Meisner history:
In the 1930s, Sanford Meisner was an actor in the Group Theatre, the
most important repertory theatre in modern American History, which
spawned the major American acting teachers, and several of the most
important playwrights and directors of the 20th century. Meisner and
his fellow actor Stella Adler fell out with their director Lee
Strasberg over his use of Emotional Recall, a technique in which the
actor used personal emotion from his own past memories to feed the
acting process. Meisner and Adler chose to use the imagination to
stimulate emotion and involvement in a play's imaginary circumstances.
Both Strasberg's and Meisner and Adler's techniques came out of the
work of Konstantin Stanislavski in Russia, but they differed on which
parts of Establish's work was most important to the actor's work and
training. The Group Theatre broke up partially because of the
conflict over these techniques. Meisner, Adler and Strasberg all went
on to become acting teachers who had a profound influence on American
acting and culture, as well as a strong influence on European acting.
At the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, Meisner created a
full-blown acting technique which would train an actor to create all
the layers of a complete performance over a two year period. It was,
and still is, one of the most systematic and complete acting
techniques in the Western world. Meisner's work was based on the
principle that acting found its most profound expression in specific
behavior that came out of the actor's real human response to
circumstances and other people. Because of this, his entire training
method relied heavily on accessing the actor's impulses, through which
real responses and real behavior were accessed in the moment. This
technique was not only applied to improvisation with another person,
but also to the actor's way of finding things to do in rehearsal,
interpreting a script, and creating the specific physical
characteristics of each character the actor played.
The basic exercise that Meisner invented to train the actor's
responses is called the Repetition Exercise. In this exercise, two
actors sit across from each other and respond to each other through a
repeated phrase. The phrase is about each other's behavior, and
reflects what is going on between them in the moment, such as "You
look unhappy with me right now." The way this phrase is said as it
is repeated changes in meaning, tone and intensity to correspond with
the behavior that each actor produces towards the other. Through
this device, the actor stops thinking of what to say and do, and
responds more freely and spontaneously, both physically and vocally.
The exercise also eliminates line readings, since the way the actor
speaks becomes coordinated with his behavioral response. As the
exercise continues over a period of months, more detailed imaginary
circumstances are added to the exercise, and it gradually becomes a
kind of improvised scene. When this is fully developed, the actors
are ready to start working with actual scripts. The course gradually
makes its way through more complex script material and work on
creating characters before it concludes.
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Cindy Vanden Enden
Program Director/Certified Meisner Instructor
Cindy Vanden Enden has been a performer, director and teacher for the past fifteen years. She is a graduate of Richard Pinter's Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, under whom after many years of mentoring to teach the technique, finally received her certification to teach in 2005. Since received her certification, Cindy has proven that not only does she have a firm grasp on the Meisner techniques' original inception, but has been able to harness specific techniques to work
meticulously with students and their individuality.
Cindy is also an accomplished actress, having been seen on the New York, Toronto and Calgary stages during her career. She has been the Director of Playhouse North from its inception, as well as the co-founder and artistic director of ColdWater Productions. Cindy is currently Canada's only practicing certified Meisner instructor.
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