It's Not NOT A Meisner Podcast
Acting teacher & director Kevin Kittle, alongside his student Carson S. Davis, dive deep into the Sanford Meisner Acting Technique—while also exploring the wider landscape of life as a modern actor. Featuring candid conversations, practical insights, and interviews with renowned industry professionals. To have your question answered on the podcast, email us at: meisnerpodcast@gmail.com
It's Not NOT A Meisner Podcast
EP01: Welcome to the Work
In the inaugural episode of It’s Not NOT A Meisner Podcast, acting teacher & director Kevin Kittle teams up with his student, Carson S. Davis, to kick things off with a candid, teacher-to-student conversation about Sanford Meisner's legendary acting technique.
Kevin & Carson introduce themselves, talk about their shared history, and dive into the heart of the Meisner Technique — starting with Sanford’s genius definition of Acting. What does it really mean to “live truthfully under imaginary circumstances”? And why is that definition so often misunderstood?
Let's get to work.
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It's always good to be where you are to be here. If you're going to be here, you might as well be present. Right, exactly, all right, all right. Episode one, shall we Episode one? A little intro. This should not be acting training. It should be actor training, am.
Speaker 1:I a good actor Like me doing. It's not not a Meisner podcast. There it is. It's a weird title which we will talk about later. We should say who we are before we start, just so you don't think we don't know what the hell. Well, you won't know that we don't know what the hell we're talking about, right?
Speaker 2:I don't. I don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:I'm not that much more versed at it than you, but we should say that even though it's called not a Meisner podcast, it actually is a podcast on the Meisner technique of acting. Sanford Meisner was a great acting teacher and he started developing this technique in, I would say, the 30s, so it's about 90 years old. It's held up a little bit surprisingly a little bit, so we should tell you who we are. It's an important question. I always like that question who are you? Who am I? Well, who are you? I am Well. There's really two ways to answer that question, carson, because there are two versions of that question who are you, which is a sincere desire to know, which usually is autobiography, but the other way to say it is who are you Like? Who the hell are you?
Speaker 2:that I should listen to you. Well, I'm asking the second version who the hell are you? Yeah, who the hell are you that I should?
Speaker 1:listen to you. Well, I'm asking the second version who the hell are you? Yeah, who the hell am I? Right, like, why should you be taking advice from me? My name is Kevin Kittle and I am old. I'm an old, I'm an ancient individual, carson, and that's why you should listen to me, because I've been around a long time.
Speaker 2:So being old directly correlates to wisdom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my years on the planet are longer than a CVS receipt. You know when those things are coming out and they keep coming, and then they stop and you go, oh, thank God it's over. And then you go to get it and it starts again. Yeah, that's what my life is like. Yeah, every time I think, mercifully it's over, it just starts up again and I can't, you can't prevent it, I can't do anything about it. But the good news about that is, every time it starts up again, I learn something new.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So you know, it means I've lived long enough to have studied multiple things and had multiple experiences, long enough to have studied multiple things and had multiple experiences. But I didn't really come to Meisner until I was in my 30s. So for those of you listening, if you feel that you haven't gotten a good head start, you know many roads lead to Rome, as they say. It could be a long journey for you. I originally started studying viola spolen, which is theater games and improvisation and all that kind of stuff. But I then, and I and I this is also for those of you who are young and are listening I, I went to undergrad right out of high school and I quit after three years.
Speaker 2:Three years in Three years.
Speaker 1:So most people would be like all you got to do is one more year, and I was like, yeah, no, I think I'll quit. What did you major in then? Theater, okay, but it was a BA, yeah, and I just it wasn't good. I don't think the program was good, but this is interesting in that I, with Viola Spolin, I always taught, because it's very, very it's all in the book. And so what happened was I went to my undergrad and I started teaching my fellow students. I was 19, the hell that I think I was, but the truth is that the teachers there weren't satisfied. Something was happening that they weren't satisfying the students, so that when all the teachers went home that's when we started At night, we would go into the black box theater and I had like 30 kids come and do the theater games with me. I was 19 years old, so I always knew that I wanted to teach.
Speaker 1:But after I dropped out of undergrad, I did. You know that I did some crazy things. I painted bridges right for a living, and whenever I tell people that they mean, you set up an easel and you painted the bridge, like no, I painted the bridge, I put the paint on the steel 250 yards, over the 250 feet, over the Hudson River, you know. So that's my background, it's working class, it's blue collar. That's why when I approach art theater it's like pack your lunch pail and go to work. It's lunch pail, discipline, you know. And so, having come from a working background construction I bring that to the discipline and hard work that it takes to do Meisner.
Speaker 1:But I realized eventually that I did want to go back and get a degree in directing. So I got my MFA in directing at Rutgers. And while I was there getting my MFA, I took classes as a director. I took all the classes of the other disciplines. So I took scene study and sound scene design and sound design and lighting design, costume design. But that meant that I also was in the room with the actors, because if you want to be a good director you have to understand the actor's process, you have to know how they work, you have to be able to talk to them, you have to see how they're finding their way through it. So I sat in the room with the great Maggie Flanagan, one of the greatest teachers. Maggie Flanagan taught me first year Meisner at Rutgers and even though I was there as a director, I would get up and do the work. I did as many activities and as many repetition exercises as anybody.
Speaker 2:And then second year at Rutgers, my teacher was Bill Esper, the peerless William Esper, who kind of took the Meisner technique and furthered it.
Speaker 1:He furthered it. You know, he was considered Sandy Meisner's right-hand man for a while at the Neighborhood Playhouse Not for a while, for many years and you know he probably was supposed to take over the Playhouse from Sandy after Sandy left. But Bill started his own studio, which is still there, the William Esser Studio on 36th Street in Manhattan. And Bill a great teacher and he taught me second year Meisner. But the most important thing for me is that Barbara Marchand taught me how to teach it. So you can study Meisner, you can be an actor, a Meisner actor. But to teach it is to understand how to take it apart and put it back together again, like the engine of a car, you know. So Barbara Marchand asked the I was out directing in the world and she asked me if I wanted to come to Rutgers and teach the first year BFA actors in the Meisner technique. And I said yeah. And the funny thing about that is I didn't know how to teach it. I didn't. I said to her I don't know, I don't know how to teach it. You know, I called up Maggie. I said, maggie, they want me to teach first year. And she said the most amazing thing to me you know more than you think you do, and I thought that's probably right. I know more than I think I know, which means that if I just start doing it, I understand it, but I just I don't believe that I know it. And then the truth is I got better at it because I watched Barbara's class. I watched her teach it and she mentored me and took me all throughout. To this day she's one of my great friends and my mentor. So we continue to talk about it, right? So that brings us to right here.
Speaker 1:I taught the Meisner technique at Rutgers University for 23 years before I retired, and I've been teaching it since. On Zoom online. I teach it, I coach professional actors. So we're coming on 28 years. I've been doing this almost 30 years, nearly 30 years, yeah. So does that answer? Who the hell are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1:So then, who the hell are you?
Speaker 2:I'm a Kevin student for the past I guess five years and I studied at NYU at the Meisner studio at NYU Tisch, and was introduced to Kevin through one of my teachers there and I kind of worst day of your life, that was a terrible day. It ended me up right here actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, I'm really taking that in. That was a really that's rough. What am I doing, anyway? No, so I've been with Kevin, I've bugged him ever since I met him and I've been studying with him nearly weekly, and also at NYU. I studied different, I'd say, shakespeare and Commedia dell'arte and all of that, everything I studied there. I would always supplement with Kevin and go back and ask hey, what do you think about this? What do you want to know? What works here, what doesn't work? Because I think Kevin is a once in a generationa-generation teacher. Oh my God, and he hates praise.
Speaker 1:I don't know what generation that is.
Speaker 2:It's true, and I like what you said about the lunch pail work ethic. Yeah, it's a job and you know, I think the point of us doing this podcast is that it's not gatekeepy, this woo-woo Meisner technique thing, it's just a thing, and you have a lot of stuff to say about it. That's really important for young people.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do think that's partly also why we're doing this podcast. It actually brings us to the title. Right, it's Not, not, it's a weird title, but it makes sense to us Because, well, first of all, it's an in joke, because I always use that term, not not and like when I'm working with Carson, he'll always ask to pin something down and he'll say is this thing, this thing? And I'll say, well, it's not, not that thing, which you know, it's because I like dichotomy, I like paradox, I like ambiguity and I firmly believe that something can be a thing, but inherent in it is also not that thing, or multiple other things. You know Big fan of complexity.
Speaker 1:So when people heard that I was doing a Meisner podcast, first of all they fell over that I was doing a podcast. You will all find this in future episodes. I am a Luddite and I hate, hate technology and didn't even really know what a podcast was until someone said you should do a podcast. I'm like that's great, what is that? But when people found out that I was doing a podcast, they said is it going to be a Meisner podcast? And I said, well, it's not a Meisner podcast and all we mean by that is it is, but also multiple things. Hopefully we can talk about Commedia dell'arte and other kinds of clowning. Hopefully we'll invite one of our company members in who's a mime. Hopefully we'll talk about Michael Chekhov and his technique. All of these techniques are extraordinary and none of them cancel out Meisner, right.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting that Carson mentioned the gatekeepy aspect of things. It's not. You know, I guess any serious technique can get a reputation as like oh, only a handful of people know how to do it, and if you don't do it the way they do it, then you're doing it wrong and you don't have any right to do it. Well, listen, I'm here to tell you that I wake up every day going. I'm not sure I understand this. I teach it and I don't. Somebody asked me once when did you feel like you started to really be an expert at Meisner? And I was like, first of all, I don't feel like that still. Secondly, I said to them, I guess about two or three years ago, and they went I was your student two or three years ago, you're telling me, when I was studying with you, you didn't know what the hell you were talking about.
Speaker 2:I'm like, fake it till you, make it baby.
Speaker 1:Well that was nearly 30 years ago. That was 30 years ago, but it's true, I swear. I felt a moment where suddenly I was like, oh shit, I understand this. I became unconsciously competent at it. It all just clicked and I realized, no matter what is happening in front of me, I recognize where it stands in the sequence of Meisner. So even when I'm directing actors, I can see well what's blocking them or what ideas have they not come up with, or what's wrong with their crafting. And so even when I'm directing professionally, I can, I can find it. But as far as the technique goes, I don't want anybody listening to this to think that you and I are saying this is the way it goes, and the only way it goes. This is, you know, I learned it from from Maggie and Bill. I of course read a bunch of books on it, particularly Sandy's book and Bill's book, william Esser's book, which is called the Actor's Art and Craft, the.
Speaker 1:Actor's Art and Craft, really really great book on the Meisner technique. So that's my understanding of it all, but I don't claim to be any expert at it. There are people as long as there are people like Barbara Marchant around, there are better teachers than me at this. But I do think that people have said to me that I should do this podcast because I do have a particular way of articulating it for, for young people specifically, and that's who we want this podcast to be for.
Speaker 1:I have taught at high school summer programs, so they're usually 15, 16, 17 years old.
Speaker 1:I just have a way of articulating it for that age group, so I hope those people are listening. But I've also taught BFA, so that's people in their 20s, and I've taught MFAs that's people in their 30s, and professionally I work with people in their 40s and their 50s. So I hope people listening to this from 15 years old to, you know, 60 or even older will recognize the work in there. And so, even if you use Meisner as a professional actor, I would hope that listening to this you would go yeah, yeah, it's great to hear that again and I remember it that way. Or I didn't remember it. It that way and I'm glad to hear it differently. But mostly I hope that if you're out there and you're young and you love acting but don't quite know how to find your way in, or you love acting and have heard of Sanford Meisner but don't understand the technique, even if you read some books on it, you might be like I read the books but I still don get it.
Speaker 2:It's hard to pick it up off the page you know it is and I remember you told me once that it's better to read the book after you've done the training. Oh my God, because you kind of think back to what was in, what you saw in class in the book.
Speaker 1:Yes, You'll recognize the training in the book rather than read the book. If you read the book, you may go I don't get this and then you might not go train, Right you know, which is not a great idea.
Speaker 2:It is good, I hope, in our podcast it's good to hear someone just talk about it, to discuss it, to take it apart, I hope there's an aspect of our, when we get rolling with this that we may put an email address out there and have people write to us and ask questions and then we can sit here and read the question and answer it Absolutely, and I like I think it's important and kind of exciting that we've worked together as teacher and student, so we kind of come at it from two different perspectives, because I'm going to have a lot more questions. So going through that, I think, will be interesting. Why do you think for someone who doesn't know what the Meisner technique is right? Not that you need to sell them on anything, but what would you say to someone who's asking or listening and saying, well, why Meisner?
Speaker 1:Yeah, honestly, it's a very good question. I wouldn't say the answer is because it's the only technique and you must study it. My first question would be why study Like you have to? I believe you have to study acting. By the way, there are plenty of great actors out there who never formally studied, but they did the work with people who did study and there's a good chance that all along the way they picked up things that worked for them. So they call it their technique because they tried it and it either failed or succeeded. So my answer to that question why Meisner? Would first and foremost be why study you have to. But secondly, why Meisner? As opposed to say any other technique?
Speaker 1:I believe that for the most part, most techniques address the same ballpark which all comes from. Well, all cause and effect realism comes from Stanislavski. So whether it's Strasberg or Uta Hagen or Stella Adler or Meisner, they are emulating what Stanislavski tried to do, which is to help the actor to operate from the unconscious right. Stanislavski himself was an actor and he was the first to sort of codify. He would say to himself how come some nights I'm really good in performance and other nights I suck? And he actually sat back and said what's the variable there? And he realized it was. You know, if he was too conscious of the audience, like if he was on stage and aware that he was being watched, he would feel very self-conscious and wooden. And well, of course you're being watched. Can you tell we're in New York? Can you tell we're in New York? Can you guys hear that fire engine out there? Or police? So Stanislavski figured out that the way to act, the way he wanted to act, which is to put your attention on anything but yourself, you know.
Speaker 1:So I think most contemporary American acting training follows that idea. Specifically why, meisner? I think it's an extremely well thought out sequence of practical exercises, like it is really thought through. It's not a little of this and a little of that, and it's not. You don't show up and on the first day they hand you a scene you don't know how to act yet and they're handing you freaking seagull. You know you work on yourself and you identify what has personal meaning for you and you let yourself improvise within exercises. You know.
Speaker 1:So to us, the most valuable thing in acting well, one of the most valuable things in acting is spontaneity, impulsivity, so that if you're in a conventional play. It looks like it's unfolding For the audience. It's unfolding in front of them. You know, the best thing you could do, what we could do for an audience, is to let them sit there and go. I'm not sure those actors know what's coming next. If they don't, I sure as hell don't. And that way it unfolds with a sense of danger, like the good kind of danger, like what the fuck's going to happen. They're living so presently in the moment. They don't know that this play has been pre-written and rehearsed and it's going to go somewhere. Absolutely Right.
Speaker 1:So the Meisner technique has I know other techniques do too, I'm only speaking to the Meisner technique has a great sequence of exercises that hold you in the present moment. Right, they force you for lack of a better word to be experiential. Right, meisner said there are two kinds of actors presentational actors and representational actors. Right, presentational actors are those actors that present the way something looks I'm acting like. This is truthful, you know, and I suppose there's an artistry in that. But Jesus Christ, you know to get up there and act like something, like you're pretending. You know.
Speaker 1:Meisner said that he wants his actors to represent the character like I'm standing in for that person. You know, I'm the house that they're living in while this play goes on. I'm lending them my house here and they're being represented through me, right? We tend to go a third step, though. We say we want actors that are experiential actors, which I think you have to be an experiential actor in order to be a representational actor. But for us, the bottom line is are you having a genuine central nervous system experience up there? And the Meister technique leans heavily on that and if you study this, you will be the kind of actor that recognizes that you're not even experiential in your real life, never mind in your acting.
Speaker 1:You know, too often we create the persona that we want to show to the world out in real life. Well, you've spent your life, then, identifying things that are palatable to you and to people who see you, but that means that you've left other. You've literally cut things out. But those things you've cut out, those might be who you essentially are. They might be your authentic self, but you go, yeah, but it's too vulnerable for me to be that. So you put it over there and eventually you've created this persona. If you stop and look at it, you go that isn't even who I am. I'm going through life presenting this, but you know, socrates said the unexamined life it's worth living. You're going to live your life and not examine who you are and how you feel about everything under the sun and bring it to your work, because as an artist, that's what you do, absolutely yeah. So I don't know if that answers the question why, meisner? I hope that as we go and have further episodes, we will in fact identify the practical sequence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, and I think most people, especially young actors, who maybe have heard about Sanford Meisner or the Meisner technique, probably have heard of repetition, but I always love what you say. People always say you know, I've done a little bit of Meisner and you always say you can't do a little bit of Meisner. And you always say you can't do a little bit of Meisner. It's a two-year trajectory.
Speaker 1:Absolutely A little bit of Meisner. Yeah, when I used to audition for students to come to Rutgers they would say, oh, you do Meisner there, I did a little of that. I'm like I'm curious to see which little bit you did. But I also test them. I'll go like, okay, let's do some repetition. Oh boy, listen, this is important too for those of you who maybe have studied repetition. It's possible the way we do it is different than the way you've been trained. So hopefully, when we may demonstrate it even a little bit here and there, or at least talk about it in detail, hopefully you may see the value of the way we think of the repetition exercise. We'll get to that. Maybe the third episode.
Speaker 1:We're not going to get to the beginning of how we would teach it in class, at least for maybe the first two episodes.
Speaker 2:So that's something we'll circle back to. Yeah, I'll make a note.
Speaker 1:You make a note, I'm not going to make a note.
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:By the way, you don't want to see my notes. If even I do make them, you don't want to see them.
Speaker 2:Well, so then what? I guess that leads us to the definition.
Speaker 1:Definition of acting. Yeah, listen, if we're going to begin, might as well begin now. Begin at the beginning. You have to identify the definition. According to Sandy Meisner, it's a really great definition. I've never come across a better definition of acting. It encompasses all of it.
Speaker 1:According to Meisner, any great acting begins with one simple concept. He called it the reality of doing. The reality of doing which makes sense, right? Are you really doing what you say you're doing? So that makes sense. When you're in a play you and I have talked about this somebody has to write a letter in their scene and they go, like you know, they go up here, take that to the. They didn't. You, you're with the audience going, they didn't write anything on that paper and what happens, of course, is the faith gets thrown out the window. We, we all, have faith, the actors have faith, the audience have faith that what we're looking at is a reality. That's occurring, you know, in a prescribed beginning, middle and end, but it's still happening, impulsively in front of us, naturally in front of us. So the second, somebody doesn't really write a letter. We all go, I'm out.
Speaker 2:Well, and the sense of danger that you talked about is completely disillusioned once you see that.
Speaker 1:Of course. So we say, if you have to write a letter in a play, write the fucking letter. Or if you read a letter, don't just look at it and then respond to how terrible that news was, you didn't read it. To how terrible that news was, you didn't read it. You know Parenthetically. This is where our actors get in trouble sometimes, because the director's like will you hurry it up? And the actor's like but I didn't read the thing, you don't have to read it. Directors, hurry up, go fast.
Speaker 1:We'll talk about directors sometime down the line. I am a director, by the way, and I hate myself Not really but directors who don't understand how actors work, they will take shortcuts and you may go I can't believe in what I'm doing. Now listen, don't be that precious actor who's like I must feel it or I can't act. That is not what we're saying, right? We actually believe in actors serving the play they're doing. So it doesn't help for the actor to be like I cannot speak unless I feel it. Come on, man, either make yourself feel it or figure something out, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just do it, say the line, do the thing.
Speaker 1:Do it Right. So this reality of doing, though, is achieved through well, through multiple things, but mostly through Meisner's definition. Now here's the thing about the definition. Whenever I'm teaching young people and I ask them, first of all I'll ask them what they think the definition of acting is, and if they haven't heard Meisner's definition, they'll just say the most extraordinary things, like pretending to be. I'm like, oh, stop. The second you say the word pretend. I don't want to hear it. You know, acting is entertaining. Maybe it is entertaining, but you're not up there to entertain, you know. So we'll hear. You said when you were younger, you used to make faces in the mirror.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, Practice. I used to do that all the time, like thinking, acting, preparing for acting was working on my facial expressions and stuff.
Speaker 1:In the mirror.
Speaker 2:And that's not what it's all about.
Speaker 1:No, it certainly isn't. It's about the reality of doing Reality of doing. You want to talk about self-conscious, right? You're looking at your face in the mirror while you're acting. You'll definitely see yourself acting. That's not a good idea and you'll pretend.
Speaker 2:And you'll start pretending Yikes, but you're not truly experiencing anything, which is the definition. Do you want me to read the?
Speaker 1:definition. Yeah, no, no it, because I think this is important. Whenever somebody says that they do know Miser's definition, they always give me a fractured version of it, an incomplete version. They'll say living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. That's only a partial definition, because, according to Sandy, the definition was acting is the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Why do people always leave out the ability Every time they say it living truthfully under imagination. I'm like no, no, he included in the definition. Whether or not you can do it, it's the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances, and you and I have talked about this.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure the definition of basketball isn't whether or not you're good at it. Yeah Right, it's like you dribble the ball and you throw it and it goes in the hoop. That's basketball, not like, but only if you can actually throw the ball through the hoop, right, but acting. Sandy Meisner was like no, I'm going to include in the definition that you have to do it, you have to be good at it, you have to be able to do it. Whether that's talent or not, we'll talk about that down the line. Talent and whether there even is such a thing, we'll talk about it down the line. But I think it's a really hard-ass thing for Sandy to do To say I don't want people showing up here thinking they can do it. That's because even in his time there were hacks, people who showed up and just tried to. You know what I mean. I mean, like today, because of there are TikTok influencers or whatever, who are known for that, who then go. I'm going to be an actor because I am known. Those are two different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and this is that's coming from a guy, sanford, who had a frame in his office that said I wish the stage was narrow as a tightrope so that no incompetent dare step on it. I freaking love that. I'm sure that influenced the ability part of the definition.
Speaker 1:I wish the stage were the dimensions of a tightrope. Finish the stage with the dimensions of a tightrope. That way, no incompetent would dare tread upon it. So it's a really great metaphor, isn't it Like if you walked into the circus and looked up at the tightrope, you wouldn't be like I'm going to climb up there and take a walk.
Speaker 2:Right, well, and you've said that about opera when you go to an opera, you don't just think you can sing opera.
Speaker 1:No, even if right, even if your talents are in the ballpark adjacent to, if you're a pop singer, you go. I am a singer, then you go. And now I'm going to sing La Boheme, you can't. Just because you're a singer doesn't mean you can sing opera or ballet. You can't just show up and go hey, let's do Swan Lake, but people genuinely show up and go. I'm going to be an actor, want like, but people genuinely show up and go. I'm going to be an actor, yeah, and but the reason for that is because we let them. We let them, we get the culture we deserve.
Speaker 1:So, you know, if some TikTok influencer, god bless them, and, by the way, maybe they do have talent, but somebody who's known for something, it doesn't mean being an actor and being a celebrity are two different things Absolutely. Or being an actor like a celebrity are two different things Absolutely. Or being an actor like a genuine actor, an artist, is different than just being known, notorious or whatever. So you have to have the ability to do it, according to Meisner, right. And then the second part of that definition is live truthfully. Right To live truthfully. Bill Esper took a look at that verb and he changed it. He changed the word live to do and the reasoning is living. It's a bit of a general verb, right? You mean all I got to do is go up there and live, right?
Speaker 2:Well, how do you ask, how do I say I'm going to go live?
Speaker 1:I'm going to go live. I mean, you and I are living right now. We're breathing. All you got to do to live is not be dead, right, just breathe, but we're not acting. So Bill changed it to do the ability to do truthfully, like always be doing on stage You're never not doing, but when you do you have to do it truthfully, really do what you're doing Right. And then the last part of that definition is under imaginary circumstances. So if you ask me what the difference is between Meisner technique and some other techniques, we would say the use of the imagination.
Speaker 1:Stella Adler too, adler and Meisner believed in the use of the imagination, the importance of the imagination. So the circumstance is not real. So all these actors who get caught up in it, I can't shake it. It's like, but that's not your real life, it's imaginary. You're lending yourself to it. You should be able to. I mean, I've told this before. I think I've told you this.
Speaker 1:Rhys Iffens, I think, is his name. Great actor. He did a movie once where he just played a character who was so hurt and so just devastated and lonely and alone and everybody treated him like shit, and he played it so convincingly. I saw an interview with him and they said to him how did you, when the shoot was over, how did you shake that character? What did it take to let go of that character? And he said two pints of Guinness. So that's what it should be. You go, are we done? We're not shooting anymore. Good, let's go to the bar have a drink, shake it off, man, let it go. It's not real. Just a job, just a job, yeah, but when you're living through that imaginary circumstance, you are having a genuine central nervous system experience. It is happening, so it's true, but it's not real. So the circumstances are imaginary. The ability to do truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Now, bill I believe it was Bill added something to the end of that definition which I only recently found out. A colleague of mine, jennifer Monaco, who teaches at the studio, esper Studio, told me that when she studied with Bill, studied training with him, he used to add to it, raised to the optics of the theater, the ability to do truthfully under imaginary circumstances, raised to the optics of the theater. I think that's from Bill.
Speaker 1:What I like about it is something that I worry about the Meisner technique. It is not enough for you and I to be truthful. You and I can be simply truthful because we're very close to each other. So our truth goes from here to here, my heart to your heart, two feet away. But if we're doing it on a stage, my lips to God's ear you should be in a Broadway play.
Speaker 1:There's 1200 seats out there. We can't be simply truthful with each other. They won't hear us, and not only will they not hear us, they may not even feel us, because we're not alive fully, vocally and physically as well as emotionally. So, raised to the optics of the theater just means that you have to radiate, which is a word from Michael Chekhov. You have to fill energetically, you have to fill the theater, but it still has to be truthful, because some people, when they try to go from the rehearsal room to the theater, they go, and now I must turn to the audience and speak loudly. Well, you gave up the truth. So how do you fill that space? With your truthful energy, still connected to your partner, still deeply alive, but also filling space beyond what some people call the fourth wall, right, raised to the optics of the theater.
Speaker 2:Right, well, and it's interesting because that definition, or looking at it that way, also applies, on the opposite hand, to film, because you're just distilling it to the optics of the lens. Right, absolutely. That's why Meisner works for everything.
Speaker 1:It works for everything. Yeah yeah, if you're shooting a film, then you know the optics that you must raise to are way smaller than the theater, and if you try to bring your theater acting to film, it's not going to go very well. It's going to smash into the lens of the camera. The camera operator is going to be like tone it down, dude. So yeah, it just means your truth in the room you're in. The other thing it does that I'm happy about is it acknowledges that there is in fact an audience watching.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:These actors who go like there's no, that fourth wall idea, a wall, really. The fourth wall, what is that? It's an imaginary wall between you and the audience. Oh, that's great. You put them behind a wall. Excellent, jesus Christ, you have to invite them in, right. So in a sense, you're saying those people are out there. They're not in our reality, but they are out there, right. Right, it's a sharing thing that we do, it's a giving. What did you call it? Bill Irwin said it to you it's a service profession. It's a service profession.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We are here to. We invite strangers into our house. The relationship between actors and the audience is host-guest. We invited them, they're our guests. What are you going to do? Invite them in to a party and then go? Hey, what are you doing Eating the Cheetos there? Those aren't for you. They're like can I have a drink? No, you invited me. Yeah, but you can't. Don't touch it, you know. But to invite them to the theater is to go. You guys all sit there. We're going to do a play, but first we're going to put a wall up.
Speaker 2:Well, that's why calling it a service profession is so interesting because it's not about us. It's not about us.
Speaker 1:Not about us, no, actors who make themselves too important. That's a scary thing, in fact. Maybe I was too harsh. I can be harsh sometimes, I can be a little bit of a dick, but when I used to interview by the way, for those of you out there who are thinking to audition for a school, a college, you should know that the two monologues that you do are really important, but just as important interview the interview. You sit down and talk to people and everyone wants to know how you feel about acting and the value of acting. When I used to sit with some of these students, I would say to them why do you want to be an actor? And they would go well, it makes me feel like, uh, we're out. They would talk about acting.
Speaker 1:I like it because of how it makes me feel and I'm like dude, it ain't about you. It's not about you and it's certainly not about how you feel. No one cares cares how you feel. The audience cares about how they feel and your job is to let them have an experience. They have a vicarious experience because you're having an actual experience up there. You have to have an actual experience, moment to moment to moment to moment. The audience lives through that vicariously, because they recognize themselves up there. We were talking about this just today. Carson and I have a company that we're in. It's called the One One Project.
Speaker 1:And just today we were talking about the value that people go to the theater to see themselves, but not just to see themselves mirrored back. They also go to see what they aspire to. So we're not just showing them how it is, we're showing them what we aspire to. So we're not just showing them how it is, we're showing them what we aspire to. We can be better. You know, I wish that I were like that. You know, it's a really important job.
Speaker 1:When people go to the theater, when it's over, they leave feeling differently than when they went in. That happens quite a bit. You enter the theater feeling one way. You watch a play, you come out, you feel different Movies too. But I'm always fascinated that people how was the play? It was very moving. They say it moved me. Well, we've taken that to mean it was emotional. No, you literally mean you came in feeling one way and you moved, you literally transacted, you transitioned, you transformed, you were moved. So the actor is the person that can do that for the audience, move them, and you know your job is when the play's over, the audience should leave and go.
Speaker 1:I got to call my mom. You know, something in that play made me go. I got to call my mom and I want to talk to her about that thing that's between us or whatever. You know it's a hell of a thing. It's a service profession. You must be of service. Whenever I was working with students, if they would come in my office and start talking about you know, I'm stuck and I'm this and I'm that, I go. Yeah, you're making yourself too important. You really you should go volunteer at an animal shelter or a soup kitchen or something. Go be of service. You know, get off, get off yourself. But but there's irony in that right, because most people go. Well, actors are very self-centered people, yeah, and in order to be an actor, you have to be very, you know, conscious of your existence on earth. You want to be self-aware, but not self-centered Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Two different things, two different things, two completely different things, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, I think in our next episodes we will talk about what we use quite a bit in our work, which comes from Stanislavski. It's called the circle of attention. So how do we do a play if there's no fourth wall? And the way to do it is in the circle of attention? We put ourselves in an imaginary circle that includes everything that's in the circle you and I and anything else around, objects or anything like that. But anything outside that circle that exists, but it's not our concern. Right, right, we'll take that apart in upcoming episodes. The other thing we wanted to talk about, but we won't today, we'll tease it, see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm learning how to do a podcast. Yes, you are See, I know the lingo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tease, we're going to tease this topic. You see, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Ladies and gentlemen, the, the. If you're going to be truthful, right, if you're going to behave truthfully, do truthfully. You have to know what truth is, or know what your truth is Right. So the next time we meet, we're going to discuss Stanislavski's interest in artistic truth and natural beauty. We're going to take that apart. Next time, we're going to talk about how truth and nature and beauty are interchangeable. So that's for next time. Do we have anything else today that we wanted to talk about? That's all we really wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1:I thought you wanted to talk about how handsome I am no, no, that's no, no, I cut that idea.
Speaker 2:Oh, you cut it.
Speaker 1:I see you scratched it. You have notes you wrote Kevin is handsome. And then you wrote a big Well and it says bring very bad, don't bring that it'll.
Speaker 2:It'll turn off a lot of this, I see. So so we won't talk about it?
Speaker 1:no, okay, well. Well, that's episode one. Episode one of it's not not a meisner podcast yes, that's kevin kittel.
Speaker 2:I'm carson s davis and uh, there you have it. Thank you for listening. Please follow us on instagram at meisner podcast.
