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The Sanford Meisner Approach: The Introduction

"Welcome!

I have realized that my impulse to write this book comes from two facts, I say facts because I know them to be true.

1. Who you truly are is magnificent and totally unique.

2. The work I am going to share with you, the Sanford Meisner Approach, is miraculous.

Maybe you are beginning your studies as an actor and you are excited and passionate. You have strong feelings about people, life, the world around you and you are hungry to find the ways to use all of yourself to express those deep feelings, to make a tremendous difference through your acting.

Or, perhaps you are cautious, nervous even. You've always wanted to give acting a try and there's that little voice inside you, calling to you once more and with a greater urgency, "Go on, go on, what are you waiting for!" And you find yourself in the theater aisle of the bookstore with my book in your hands, reading the introduction to see if this is the one for you.

Maybe you have studied acting, a little here and a little there and you have noticed that there have been moments in your acting when something has "clicked" and afterwards you thought, "That is exactly where I want to be in my acting!" But you're not really sure what happened, how it happened or how to have it happen again. It all seems to be hit or miss. And you wish you had something solid, in terms of technique, that you could count on. Something from which to build on and to grow with.

Maybe you have acted some-in college or community theater or professionally-and you have been pushed to results so quickly and so often that you feel you have lost touch with your own creative center. You find that when you are really honest with yourself, you have to admit that acting just isn't that much fun for you anymore. And you long to re-connect with your heart in your work, with that joyous spark that got you into acting in the first place.

If you recognize yourself in any of those statements, you've come to the right place. Which brings me back to those two facts:

Who you truly are is magnificent and totally unique.

The work I am going to share with you, the Sanford Meisner Approach, is miraculous.

And I do not bring up miracles lightly. Let me tell you, when students have a moment in an acting exercise in which they suddenly experience themselves as so much greater and more powerful than they were aware of; more expressive and spontaneous, more deeply caring, concerned and interested than they ever thought possible; that they can be totally available and receptive to their partners as well as to their own passionate spirit; that they are courageous and ready to take risks, able to fight for what they know to be true and honest enough to say, "Yes, I am wrong", to be generous and forgiving and willing to ask for forgiveness-a moment from which their life will never be the same and from which they learn in a vital way that acting is about being fully alive, fully authentic; about being the complete expression of ones greater truth and that it is more joyous than they ever could have imagined, NOW THAT'S MIRACULOUS!

And you know what? It is this kind of personal transformation that I have been privileged to witness in my classes countless times. It is the great leaping off place in one's pursuit of the craft of acting. And it is why as a professional actor and director these last fourteen years since graduating from the Neighborhood Playhouse, I also continually and ecstatically return to the classroom as acting coach, to share the brilliant process given to us by my teacher, the great acting teacher of our time, Sanford Meisner, "Sandy!"

And so, it is why I wrote this book. I'd be a liar if I told you that I thought there was another acting technique as effective as the Meisner work. Am I biased? ABSOLUTELY! And I didn't want to give you just one more interesting book to read, (although you may find this book vastly interesting) my aim was to give you a specific, step-by-step way of actually doing the foundation exercises of Sandy's approach. My hope is that this book will become deeply valuable to you as you discover and forge your own, very personal, approach to acting and to the theatre.

You may wonder if you can do these acting exercises. You may be asking yourself those old, nagging questions, "Do I have the ability, am I talented, can I make it?" Let's get this clear right now. You must leave all of that alone and put your energy into one thing, doing the work! You see, the rest is out of your control, so why bother with it? I am telling you that you do have the ability, but you know, a better question to ask yourself is, "Am I ready to be unreasonable with myself?"

Also, this book is not meant to replace your working with a good acting coach. (A good teacher will interact with you and create an environment that supports your growth as an actor in ways that are possible nowhere else.) What I intend this book to do, is to give you a great start; to strengthen you and prepare you so that your work with good teachers (acting coaches, directors and other actors...) will go very deep and will be very true. Also, your work here will help you to know who your real teachers are-and maybe protect you from the rest.

Everything I say to you in this book is the truth. I am speaking to you now as an actor, for all that I have available to me on stage is my own point of view, the truth as I know it, and I must hold on to it and fight for it with my life! There are many acting techniques and the ones that are valid will help you arrive at the one ultimate truth, your truth. The work we will do together will lead you to acting with a deep personal meaning, a wonderful simplicity (so rare in the theatre) and to a level of working where technique disappears and what remains is you in your acting.

You know, if someone in the audience leaves saying "That was a real Meisner actor," it would all have been a waste of time. When you give them the real thing, the audience will leave talking not so much about you but about their lives. They will run out and call their sister who they haven't talked with in ten years or hurry home to hug their daughter, they will move out of a terrible situation or confront their boss-they will be altered in some way-and they will come to you backstage and say "Thank you!" "

-- Larry Silverberg