What Is the Meisner Method of Acting?

@Armas1313: Having worked in both the worlds of acting and business, it is my opinion that the most truly dangerous deceivers are to be found in the home, on the way to work and when you get there.

Actors are constantly reminded there is a dichotomy between what happens on the stage or screen and what is “real” after the makeup has been removed. A manager, spouse or salesperson has “really important reasons” to reach their goals and their deception takes place in the world that they perceive as being the only real one. In fact, at the workplace, it can be the mom or grand-mom from next door who ends up most reminding you of Hannibal Lecter. And the higher you rise in a company (in politics, religion or national defense), the more individuals you will find who reached their positions by having developed the capacity to manipulate others in what they perceive to be the real world.

There are a lot of psychos up there, next door, in the sales department trying to sell you a whatever, in the next room, but no one tells them “that’s a wrap”, has them take their bows and sends them home. They are perpetually trapped in the illusion with you. This state of self-contradiction is known by many under the moniker of “real life”.

You’ve really got to watch those non-actors. They never know when the play is over. --J.H.

@Anon1313: There is a big difference between acting and lying. An actor works to achieve honesty on stage because it is their talent/craft. Their focus is not to deceive but to bring life to the stage so that an audience is, for a short time, swept from their reality and into another world. Do people lie? Sure, but liars make terrible actors. I'll say OJ Simpson and rest my case.

I think the author has got meisner wrong. It's not about achieving your objective at any cost, Meisner is against that. That is Stanislavski and The Method.

Meisner is about putting all your attention on the other actor/s and letting your objective be flexible and malleable in regards to what the other people on stage make you do.

The method makes you become a character, and live like them as you use your own experiences to create the character, which I think is mentally exhausting. Meisner was against all that. You should know that you're acting and it's your imagination that take you to the places that the character goes, not your own experiences.

I trained with Bill Esper who trained with Meisner as a teacher for 15 years.

I worry that people can get so lost in the world of acting that they lose touch with reality. After memorizing a large number of lines for a long period of time, phrases and ideas get stuck in the subconscious which might actually affect a person in real life. I wonder if actors with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia relapse into acting roles.

Directing is like engineering. You have to understand what each part has to play in the general machine of the storyline. Each actor needs to be properly selected to convey the part that they must play perfectly and in sync with everyone else. In a movie, even one misplaced or miscast part can ruin the whole thing. That is why making a movie requires both the mind of an artist and the mind of an engineer.

@Armas1313

I think that you have to trust that everybody is human, and therefore, everybody needs to be themselves sometimes. Instead of dismissing actors as untrustworthy, it is better to recognize that they are people too, with all-too-human problems, just like everybody else (and often worse than everybody else).

People who can effectively employ the Meisner method scare me. If they are able to so convincingly become someone who they aren't, how do I know they won't be pretending in real life? A truly good actor could effectively make me think they're my friend, just to get a buck out of me.