ABSTRACT
The class progressed to improvisation, with one actor entering while another was in the room occupied by an activity–again, a classic Meisner training component. The training began with the well-known Meisner repetition work, first repeating exactly what our partner stated before working up to changing the pronoun to make it more personal. Authors worked with the “pinch and ouch,” with students stating very provocative observations about their partner in order to garner strong personal reactions. Then the “hard-core” repetition began with a team of two working in front of the cast, and the teacher animatedly coaching and encouraging true connection and real behavior. The authors guess it is a testimony to the strength of this work that decades later, when some of us from that class meet up, we sometimes humorously repeat each other’s lines–changing the pronoun of course!.
