlet on-stage would be likely toap pro ac h his work by m aking a list of Ham let's ch arac ter tra its."Indecisive" cou ld be at th e top of th at list. His next step migh t be tofind a way to po rtra y or play the quality of indecisiveness. Histhin kin g m ight go as follows: "when I get to tha t 'To Be or no t tob e ' ^ soliloquy, I be tter find a way to repre sen t H amlet's inability tom ake a choice, his con stant w avering wh en it comes to a decision.After all, Hamlet can't decide whether to kill his uncle and now inthis mo nologu e he can 't even decide w he ther to live. I m ust findways of behaving w hich will show th e audien ce th at Hamlet has apsychological prob lem . Maybe on that first line of the monologue , 'Tobe or not to be, th at is the q uestion,' 1 should look towards thehea ven s an d simply ask God above to help m e make this decision."

The actor's hypothetical thinking process has been describedhe re as a m eans of illustrating th e pitfalls of repre sen tation. Thisacto r is m entally plann ing his performance. He is bringing apreconceived notion about her character into her interpretation ofth e role. Often, actors refer to them selves as playing a role. Eventhese words seem to suppo rt the concept that an actor represe nts acharacter or at the very least that the actor perceives himself assep arated from the ch aracter she is "playing."

When an actor approaches the role of Hamlet with the idea thathe will rep res en t o r play Hamlet, the n he stan ds to give aperform ance in which he "indicates" the role of Ham let. In oth erw ords it becomes clear tha t if the a ctor engages in the faultythinking tha t his task is to "represen t" a charac ter, the n it will

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naturally follow that his performance will be replete with momentsof indica ted acting. By indication, w hat is m ean t is tha t th e actor isnot fully involved in the process of living the life of the characterand his world on the stage, but instead he approaches the stage lifewith a detac hed view towards showing the aud ience how Hamletwould behave in his situation at Elsinore. This results in actingwh ich does no t seem realistic to the audience. An acto r who is"indicating" can often speak the lines clearly, and with anund erstan ding of their meaning. He can move deftly ar ou nd thestage in a ma nn er wh ich appea rs to be like the ch arac ter. He caneven m od ulate his voice to take on the vocal characteristics of therole, but nonetheless, he is still indicating.

Often, the u ntra ine d ey e hi th e audience will no t be aware t ha tan actor is indicating. This is precisely because so man y actors,professional an d am ateu r, do indicate. As explained, indicatingderives first and foremost from faulty thinking about the actor'sapp roac h to ch ara cte r work. If an acto r sees himself as playing arole, then it naturally follows that his performance will be indicated.As was me ntion ed earlier, the re are ma ny sub tleties involved in anydiscussion of an ac tor who indicates. It is very un de rstan da ble foran aud ience m em ber to be unaware tha t the actor playing Hamlet isa false acto r bec ause he is indicating . And ye t, for insta nce, if th eactress playing G ertm de h appe ns to be an accomplished actress,(perha ps o ne who ha s trained with Sanford Meisner), the audiencewill clearly notice the difference between the false acting of Hamletand the truthful acting of Ge rtmd e. In oth er wo rds, i t may he

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difficult for th e audience m embers to realize tha t they a re seeingfalse acting, until th ere is another ac tor on th e stage whose acting isimbued with that indescribable something which makes it believable.

The p roblem indicating presents as an example of false actingis that it stems from such a deep and prevalent misconception of thena ture of the a rt of acting. The conventional wisdom about actingcertainly rests on the principle that an actor pretends to be acha racte r on th e stage. This derives from the idea tha t the stage is aspace where people "make believe" they are in another world.Therefore, to continue this line of thinking, it would stand to reasontha t audience m embers attend the theatre in order to watch actorsmake believe on the stage. Acting teachers and studen ts alike areguilty of perceiving th e actor's work to be that of pretending to besomeone else (the character) in order to make the audience believetha t he is someone else.

These concepts of pretending and make believe lead right backto the concept of represen tation as embedded in false acting. Whenan actor sees himself as portraying or representing a character suchas Hamlet, then the actor opens himself to the possibility ofindicating Hamlet's characteristics on the stage. He thus sets out tofool his audience into believing that he is Hamlet through the use ofgestures and text. And, often, the audience is fooled into at leastmom ents of belief that Hamlet exists on the stage. But thesemom ents are few and far between if the actor is indicating the role.The audience's atten tion may be focused on many o ther aspects ofthe performance of the play, Hamlet, an d thus not be critically aw are

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misconception about the actor's relationship to the text is that thetext will reveal the actor's performance of a character. Thecharac ter of Hamlet, as written by Shakespeare in The Tragedy ofHamlet, Prince of Denmark, speaks lines in the play. These are thesame lines that countless actors over the centuries have spoken asHamlet in performances of this play. Yet, the text itself, the lines aswritten by Shakespeare, will have very little bearing on the actor'sinterpretation of the character of Hamlet. Certainly the text providesclues to Ham let's psychology and most certainly the text provides th eactor with all the words he will say as he lives the role of Hamletduring performance, bu t the text does not lead the actor to hischaracterization of the role.

If the text were the leader and the ac tor were the follower,then it would stand to reason that the actor's task is to "follow" orinte rpre t the text. Often the actor is referred to as the one whointe rpre ts th e text. It is common wisdom to think of the actor, let'ssay Al, in th e role of Hamlet bringing his unique interpretation to thecharacter of Hamlet in his performance of said character. It is thisperspective which leads to the gross misunderstand ing abou t howthe actor approaches a character as embedded in the text.

The text, as written by the playwright, is static in the sensetha t unless the playwright, director or actor makes a consciousdecision to change the words, the words remain the same on paper,A play such as Hamlet, written centuries ago, remains a historicaldocum ent, unchanged and intact, hundre ds of years after it has beenwritten. Therefore, a contemporary production of Hamlet, with Al

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cast in th e role of Ham let, may very well con tain t he exact sam elanguag e as a pro du ction of Hamlet with Sarah Siddons in th e role ofHamlet durin g the nin eteen th century. What is of imp ortance he re isthe concrete fact that the text does not necessarily change whenvario us acto rs, thro ug ho ut history, cast in the role of Hamlet, performthe ch aracte r on the stage with an audience present.

If the text remains the same, then the question arises, how willon e ac tor's performa nce of the cha racter differ from a noth er's? Ithas already been implied that conventional wisdom would say thatth e difference between two acto rs' work lies in their varyinginte rpre tatio ns of the ch aracter. Specifically, each actor read s thepart of Hamlet and creates his own vision of this fictional personage.Al might perceive Hamlet as a whimpering Oedipal figure,ema sculated by his mo ther G ertrude to such a degree that he isincapab le of m aking ad ul t decisions. Al's "inte rpreta tion" of the rolem ight includ e a decision to "play" Hamlet as a very imm ature,infantile, almost retarded human being who is driven by a need torec ap tur e a state of infantile bliss with mom my. His relationship tohis girlfriend, Ophelia, could be one in wh ich he tries to reca ptu re thelost love of the mother through relating to another woman.

A second actor. Will, on th e othe r h an d, m ay bring a verydifferent "interp retation " to the chara cter. Will might app roach thecharacter from the point of view that Hamlet is an extremely angryman who is given to fits of rage when life doesn't meet hisexpe ctations. For Will, the de ath of Ham let's father may be thecatalyst which sets off waves of anger which wash over the character

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th ro ug ho ut t he ev ents of the play. Will's Hamlet migh t be anarrogant, blustering fellow who takes great pleasure in abusing hisgirifriend, Ophelia.

These examples of varying interpretations are offered asevid ence th at on e ch arac ter can be "interpreted " differenfly by twoac tors . Of im po rtan ce h ere is the fact th at both the se visions ofHam let can be achieved by simply reading th e text. W hat if Al andWill were not actors, but graduate students in English writing essaysana lyzin g H am let's personality? Al m ight offer the title, "Hamlet:Infantile Amb ivalence Among Paren tal Figures." W hereas Will'sessay might be titled, "Hamlet's Rage: Remembering Leads ToDism emb ering." It becomes clear tha t a reading of the text lendsitself to a variety of interpre tations . Does the value of an actor'swo rk res t on h is ability to find a uniqu e or interesting"inte rpreta tion" of the character, much like the English stu den twh ose grad e de pe nd s on a certain ability to bring original thou ght tohis analysis of the famous Hamlet character?

Absolutely no t. Retum ing to the "follow the leader" concept,th e ac tor w ho creatively interp rets th e text is simply th e followingth e lead er, th e text. He is using the text as a guide to form a m en talco ns tm ct of his cha racter. In othe r wo rds he is analyzing the text inord er to dete rm ine the personality traits of the character. The textthus becomes the auth ority on the character. The actor uses the textas a guid epo st for th e choices he will mak e to create his c harac ter.His ch ara cte riza tion of Hamlet, for ins tance , will be based on h isability to creatively analyze and interpret the text.

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It becomes clear that the actor who is interpreting the text isfunctioning as a literary critic. And the actor, as literary critic, willturn in deadly work because his performance will sound like anintellectual ren derin g of the dialogue. The actor is perceiving his jobas one in which he analyzes the text and offers his analysis to theaudience. This job is aligned closely to the previously discussedconcept of representation, wherein the actor creates a ch aracterdistinct from himself. If the actor believes his job is to represent acharacter, then his literary criticism skills will serve him weU in hisendeavors.

The question arises, how does the previous description of theactor's relationship to the text qualify as a feature of false acting?The answer resides hi the premise that the actor can mentallyconstruct the character through th e use of intellect and analyticalreasoning . At this point it must be made clear tha t interpretation ofthe ch aracter throu gh reading the text does form one aspect of theactor's process. But what is at issue here are two concepts: that anactor can create a performance purely through textual analysis andthat the text stands as the determiner of the actor's performance of acharacter.

If an actor is thinking abou t the text as he engages in hisrehea rsal p rocess, then the result will be an intellectually basedperformance of the character. The very process of creating a mentalconstm ct for th e character will interfere with the ac tor's objectivewhich is to discover his behavior in the imaginary circumstancesem bedded in the text. In other words, the actor in the role of Hamlet

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must discover how he, the actor, would behave in Hamlet's situation.Th e acto r's discove ries of himself in H amlet's circum stances willoccur du ring the rehearsa l process as the actor discovers his ownways of behaving. This introdu ction of the term "behavior" inrelation to the actor's work will be explained later in this chapter andthro ug ho ut the ensuing cha pters. It is mentioned he re so as to allowfor the un ders tand ing that the actor 's work has less to do with theplaywright 's wo rds than is commonly unde rstood.

In question has been the concept that an actor's task isprim arily to inte rp ret th e text. If the actor, falsely tra ine d, compUeswith this perspective, then he will approach his creation of thecharacter by using the text as a kind of handbook which contains theguidelines and c riteria for his interp retatio n. It can be seen that theactor is placing his faith in the language of the text as a means tohelp him discover how to perform the chara cter. It becomes cleartha t th e actor, who relies on th e text for his performan ce, isabdica ting his respo nsibihty to the artistic process of creating acha racte r. He is mak ing no con tribution wha tsoever to the audien ce'sun de rsta nd m g of Hamlet. He is, instead, shnply creating a divisionbetween himself and his charac ter. The art of acting is no t anintellectual exercise bearing witness to interpretive skills, but ratheran art wh ich reveals hu m an behav ior. The playwright creates thelanguage of the charac ter and the actor endows the character w ithhis behavior.

Th ere is a secon d a nd equally egregious flaw m acting w hichemerges w hen the actor perceives his job as interp reter of the text.

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He becomes th e obvious victim of th e illusion tha t his acting residesin th e vocalization of th e text. Each word becomes an o pp ortu nity forthe acto r to express the tho ughts of the character in language.Similar to the con cept of intellectually analyzing th e word s, the acto rw ho engages in a vocalized in terpre tation falls prey to them isconce ption th at h is voice will suffice as the prim ary m ean s bywhich he revea ls his characterization of the role.

A hy po the tica l illustration of the actor, Al, offering a vocalinterpretation of Hamlet, will explicate the dimensions of this form offalse ac ting. A few lines from Hamlet's famous soh loqu y in Act III,scene i of Hamlet will serve as common ground for the discussion ofAl's interpre tation.

To be, or n ot to be; tha t is the question:Whether ' tis nobler in the mhid to sufferThe slings an d arrow s of outrageou s fortune,Or, to take a rm s against a sea of troubles.And by opposing end th em .^The actor, Al, who offers a vocal interpretation of Hamlet might

take the simple, obvious approach to these lines which revealHam let's thou gh ts abo ut th e value of being alive. An obvious,con vention al rea ding of these lines would lead to the simple concep tthat Hamlet is merely proffering the existential question, is lifew orth th e struggle? Al, with his attention on the text, is conce rnedabout making sure that the audience understands Hamlet 's anguish.He will view th e languag e as poetry w ith th e inte ntion of reciting thelines in a way which will be pleasm g and in teres ting to the ea r. It iseasy to im agine Al giving careful con sidera tion to the first line, "To

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be, or n ot to be; th at is the qu estion:" p articularly because It souniversally well know n. A look at the m any questions h e might poseto himself will reveal the m indse t of the actor interes ted in theso un ds of th e speech he is reciting.

Of primary interest might be how to handle the fact thatHam let rep eats th e phra se, "to be," Should Al pu t more em phas is onthe first "to be" or th e second? How hnp orta nt is the word "not" inth at sentence? Perhap s Al might conclude that the wo rd "be" shou ldbe stressed a nd th e wo rd "to" should be unstresse d. Perhap s, in theintere st of variety, Al would choose to elongate his pronun ciation ofthe wo rd "or." In this way he could draw out the word which bestrep res en ts th e fact th at he is considering two options. The word "or"signifies that he has a choice. Therefore, he could downplay theinton ation s on bo th of the "to be" phrase s and em phasize "or" with acertain intensity of pitch.

Al will confront the sam e question s thro ug ho ut his analysis ofthe text as poetry. He may ask himself which wo rd deserves m orestres s in the second half of the line, "that" o r "question?"Undoubtedly Al will contend with the challenges implicit in suchw ords as "slings" an d "arrows." These wo rds resonate withm eta ph or . How best to get th e full mileage from the image offortune being "outrageous" and filled with "slings" and "arrows," andsoon .

Al will co ntin ue to work with th e language until he discoversfor himself the best combination of stressed and unstressed syllablesan d wo rds to Indicate his "interpre tation" of the poetic language. As

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an actor consumed with the language and all its challenges andimplications, he will be thrilled wh en he works on the ph rase , "sea oftroubles." W hat an op po rtun ity for an actor to entice his audie ncewith t he long vowel sou nd of "eee" an d to follow this sound with th em or e stacca to syllables in the word " troubles ." For Al, the se fewfamous lines contain a myriad of opportunities for poetic renderingsand vocal meanderings.

Acting is no t declamation o r poetic recitation. W hen an acto rrecite s a line, he is in fact prese nting th e line to the audie nce. He isoffering th e line as som ething to be app reciated aurally. And theacto r's objective sho uld never be to simply speak w ords ou t loud tocrea te an aesthetically pleasing effect. W hen the actor speaks hislines they sho uld sou nd as if the actor is really talking. Fu rtherm ore,the actor w ho recites lines is engaging in a form of repres enting thech arac ter, in th at the very act of reciting lines distances th e ac torfrom the w ords h e is saying.

Of sec on da ry in teres t, here , is the issue of voice training for th eactor. The im po rtanc e of voice training is in no way m ean t to beun de rm ine d in this discussion of vocal interp retatio n of the text.Certainly, it is com mon knowledge amo ng tho se conversa nt in th efield of acto r trainin g tha t the acto r's vocal instru m en t plays a criticalrole in the acto r's ability to facilitate h is work. The ac tor 's need forvocal training is not in dispu te in this discussion.

This hypo thetical illustration of Al's considerations of theaforem entioned text is m ean t to serve as an exam ple of false actingonly insofar as it reveals a misplacement of the actor's perspective

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on the task at hand: to behave truthfully under Hamlet's imaginarycircum stanc es. It is well within the realm of both possibility an dnecessity th at A l's wo rk on the role of Hamlet would enta il some ofth e que stions previously posited. Certainly, Shake speare's poeticlanguage poses great dem and s on the actor and as has been stated,these de m an ds are a necessary com ponent of the actor 's work.

No netheless, it remains critically im porta nt to the discussion offalse acting to understand that the actor who mistakenly perceivesth at his perform ance of a role is primarily dep en de nt on his abilityto inte rpr et the text is at best misguided. This is not to say tha ttextual interpretation is not one component of the actor's work. Adiscussion of the proper relationship of actor to text will beaddressed in Chapter IV. Of importance here is the understandingtha t th e acto r who limits his appro ach to the chara cter to textualinterpretation of said character will bring very little of himself to theperform ance . If th e acto r perceives the text as the leader, then he asthe follower is m erely giving voice to the prin ted w ord. Conversely,if the actor takes the lead, understanding that the text as written willfollow, he stands the chance to create a character which will begalvanizing a nd m em orable in its originality and complexity.

A thir d con tributing elemen t to false acting resides in theacto r's percep tion of himself as being watched by the audien ce. Infact, the concept of the actor being observed is implicit in this artform. Unlike the writer or pain ter who creates his wo rk in solitude,the ac tor's art is one of performance in public. The art of actingcon tains th e elem ent of the actor performing in full view of othe rs.

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Intrinsic in the a rt of acting is the stipulation tha t one d oes no t act ina void.

The question arises, how does the element of the actor as theartis t who p erform s his ar t for othe rs and in full view of others leadto false acting? Th e thir d fea ture in the definition of false acting isth at th e actor por tray s the chracter for a live audien ce. This leads todistance between the actor and the character. To po rtray a characterfor a live audience presupposes the actor's awareness of himselfbeing watched by the audience.

It is evid ent tha t an actor will always be som ewhat aware ofhis aud ien ce wh ile he is engaged in the process of acting. At issuehe re is th e focus of the acto r's awa reness. To wh at extent is theacto r's atten tion on w hat he is doing on stage an d to wh at extent isthe actor's attention focused on himself as a self-conscious agentengag ed in a process that is being watched by others? Thesequestions lead to a discussion about where the actor must place hisattention as he performs as well as the nature of the actor'sawareness during the act of performance.

It can be fairly stated that the self-conscious actor is the falseac tor. If he is self-conscious the n he is aw are tha t he is beingwa tched. The degre e to which the actor has his attention on th ereality of being wa tched is the degree to which his atten tion is not onw hat h e is doing o n th e stage. As stated earlier, it mu st beacknow ledged th at some facet of the actor's awareness will "know"that he is a human being engaged in the process of living the life of acha racter on the stage at any given momen t in the performance

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process in front of an a udie nce . This is a very obvious po int if oneconsiders th at a hu m an being's sanity rests on his abihty to be awareof himself in his circum stances in life at any given mo m ent. And yet,it is also gene rally know n tha t any artis t engaged in th e act ofcreating will "lose him se lf in the act of creation.

It is the actor's capacity to lose himself in what he is doingwhich is at issue he re . The self-conscious actor will hold o n tight tohis awareness that he is being watched by his audience.Furthe rm ore he will be burd ened by the amo unt of attention he isplacing on himself as he acts. An actor consum ed with watchinghimself or with being watched will be incapable of placing hisatte ntio n on what he is doing as the character. Attention on the self,ra th er tha n o n w hat on e is doing, will result in a performan ce whichseems stilted and ineffective and will constitute a kind of falseacting.

Although the symptoms of self-conscious acting are manifold,they a re no t easily discernible. Like the actor who indicates, theself-conscious actor can sUther through his performance withoutbeing indicted by audience or critic alike.

W hat ar e the symp tom s of the self-attending a ctor? They arepre sen t in the way the actor behaves on the stage. Consider theearlier ex am ple of th e self-conscious a ctor in the role of Ham let. ActIII, scene ii of th e text take s place in a hall hi the castle. The scenebegins as Hamlet en ter s the hall with the players. He ha s hired theseplayers to ena ct a play for his uncle, the King, an d the cou rt.Ham let's speech to the players could be comp ared to an acting lesson

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in which Hamlet is the teacher and the players are the stud ents . Atth e very least Hamlet is functioning as the d irector w ho is coachingthe actors in tmthfu l acting.

Ham let's open ing line is:Speak the speech, I pray you , as I pro no un ced it toyou trippingly on the tongu e: but if you m outh it,as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my Unes.^Al en ter s an d th e players follow directly beh ind h im. Because

Al is self-conscious, he has rehearsed Hamlet's gait for weeks prior toperform ance . Al has created a way for H amlet to walk which couldbe describe d as regal and princely. During rehearsa ls the directorwas pleased w ith Al's en tran ce in this scene, calling it a pp rop riatean d inte res ting . Now it is ope ning n ight an d Al is well aware of hisaud ience w atching his performance . Al takes one step on to the stagean d th inks ab ou t the way his hips are moving. He takes a secondstep an d de cides th at his head shou ld be raised a little higher, th athe should not be looking at his hips or his audience will realize thathe feels awkw ard ab ou t his hips. He the n raises his head as he istaking his last two steps before he will abruptly make a half-turn toface th e players an d begin his speech.

It becomes clear that the self-conscious actor thinks abouthimself while perform ing. It is not necessary to dete rm ine w heth erthe a ud ienc e is aw are th at Al as Hamlet has looked at his hipsbecause he is worried ab out them, or w hether the audience simplyperceives Ham let looking at his liips as a mom en t of perform ance. Ofsole imp ortan ce is the ac tor's choice to look at his hips. In th e

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m om en t th at Al is observing his hips, he is self-attentive. Althoughit ap pe ars tha t H amlet is looking at his hips, an d certainly it could bejustified that Hamlet might look at his hips at this moment, the tmthis that Al is simply placing his attention on himself.

Naturally t he ques tions arise, why is Al's mom ent of looking athis hips con side red false acting? If th e audien ce thin ks it is Ham letlooking at his hips, then what possible difference could Al's momentof self-attentive ness m ake in the quality of his acting? All thedifference. To the discerning eye, Al's m om ent with his hips is am om ent w here Al displays the discomfort he feels u pon making hisen tran ce . It has been established th at Al feels awkw ard. He knowsth e audie nce is watching him. That mo m ent of awareness of beingwa tched con stitutes a m om ent of false acting.

The symptoms of Al's moment of false acting are that he looksuncom fortab le an d self-conscious. The discerning eye will see th atfor at least one m om ent th ere is no Hamlet on th e stage, there issimply an a ctor wh o has ceased acting for a mo m ent. And yet, Al'sself-consciousness continues into the next m om ent of hisperformance when he realizes that he has lowered his head in orderto look dow n a t his hips. As noted , Al decides to raise his hea d an dlook up w ard s. This becomes a second exam ple of self-consciousacting . Once again, Al has placed his atte ntio n on himself. The falseacting occurs at the m om ent that Al is thinking about the placementof his he ad . In ot he r words Al's self-conscious thou gh ts and feehngsare interfering with h is ability to behave as Hamlet in H amlet'simaginary circumstances.

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When an actor appea rs to be uncomfortable on th e stage, It canbe deduced that he Is self-conscious and tha t he is having a reactionof sham e abou t his work. Conversely, the actor who appea rsextremely comfortable on the stage is probably self-consciouslyengaged in exhibition of self and the reaction will be pride. In eithercase, the actor is perceiving himself as perceived and is accountingfor this phenom enon in his performance.

The actor w ho reacts with p ride might ask the question, howshall I play this character? Often, his decisions about how to play thecharacter will lead directly to the acting mistake of overacting.Overacting is inextricably linked to representation and self-consciousness, to the extent that it is a symptom of the actor's choiceto represent a character, or to engage in a too full awareness ofhimself as he is acting.

Overacting can be defined as bringing more to the actingmoment than is necessary and has often been referred to as"chewing scenery." One might compare the actor's art of playing arole to the task of filling an eight-ounce glass with water. The actorpours himself, the w ater, into a character, the container. It can beunderstood that the actor fills himself fully with the character andunites himself with the character. He pours his eight ounces of waterinto the cha racter which is an eight-ounce glass. When an actoroveracts, he is no t measuring the water. He is guilty of trying to fillan eight-ounce glass with twelve ounces of water. To continue thecomparison, as the extra water splashes down the sides of the glass,so the actor who Is overacting seems to be spilling forth with more

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emotion, gestures or general declamations than seem fitting for hischaracter.

If overacting is the most obvious of the traits of false acting itis pro bab ly also the m ost egregious. It has become almost trite torefer to Hamlet's famous speech to the players in which he warnsthe m ag ains t the m any pitfalls of false acting. And yet, it has beencited so often, b ecause Shak espeare has so deftly des cribed m any ofthe attrib ute s of overacting. Although ma ny of Ham let's warnings tothe players could be generalized into the category of "overacting,"one particular segment speaks particularly well to the issue at hand.

Be no t too tam e neither, but let yo ur own d iscretionbe your tutor: suit the action to the word, the wordto th e action: with this special observance, tha t youo'erstep no t the m odesfy of na ture ; for anything soov erd on e is from the pu rpose of playing, whose end ,both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue herown feature, scorn he r own image, an d the very agean d bod y of the time his form a nd p ressure. Nowthis overd on e or come tardy off, thoug h it mak e theunskillful laugh, cannot but make the judiciousgrieve; the censure of the which one must in yourallowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.^^

In a phrase, overacting occurs when the actor "o'ersteps the modestyof nature," The te rm "overacting" serves as an um brella for themyriad sins of the actor who either lacks the sufficient training ortalent to modify his performance according to Hamlet's dictates. Inthis case, th e "m odesty of natu re" serves as a catch p hra se for th eactor 's ability to m easure the water to the container and thus pouroneself up to the rim of the glass, but no further.

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Having indicted actors on three major counts of false acting, itbecomes necessary to shift the perspective in order to discoverexactly what quahties or components in the art of acting can begin toqualify as features of truthful acting.

Truthful ActingThe western realist tradition dem and s that the performan ce be

a lot like real life, and this technique which produces truthful actingyields acting which correspo nds to the dem and s of this tradition. By"truthful" what is meant is that someone in the westem realisttradition would value this kind of acting because it is true to life.The goal of th e M eisner methodo logy is to train actors to act as ifthey were experiencing real life on the stage.

The definition of truthful acting is: The character is the actorbehaving^^ truthfully in the characte r's imaginary circumstancesresulting in the performance of the text in front of a live audience.The four principles of tmthful acting are directly linked to thisdefm ition. These principles of truthful acting are a way of spellingout this defmition of truthful acting. Each principle corresponds to apa rt of the definition. The four principles of tm thf ul acting are:

1. The actor behaves truthfullya. With full attention on what he's doing (not on hunself)b. With behavior based in reacting to the partner and the

environment.

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2. The character is simply the actor behaving as himself bytaking on the character's imaginary circumstances as hisown.

3. The doings and reactions result in the performance of thetext.

4. Th e performan ce is no t for the au dience, m erely in front ofthe audience.

The q uestion rem ains, why do es acting which follows thesefour principles and w hich corresponds to the definition of truthfulacting cons titute truthful acting? The answer to this question is thatit is tru thf ul acting because it is a lot like real life. A look at howthes e principles of tmth ful acting correspo nd to how we behave inreal Ufe will further clarify the connections between the two.

Principle 1 states tha t The actor behaves truthfully. Thiscon cep t of behaving truthfully can be just hke real life. In life we dono t follow pr em ed itate d plans of text. In life we are always doingsom ething an d we are absorbed in wh at we are doing. In real life weare constantly reacting to unknown events that come from otherpeople an d th e env iro nm en t Hence, the two Sub-Principles, l.a.,W ith full attenti on on wh at he is doing, (not on hunself) and l.b ..With behavior based in reacting to the partn er and the environm ent,also explain how real life works. Heidegger's work inphenomenology is useful here as it supports the premise that thehum an being does things in the wo rld .^

The obvious questions about w hethe r the act of doing nothingbu t sitting vacantiy in a chair staring into space can be considered a

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dom g an d no t a state of being easily come to mind hi this discussion.Yet, it m ust be und ersto od tha t the act of staring vacantly into space,even in an obv ious stu po r, constitutes a doing, if the doing is to dono thin g. In oth er w ords , real hfe always consists of doings, with t heatten tion on wh at one is doing, because even doing nothing butstaring is still a doin g if the do m g is to sta re.

Secondly, o ne 's b ehav ior in rea l life, Uke Sub-Prhiciple l.b ..With behavior based in reacting to the partn er and the environm ent,also corresponds to real life because in real life these unknownfactors from other people and the environment will always cause usto react in some way. To be hum an a nd to be aUve m eans th at one isalways pu t in the position of respon ding to the world arou nd oneself.Even If the h um an being m akes a conscious effort to avoid showingthese responses, for fear of reveahng too much about the self,nonetheless these responses happen to the human being in spite ofhimself. Meisner's initial exercises focus on having the students dojust this, practice respo nding instinctually to both external andinternal stimuli, as detailed in Chapter 11.

If in real life we are doing things a nd respon ding to things,then tmthful behavior in acting would have to be like this real lifephe nom eno n. But wh at about the three elements in acting which areno t like rea l life: ch aracte r, text an d audience? The acto r wh o isbehaving on the stage the way he would behave In real life is greatlychallenged by these three elements. The difficulty for the actor is tocon tinue to b eha ve a s if he were behaving in real life while heen du res th e difficulties tha t these elem ents of acting pres ent.

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The first element, character, is hand led m Prhiclple 2, Thecharacter is simply the actor behaving as himself by taking on thecha racter's imaginary circumstances as his own. How can it bepossible that there is no distance between the character and theactor? It had better be possible because that's the way it is in reallife. In real life, we are who we are. We do not play characters inreal life because each person is simply a human being who exists inthe world as hhnself. Therefore the actor who must contend with theelement of character m ust find a way to perform tha t character onthe stage as if that character were a living human being in a real lifesituation. Hence the second part of Principle 2, by taking on thecharacter's imaginar