Method acting

Cafe Society
1

I didn’t want to hijack Jinx’s thread, but the discussion of method acting got me thinking about my own acting training.

My teacher had studied with Sanford Meisner, so he taught the Meisner Technique. (And I’m trying to remember the signs my teacher put up in the room for every class. The only one I remember absolutely was An Ounce of Behavior is Worth a Pound of Words. Were the other two Be Specific and Act Before You Think? This was 20 years ago, so forgive my memory lapse!)

I remember the 1997 episode of ER in which Sanford Meisner appeared (and I think maybe Noah Wyle trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse?). The man was 90 years old and had had a laryngectomy in 1970 due to throat cancer, so he couldn’t speak. And he was amazing. An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words, indeed.

For those of you trained in The Method or something similar, let’s talk about it!

2

When I took acting in college (3 terms, and basically the only college courses I did end up taking all the way through) my professors were all Method guys. Personally, I thought it was the stupidest shit ever, but a lot of my classmates seemed to get something out of it. I vaguely remember Meisner being mentioned - maybe we even read a book of his and did exercises; it’s been a long time - but I don’t think his style was the great focus. Personally, I never used any Method techniques, but I gave them lip service and my instructors thought I was using the Method, so they gave me A’s.

There’s madness to the method,
Woody