ABSTRACT
Sanford “Sandy” Meisner created a distinct Stanislavsky-based technique that easily availed itself to the fast logic of mainstream Broadway or Hollywood casting: actors were selected on the basis of their appearance and ability to perform within a set range of types (without signaling their theatrical craft). Meisner claimed that he despised the ethos of show business but his aesthetic taste was analogous to the vast majority of commercial producers and directors; he hated acting that was either anchored in imitative character clichés or theory-based intellectualism. Acting, for him, had to be linked to the performer’s unique persona and his or her direct responses to their scenic environment and immediate conflicts. The Meisner Technique (labeled the “Meisnerian Method” at 20th
Century Fox in 1959) was the first American-Stanislavsky practice that discarded the MAT’s identifiable notions of character creation or textural analysis. Actors had to start from scratch – that is, everyday reality – and remain at scratch. The technique had the added attraction that it did not always require the omniscient eye of a master teacher. Its principles were relatively simple, if sometimes demanding. A trained disciple could carry out nearly any session almost as well as its inventor. In that sense, Meisner Technique was the very opposite of the Michael Chekhov or Stella Adler Technique. Meisner’s ascorbic attitude in the classroom was legendary and
always aimed at the matter at hand – the individual pupil. He rarely lectured on acting philosophy or diverted students with anecdotes about his illustrious career as a performer, which he modestly depicted as “generally undistinguished.” Meisner was an intensely asocial teacher and private person, a virtual recluse. Until the end of his life, he never
imparted much information about himself or his work on the stage or screen. Partly for that reason, David Mamet praised Sandy as the “first authentic person” he met in the theatre. (In fact, much of Mamet’s seemingly pointless and repetitive dialogue may have originated at a Playhouse session.) Other students memorized Sandy as a “tragically singed romantic.”
