Working with Actors: Meisner Technique for Directors and Actors

About the Book

Working with Actors provides the key to unlocking the honest, dynamic performance every actor has within them. It offers a well-articulated formulation of the Meisner Technique easy for directors and actors to use within a working context.

Through setting out an accessible training programme for practitioners working across stage and screen, this book establishes a clear-cut route to building a three-dimensional character in an organic, non-intellectual fashion, based squarely on the character’s objectives.

Few books in this field venture out of the training studio, while in this book - alongside offering an intense and concentrated Meisner training programme - the focus is more on the ‘pay-off’: the collaborative act of developing the role and how that plays out in rehearsal and performance.

Beyond that, the books uniquely offers:

> a new modality for script reading, analysis and rehearsal through which the character is born in relation to other characters;

> a prioritisation of the key skills for coming alive in the moment – listening and putting one’s attention wholly on the other character/actor;

> a historical perspective on how Meisner’s methods have evolved and why they provide the basis of truthful acting;

> for directors, a format for analysis of the complete work based on Stanislavskian principles;

> for actors, complementary methods, such as Uta Hagen’s ‘endowment’, to enhance the ‘reality of doing’

Table of Contents:

CONTENTS

PART ONE: TECHNIQUE

1. INTRODUCTION
2. SIMPLE TECHNIQUE PERFECTLY
3. FEAR
4. WORKING ‘WITH’
5. ACTING IS DOING
6. LISTENING
7. BEYOND LANGUAGE
8. THE PINCH AND THE OUCH
9. IMAGINARY CIRCUMSTANCES
10.WHO’S THAT KNOCKING?
11.MAD SAD GLAD
12.NO SUCH THING AS A MONOLOGUE
13.TAKING IT PERSONALLY
14.IT’S JUST AN ILLUSION
15.IN SEARCH OF THE CHARACTER
16.A DIRECTOR PREPARES
17.MAPPING OUT REHEARSALS
18.TAKING SIDES
19.LAUNCHING THE CANOE
20.THE NITTY-GRITTY
21.APPLYING THE ‘AS-IF’
22.DIGGING DEEPER
23.STRIVING FOR THE SUMMIT
24.THE REAL WORLD

PART TWO: PERSPECTIVES

25.WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
26.PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL MECHANISMS
27.BITS NOT BEATS
28.INDICATING
29.LIQUIFIED TROUBLE
30.CAST THE ACTOR NOT THE CHARACTER
31.UNBLOCKING THE WRITER
32.EVERYONE CAN ACT
33.FAKING IT
34.THE CASE AGAINST ACTIONING
35.SUBTEXT
36.SILENCE IS GOLDEN
37.CLIPS
38.MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
39.THE CASE FOR REALISM
GLOSSARY
INDEX

About the Author :
Stephen Bayly is a respected director and producer with film credits including Coming Up Roses (1986), Just Ask for Diamond (1986), Richard III (1995) and Mrs Dalloway (1997). He was Director of the National Film and Television School UK from 1998 - 2003. He alternates his teaching at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in Cuba with travelling extensively to give workshops in other countries, under the auspices of Directing Arts (www.directingarts.com).

Review :
This an exciting read, especially for actors like me who have not previously had the good fortune to discover the Meisner Technique of rehearsing a script. Stephen Bayly gently, authoritatively leads us through the method, mapping unknown territory until the way is clear. If you don’t know of the Meisner Technique, this book explains it all, clearly and without fuss. Directors and actors, professional and amateur, now have a bible to believe in. An incredibly useful guide for directors and actors to using Meisner’s principles in theatre, film, or TV projects, even those who are new to the technique. Eminently useable, it leads the reader through the ‘nitty-gritty’ of applying the Meisner Technique to real projects while providing a useful context and background to its principles.