Sandford Meisner and his technique

Abstract

The New York Times observed that Meisner had been, for most of the twentieth century, a ‘Third Name’ in American acting, as much more was written on other practitioners like Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg (Malague 2012: 111). This is corroborated by British academic David Shirley who says: Given his remarkable contribution to the development of acting technique in the USA and his undoubted influence on some of the world’s most celebrated performers, directors and writers, it is somewhat surprising to discover that, until relatively recently, the work of Sanford Meisner remained virtually unheard of Britain. (Shirley 2010: 199) I, for one, had never heard of Sanford Meisner until two years ago when Meisner and his technique formed part of a study unit I took called ‘Acting Techniques’, at the theatre department of Indiana State University in the USA. At least in some European countries, he is still considered as theatre’s best kept secret. This is seen, for example, when British author Jonathan Pitches only dedicates two pages on Meisner in his book Science and the Stanislavski tradition of acting (2006: 122-3) . American author Mel Gordon only dedicates five pages in Stanislavski in America (2010: 176-183). However, the fact remains that there is material out there on Sanford Meisner, but my question is what is exactly known on Meisner? In every book I’ve been through in my research on Meisner, it seems to me that there is a certain recurrence in the way different authors tackle his work. For instance, David Krasner first gives a bit of background on him, than he goes on to introduce some of his exercises whilst also offering some criticism (in Hodge 2000: 142-46). Mel Gordon used the same structure, more or less, the difference being that he gave more on Meisner’s background and less criticism.