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In
This
Issue: An Interview
with a Meisner-o-phile
Dear
[[FirstName]]
The new year started
with a bang for me! I've done several wonderful SUCCESSact Intuitive
Sessions
for
some equally wonderful actors. Here's
a great testimonial from one of them:
"I just saw
today that I tend to come back to things I don't like, from
the fear that there is no other option, and that is what I
should do, not want to do . . . I tend to focus too
much on the how, and as so, stay in the known, and familiar
"comfort zone" which is anything but comfortable. I
actualy caught myself, running the same "tapes" in my head .
. . and pretty much taking that default route several times
a day--wow! How much of a subconscious habit this issue has
become! It's the old way of thinking that has to be
transformed here, it is like a self- created problem. If I
focus on what I don't want and re-visit that again and again
from fear there is no other option,[The] Law of Attraction
brings me more of what I don't want--ha! Crazy to discover
that, thank you very much for your insight! It took me some
time to digest the info from the session, and I am sure more
will come. I now understand that testimonials on
your site about the successes people had through your
sessions!"
To read these testimonials and learn more
about how to book a session with me, click here. Act now. So you
can act sooner.
I'm also so
excited to be doing the BRANDact Branding for Actors Workshop this
month! I created
acting magic when I created this workshop. I swear I must have channeled it. The workshop
process is so powerful that BRANDactors who took it
immediately had huge
wins in their careers. Seating is limited
to 14. And seven spaces are already gone! SO ACT NOW TO GRAB YOUR SEAT.
One of my
students who recently went through the branding process with
me individually has not only had major auditions for shows
like The Unit and CSI:
Miami . He also recently won a
huge demo reel competition. And . . . after years of good
roles but no representation . . . he found an agent
who told him she'd do anything to work with him.
In addition, he just closed last month in a comedy revue helmed by
a famous sitcom director. And, last week, he sent me
pictures from a commercial he shot that may air at the Super
Bowl. He's a
BRANDactor success! And it could be
you! Click
here
for
details.
Also, CLASS FEES are going up substantially
in February. But if you sign up and pay for the
first month of classes before the 1st, you can take class with
me for the old rate of $120 for four sessions for six
months!
Here's the second
article in the Sanford Meisner series. I'm especially
proud of this one because I interviewed a fabulous friend whose intensive class with Meisner changed her lfe. Read the exciting things she said below.
BRANDact™ is
BACK!
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Don't miss this
career and life-changing workshop!
To find out
more, click
here.
Have Acting Success with a SUCCESSact™ Intuitive
Session!
To read some inspiring stories of actors who have had
SUCCESSact successes,
click
here.
Buy the Aligning your BRAND™eBook for
the pre-internet price of $39!
With even MORE
FR^E perks!
For a sneak
peek, click
here.
To learn more, click
here.
To order,
click
here.
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An Interview with a
Meisner-o-phile
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I've studied with almost every
legendary acting coach you know. I'm a little too young to
have studied with Stanislavski. But my illustrious coaches
include Uta Hagen, Sanford Meisner, Viola Spolin and Lee
Strasberg. Great acting coaches all have one thing in common.
They can instantly diagnose acting problems and then challenge
the actor to break through these creative blocks to find true
expression. So this series is not only about them. It's
dedicated TO them . . . and to all those acting coaches out
there who dare us to be better!
I didn't like Sandy Meisner as a coach. So I guess you can call me a Meisner-o-phobe. I studied with him just shy of three months in New York a long, long time ago. And, like a bad relationship, I knew it was all over that very day he verbally stripped me naked in class. I've since blocked out what he said to
me. But, after that slur, I lasted only a few weeks more. I didn't understand that repetition crap anyway. And what
it had to do with acting.
So I put off doing my
articles on Meisner for my "Great Acting Coaches" series for
some time. I didn't want to appear negative. Then I had a
great idea! I'd ask my friend, Pamela Clay, a confessed
Meisner-o-phile, to tell me about her experience with Meisner.
Pamela, now starring in the indie sci-fi thriller,
The Next Race, is one of the best actors I know. And
she was one of the lucky few to travel to Bequia in 1985, the
first year that Sandy and James Carville opened the
Meisner/Carville School of Acting
there.
So we met at our
favorite vegetarian restaurant in Burbank. And over Mock Duck
Curry, Tofu Fried Rice and Kombucha tea, she told me of her
Meisner experience.
Boy . . . was she
lucky . . . 6 weeks, training all day 6 days a week, room and
board . . . all for the paltry price of $1500! Pamela
explained, "he wasn't doing it for the money. He was doing it
for the thrill of it". But Pamela wasn't just lucky. She had
found her coach. "If he could trust you, he could teach you,"
she said.
Pamela remembers her
first glimpse
of him . . . a little man with huge glasses aided by his
lifetime partner, Jimmy Carville. She had traveled across the
country to be interviewed . . . all of the great coaches wouldn't
accept you without a face-to-face interview in those
days. She said that Meisner wasn't one for small talk .
. . that Carville was his "mouthpiece". My mentor, Lee Strasberg, wasn't
one for small talk either. And we both had the same initial experience
with our coaches. We both fell immediately in love
with them!
"He completely
changed my life!", Pamela exclaimed. "He was trying to get you
. . ." and then she uttered the famous quote . . . "to behave
truthfully under imaginary circumstances". She also said that
he lived for those moments of intense connectedness in acting
. . . it fed him. And when I asked her what made him so great,
she said that he was "a pure vessel for his gift and he dared
to speak the truth".
He was such a
stickler for truth that he thought nothing of throwing people
out of class. He didn't throw me out, but like many of my
fellow students in the short time I worked with him, he
threatened to. Or he'd say something like, "what are you doing
here?" Looking back on it, it actually kept us on our toes.
Pamela said, "he didn't think you could train actors and if he
felt you wouldn't make it, he didn't want to work with you."
She also said that he threw someone out of
her class and the actor had to wait around until the six-week
session ended to leave. I don't know if my fragile young psyche
could have stood the devastation of rejection at that time.
That's probably why I left. Fortunately, I wasn't stranded on
an island!
During our lunch,
Pamela and I discovered that we had studied twenty years apart
. . . and perhaps had experienced different Meisners. My Sandy
had the booming voice and the springy step of a more vital and
perhaps more impatient man. Hers was the post-laryngectomy
health-challenged Sandy. Perhaps a kinder, gentler Sandy. One
who had lost his most-prized voice. But not his truth or
heart.
I left our lovely
lunch with a greater understanding of the actor-coach dynamic.
I was very lucky to study with some of the great coaches of my
generation. Several of them, like Meisner and Strasberg, even
spawned major shifts in American acting technique as well as
legions of famous followers. But it wasn't the fame of the
coach that made the difference . . . it was the connection.
Lee wasn't always kind. But I understood him. I understood his
work. And he instinctively understood me. Warts and all. And
that's what made all the difference. It was what made me a
better actor. And that's all that mattered.
So I'd invite you
to find a coach whose technique and way of working really
resonates with you. And one that will tell you the truth. You
owe it to your talent. Meisner believed that it takes 20 years
to make an actor. And he told Pamela, "you don't need to
study. Just get out there and work". She did exactly what he
suggested. And, 20 years later, he was right!
The difference
between good acting and bad acting is the difference between
being and pretending to be.
--Pamela Clay on Sanford Meisner
Next Week: Intention 101:
Place
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