Talking About Sanford Meisner
and His Acting Technique

Sanford Meisner:

Interview with Acting Teacher Wendy Ward - Part 6

In part 5 of this exclusive interview , Wendy tells the story of a typical audition that a young woman had for a television show in Los Angeles and the reason she got the job!

Tony: Wendy we met about four years ago and you will remember that when I came to you, I was a little disappointed in the results I had been getting with my acting training, which was very much Method-based. Knowing what I know now, it could have been the teacher who wasn’t giving me what I needed. It could have been the technique itself. At any rate, I wasn’t getting better as an actor as quickly as I wanted to. And then I discovered, through you, the Meisner technique.

What I’ve told people is that since I have subscribed to the Meisner technique, I have gotten results faster than I had using the other technique. I realize that it doesn’t mean that it will be that way for everyone. There is a reason why there are different acting techniques. Different people learn best in different ways. For me, it’s been that way.

Please talk a little about the Meisner technique, where it came from and what it’s all about.

Wendy: Well first of all, what a lot of new actors don’t realize is that Sanford Meisner was a contemporary of Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. Sandy and Stella left the Group Theatre, to a certain extent, in protest over the laborious aspects of using the method as it was employed by Lee Strasberg. I had the good fortune to transcribe a number of interviews with a few people from the Group Theatre and some famous actors who trained under them all of whom were interviewed for a recent documentary on The Group.  It was fascinating how much complaint there was about the Method.

So when Sandy started developing his own technique, it didn’t include any sense memory work. It didn’t include relying on the actor’s actual experiences to create the emotional life appropriate for the imaginary circumstances in a scene.

End of part 6. In part 7 of this exclusive interview with Ward Acting Studio founder Wendy Ward, she goes more in depth about the Meisner Technique of Acting.

Visit Wendy Ward at the official Ward Studio website.

 

Here are some other related pages you might find helpful:

Read here about my personal experience at the Ward Studio.

Sanford Meisner and his technique as it compares to some others.

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