ABSTRACT
The great American acting teacher Sanford Meisner defined acting as “the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” That sounds simple enough. But since most of our actual “living” is done unconsciously (tying our shoes, driving our cars, putting on a jacket, formulating verbal responses), when we try to “live truthfully” in a fiction we attempt to purposefully do things we normally do with little or no conscious thought. Anyone remotely familiar with the Meisner process has likely heard of the “repetition game.” This is what we have come to call our “core exercise.” After working and training students in the Meisner approach for several years, author began to develop a deep sense that something essential was needed to add to our overall approach to training. In emotional preparation, once the circumstance is created, the actor would then allow themselves a completely uncensored fantasy to dive deeply into the imagined event.
