Lessons from Sandy
I’m sure you know by now that we’re greatly influenced by many of Sanford Meisner’s ideas. I find myself inspired by his words more and more. I found a few new quotes that I thought I would like to share with you. I will use the quotes to explore some ideas on acting and hopefully pass some of the inspiration onwards!
“Less’s more!” Mies van der Rohe and the Bauhaus may have gotten there first (well, second I think actually), but when Sanford Meisner says ‘Less is More’, I wish more actors knew this from birth. The actor should always aim for less, often much less. I spend much of my time reigning actors in, helping them cut back on their over-done faked emotion and their desire to push so hard. Less, less, always less, because more is often sickening, like too much cake.
“The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting.” Stripping back to the truth, the simplest most basic truthful sense of ourselves is often the best way to bring truth to the role. You bring your truth to the role and rather than creating character, you reveal the truth of yourself and that truth sells the audience on our well-meaning trick, the creation of the illusion of character.
“Acting is not talking, it’s living off the other fellow!!!” Of course, the basis of acting for Meisner, taking your inspiration, your fuel for the scene from your scene partners. Acting has nothing to do with talking, little in fact to do with words. The bit of the ice berg that you CAN see is the words. The rest of your acting is why lies beneath.
“You can’t learn to act unless you’re criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you’ll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done.” You do need someone to help you cut the shit, can the bull, stop letting yourself off the hook, and if its done with love and care, or the professionalism you deserve, then that object criticism will make you stronger, a better, truer performance, and perhaps a better person too.
“The only way to deal with yourself as an actor is to follow the emotional truth of what you have to do under the imaginary circumstances. And as you develop you become confident. You come to believe in what you’re doing and trust it because it’s out of you.” Trust yourself. End of.
“Transfer the point of concentration to some object outside of yourself – another person, a puzzle, a broken plate that you are gluing.” One of the first things that I learned as a director was that actors that had a focus on something other than themselves were completely different in their performance from those that were ‘self’ conscious, in other words, inwardly focused. A puzzle may be fine, something that holds your attention is good, but you can’t always find a ‘something to do’ in every scene (although I confess I like scenes where people do something other than just talk). However, for most scenes, you have the most interesting, attention-holding thing of all, a fascinating human being playing opposite you. Let them be your focus and you’ll fly.
“You can’t fake emotion.” I think my greatest dissatisfaction with acting in general is that I see faking that’s done as if it’s done well and audiences lapping up like it’s remarkable, when really it’s just a downright lie. Fake emotion isn’t interesting. It’s distracting to me as an audience member, it doesn’t add to the scene, it completely detracts from it. If the emotion doesn’t come to you, don’t even try to fake it. Your bullshit standardised, generalised fake-ass emoting won’t fool anyone, and all you’ll get from your audience is indulgence, which is to say, a sort of pity, wrapped in applause.