Things have moved so
fast in the last year. The huge interest that the drop-in classes
first attracted has developed over three years into a genuine
commitment to long-term training and deepening of the actor's art. This
community of like-minded artists offers a real home to serious actors,
directors and writers. Producers, agents and casting directors too,
have found their way to the Actors-Space to investigate the work.
We have been established in our Space at the Aqua Carré in
Kreuzberg for just eight months, but it was immediately a place we
could call "home". There followed the development of the building
into an office and two studios, and then of course the visit by Bill
Esper in June, and shortly afterward the wonderful Susan Patrick, also from
the US.
We enjoyed a five-week, full-time summer
programme, with contributions from Susanne Eggert on voice, Jens Roth's
Sourcetuning and Emily Poel's Grinberg movement Method. With the
addition of Andre Bolouri and Wolfgang Wimmer as Co-Directors of the Actors-Space, and Annette Goeres, Karen Cifarelli, Erinbell
Fanore and Michael Schuerk to the regular teaching team, we embarked on yet another exciting journey: the beginning of our One
Year Actor-Training programme.
This represented so far the peak of our ambition: to give the Meisner
Technique its most faithful contemporary incarnation, and fullest
authentic expression outside the USA. Now into its fourth month, the
course has attracted so much interest that we will shortly begin a
second class.
Here in Berlin, where so much of modern casting and acting practice has
changed in such a short time, we are now offering the opportunity to
train FULLY in a technique that most coaches here only understand as an
exciting "added extra" to the actor's toolbox.
Repetition is not the Meisner Technique. Activities and Knocks at the
Door are not the Meisner Technique. The Meisner Technique is an
ENTIRELY INTEGRATED WAY of working as an actor. It is exciting,
liberating, fulfilling, energising and all in all, a breathtaking
way of approaching our art. Just as when I first encountered the
exercises, at drama school in London twenty years ago, Meisner's
approach still seems totally revolutionary and at the same time totally
familiar, as if everything about it were self-evident.
When I ask people at the beginning of a class, "Why
are you here?" there are three answers that most commonly
feature:
1) I want to find a way to be more truthful in my acting
2) I need to get out of my head, I want to get free
3) I want to rediscover some of the fun of acting, why
I became an actor in the first place
Consider some questions:- What if your performance couldn't
be "wrong"? What if you could go into an audition knowing
almost nothing about the character, but still feel equipped
to bring powerful choices to the reading? What if you
knew the secret of emotional preparation is not childhood
trauma, but the activated imagination...? What if you
were free of all anxiety about what you're "supposed
to be doing"?
All these concerns, and a few more besides, are dynamically
addressed by Meisner's simple but utterly powerful exercises.
Actors become less self-restricted; less concerned about
their own behaviour; more attuned to the events of the
scene; more impulsive and intuitive in their acting.
This takes work, of the kind all other artists take
for granted. Dancers have their barre, Musicians their
scales, and Actors, too, need to exercise at all times.
In fact it takes a good deal of work to achieve simple,
truthful behaviour, but it is this, of course, that
we love in all truly great performances.
Peter Brook was asked what he was looking for when he
was auditioning for his first company in Paris. He replied,
"I want to work with actors who know how to open themselves
up, and then communicate openly with other actors"
This is a common theme in all acting theory, but among
the american inheritors of Stanislavsky's system, Sanford
Meisner was alone in putting the relationship between
actors at the root of his teaching practice. This is
something too many actors forget, and too few directors
ever properly understand - that acting is a collaborative
art, and that we must learn first to Really Listen,
before we worry about anything else.
Many people, seeing the work in practice, have immediately understood
the value of Meisner's exercises and added them to a rosta of other
teaching tools, and that is perfectly valid. Over the years, from a
London base, I have taught throughout Europe, in France, Austria,
Belgium, Holland, Ireland, and those visits are always exciting
opportunities to offer actors another way of thinking about their work.
But the project here in
Berlin is not simply a place for exercises pulled together from all
the great acting techniques. Actors-Space Berlin
is the first acting space in Europe dedicated to the Meisner Technique
as a total approach to the challenge of being a complete actor.
Whatever you think you know about the Meisner Technique, we're only
just getting started!
All the work we do here has this at its heart - be authentic,
be intuitive, be spontaneous. Work hard, but look for
the fun in your work. Trust your instincts, and work
on your craft. Exult in your successes. Fail in public.
Get up and go again!
Laugh, Cry, Rage against the fates.
Enjoy the challenge.
Be Human!
Connect!
I look forward enormously to working with you.
Mike Bernardin
