Dude, find a good Meisner (acting) teacher and
take Meisner tech 1
This acting method will beat the pants off any book or tape your money can buy.
In the hands of a good meisner teacher you will find out very quickly where your skill level is at, how to be
uncomfortable as hell and stay loose about it, how to keep a conversation moving... meisner training gives you no
place to hide, it forces you to work off the other player's energy and forget your own stupid gig... the massive,
grotesque, wildly fucked up mistake that these How-To courses make is they teach it like wretchedly bad acting
teachers teach people how to be wretchedly bad actors, like a simple formula that you memorize and then try to pull
off the formula, if you tried that on stage you'd be boo'd off in 10 minutes of making a total fool of yourself...
meisner is unique in that there is no formula, you have to be totally responsive and alive to the finest shifts in
energy from the other person and know how to track those shifts and work with them. it is a powerful skill that is
totally transparent, nobody sees or feels you doing meisner, it is absolutely invisible, there anre no lines, no
hooks, no moves, no pathetic NLP schticks (speaking as one who went through an extended NLP phase with the real
dudes a quarter century ago)... meisner is pure energetic attunement, it is hard and frustrating to learn, you'll
feel like an idiot for months as you study it, then when it starts to click in, you'll be thinking, what the F?
Where did that come from ? It was so effortless, so natural, like breathing, pure second nature... just do the
legwork and find a good (translation: relentless, intuitive, powerful ,respected in the industry, demanding, cuts
your bullshit no slack) meisner teacher... and beware of the legions of phonies that, heeeeock, "teach acting"...
it's the purest path there is...
Note carefully ! Was it a Meisner class ? Was
the teacher exceptional ?
having survived some damn awful bad acting classes in search of the real
deal... point 1, yes, there are real deal teachers out there, and they're the ones who make you really
uncomfortable and demand you work right down to your core and point 2, those teachers are very unpopular with losers
and phonies because losers and phonies can't take the heat unless they make the conscious choice to get past their
loser-phony facades and take responsibility for their own existences at a deeper level, and point 3, these teachers
are also most respected at being able to to generate real results because they will only work with real energy, and
point 4, only real energy is going to score in the outer world so you might as well learn how to cultivate it or get
used to riding in the cattle car, and point 5, there are more than too many lame losers who have figured out a nice
little cash generating racket peddling their sad excuses for "acting classes"... if that's all you ever
experienced, you might think that's the real McCoy when it never was Jack and never was intended to be...... you
have to do your homework and sniff out the good stuff, then be prepared to work your sad ass ragged, 'cause that
focus and committment and ability is what other people instinctively get about you when they size you up, which,
trust me, they do non-stop.
that's kind of the deal, you learn to be
comfortable with discomfort
a real acting class will make you really uncomfortable, over and over, in
hundreds of ways, until you learn to work with discomfort; pressure, awkwardness become you allies, not your
adversary... most wannabees can't get over because they can't take psychological pressure, once the adrenaline
kicks in they fall to pieces.... the best teachers will take you to places where you learn to respond to having all
your most sensitive buttons pushed with elegant social reflexes... you will move from a place of doing to a place of
being, you won't have to consciously do anything, you just hang out and be. Centered Being is the most critical
skill, there's no recipe. Your center has to be very still, perceptive, aware, responsive, quiet, free of a lot of
preconceptions and need to fill the space with excess talk and activity... like, knowing exactly when to stop
talking, exactly where the social edge is, when to let silence do its work at the precise instant, that is fine
skill they few, very few people have without deep training.