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The Sanford Meisner Approach Vol 2: The Introduction

"The greatest acting teacher of our time, my teacher, Sandy Meisner, died last week. Even though he was so ill this last year and could not teach, it is unimaginable to me that he will no longer be in the classroom. It is unthinkable to me that he will no longer be helping actors arrive at an absolutely uncontrollable and deeply authentic moment, helping actors get out of their own way and igniting their imaginations, helping actors to be more available to both their partners and to their own powerfully creative resources. It is horrifying to me that, like the thousands of actors who were fortunate enough to sit in that classroom with him, thousands more will never have that chance. I miss Sandy so much. I miss the burning arrow he was in my life, always aimed at the heart of the matter, demanding that each and everyone of us be relentless, simple and true.

Out of his passion and his brilliance, Sandy developed a profoundly organic and healthy approach to training actors. Why do I say organic and healthy? Because this work continually invites us to bring our humanness to the stage, our own unique point of view. It is a process that keeps demanding us to shed anything extraneous and false as we fully inhabit the reality of this very moment. It is certainly the most rigorous and the most rewarding work I know. And if you want some examples of the kinds of results that are possible, well, here are just a few of Sandy's students: Robert Duvall, Joanne Woodward, Jon Voight, Gregory Peck, Diane Keaton, Peter Falk, Steve McQueen, Mary Steenburgen, Jeff Goldblum, Tony Randall, Lee Grant and Sydney Pollack.

In case you don't know, Sandy was a founding member of the revolutionary, 1930s New York theatre company, The Group Theatre. This incredible collaborative experiment, which grew out of the most personal vision of theatre great Harold Clurman, is where everything we know as modern American acting sprang from. And when the Group Theatre dissolved in the early 1940s, Sandy Meisner went on to develop and teach his own ways of getting at this thing called "the craft of acting" at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre in New York City - which is where I studied with him.

This book and the other three I am doing on the Meisner Approach are a simple offering. Sandy gave this work to me and I want to give it to you - very much! As does Sandy's approach, these books work in a step-by-step fashion. Like with a tower of building blocks, the foundation must be laid first and then, it is only the careful placement of each new block that makes the placement of the next block possible. So, if you haven't read my Meisner Approach: Workbook One (which is where I lay the foundation,) I suggest you do so - it will make this book vastly more valuable for you. But do feel free to read this book first. If it turns you on, well, go run for the first one.

In the foundation work of Workbook One, we worked on strengthening the essential skills of great acting. These abilities include: being led by our instinct rather than our head, living fully in the present, being responsive to our partners in each moment, really doing what we are doing rather than pretending to do what we are doing, being the expression of who we truly are rather than who we think we should be or who others tell us we should be, bringing authentic and personal meaning to everything we do on stage and expanding our actors imagination. Good stuff for actors, don't you think? Not only good, crucial!

And now, I welcome you to Workbook Two: Emotional Freedom and I invite you to join me in the next fundamental phase of the Meisner work - "emotional preparation" - as we explore the realm of the emotions and the actors emotional instrument. Ready? Let's go."

-- Larry Silverberg