Meisner and the repetition technique

Sanford Meisner was the son of Jewish immigrants who grew up in New York. He was born 31st August 1905 and died 2nd February 1997. He developed an acting method based on Stanislavskis method. This is known as the meisner technique. After his brothers death he became resentful of his parents and turned to playing the family piano. He went onto study at Damrosch Institute of Music now known as the Juilliard School. When the great depression hit, his father pulled him out of the school in order to help out in the workplace. He found that the only way he got through it was by remembering the classical piano tunes he learnt at school and playing them back to himself in his head. By doing this he became almost pitch perfect. Later on his life he would often close his eyes when assessing actors performance. He said he did this in order to feel when the true emotions were expressed during a performance or rehearsal.

The Meisner exercise we did in class was a repetition technique. We got into pairs. In these pairs one person would say something about the other persons appearance, something they saw but no opinions. Then the other person would repeat it about themselves. For example the first person would say 'you have brown socks' and the other person would respond by saying 'I have brown socks'. This could be tossed back and forth until one of the partners pointed out another thing and you would carry on like this. At the first stage of this we put no emotion into it, and we were told not to act it. We just let the words transfer from person to person. Then we played it with objectives. Linking it back to our performance idea of courtship rituals the boys were often given objectives of trying to get a girl to admire you or trying to ask a girl to go out with you. This meant the exchange had more substance to it. The purpose behind this exercise was to create honest reactions onstage. The next level up would be to use words from a text or script we were using and throw the lines back and forth like that. Rehearsing using this technique can allow you to develop honest reactions between you and your scene partner. Instead of working out how you want to say your line, you are reacting off of what the other person is doing. This means you are not acting out a conversation but that what you are doing really resembles one.