<p>So many people here were so helpful when I first jumped on a couple of months ago to try to sort out potential schools/programs for my (hs junior) daughter. I started with what everyone suggested and have been doing tons of research -- thank you all for sending me in the right direction!</p>
<p>Here's a question we're bumping up against now: What seems to be the prevalence of Meisner training in many schools. Not just colleges, of course -- we are in Los Angeles, and most of the well-regarded acting training out here is steeped in Meisner as well.</p>
<p>My daughter attended a course at RADA this summer and absolutely fell in love with the British approach to acting. It spoke in every way to who she is -- she felt like she finally found acting teachers who "got" her, and she in fact did very well there this summer. She is an "outside-in" actor, most comfortable working on textual analysis and physical technique in a very British way. She doesn't like the repetition and improv aspects of Meisner, and finds they don't help her at all as an actor.</p>
<p>So here's my question: Is it possible to build a good list of acting schools in the U.S. that don't rely on Meisner as a significant part of their training? Is that even advisable? Or should she just suck it up and learn a technique that she finds hinders her personally as an actor?</p>
<p>(Yes, we will apply to British schools, but given how few American actors each one takes, that's not a complete solution.)</p>
<p>I know this is a strange question, and really appreciate any insights anyone has on the subject!</p>
<p>In the US, I’m applying to CalArts, Carnegie, UNCSA, UMinnesota, Juilliard, and SUNY Purchase. </p>
<p>None of those schools have a particular emphasis in Meisner. I’m in the same boat as your D. I did a program at Guildhall this summer and fell in love with the training across the pond. I’m applying to 5 schools there.</p>
<p>NJTheatreMOM – Yes, I know those two explicitly say they focus on Meisner. What I’m learning, though, is that plenty of other schools use some version of Meisner training even if they don’t use the name explicitly. As I talk to people from CMU and Purchase, for instance, they feel much of the training is Meisner-based at least in their experience. It’s hard for me to tell on the outside how accurate that is… And hard to say whether that’s something to embrace or not…</p>
<p>PayingOurDues, my son went to BU and I really don’t think the training there is Meisner based or I would have heard about it. The only training focus that I’m aware of there is Linklater voice training.</p>
<p>It’s an interesting question. I’m going to ask my son about it and I’ll let you know what he says.</p>
<p>I always thought BU had a strong Meisner influence from having talked to some graduates, but maybe that’s changed more recently . Actually, most of the top American schools do. Like all the schools Josh named except for CalArts and Juilliard who do Spolin instead which essentially takes you to the same place carry at least some of that influence. And at Juilliard it’s only been since Marian Seldes (now at Fordham) left that they got away from it. Hell, UNCSA even has Carolyn Kava who was approved by Meisner to teach at the Neighborhood Playhouse on the faculty and who also happens to be one of the only such teachers to have parlayed the technique into a real world acting career. [She</a> even got to tell Tom Cruise to not say ***** in the house](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube) in an Oliver Stone joint in which Cruise showed he really can be an excellent actor when he takes a role that calls for it. :)</p>
<p>I don’t know what they teach in the British summer programs, but there’s a [YouTube</a> video of a first year class at Guildhall](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube) in which the teacher has them doing some exercises that are similar to Meisner or Spolin in their emphasis on spontaneity prior to moving into text although with more of a physical emphasis.</p>
<p>P.S. It’s funny that CC won’t let you say ***** in their house. :)</p>
<p>You should take a look at NYU Tisch and see the different studios available there – as you may know, the students are assigned primary studio (for the first two years) by the school, so if any of those studios seem like the kind of training your D is looking for, then it’s probably worth a shot.</p>
<p>This is my son’s reply about BU (copied from an email):</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the first real scene study class that you take at BU is Meisner-based, because that’s the training background of the teacher. However, there is a range of training options that happens. One can train anywhere from London to Paris to Italy to India for abroad. The school also uses Linklater, Stanislavski, Grotowski, and touches upon techniques like neutral mask, Laban, and commedia. If you want to avoid Meisner thinking entirely, definitely don’t go to BU. However, BU does offer a range of training options of which Meisner is only one. This is especially true of the Theatre Arts major.</p>
<p>This is not something my D has ever considered. Can a person really hate the Meisner training so much that the school they have chosen would be a bad fit?</p>
<p>Bisouu – I think that’s a really good question. I see lots of discussion of type of campus, location, intensity of training, etc. when it comes to assessing “fit,” but not much about the type of training at each school.</p>
<p>For my own D, it’s not so much that she hates Meisner – she just finds it useless personally, and wants to spend her time focusing on learning technique that she feels she can incorporate to make her a better actor… And I’m trying to assess how much to respect her point of view vs. how much to tell her to just try to learn what she can no matter what…</p>
<p>It’s not something I ever thought about or saw as a possible issue for my D. I am not an actor and have no idea about the different types of trainings. My D’s theater class does acting exercises but I am not sure she would even know what type these are. She also has done outside acting classes and I don’t ever recall hearing any specific name attached to the training. I hope your D finds the right fit for her. :)</p>
<p>I think the kids who have done summer pre-college training programs are the ones most likely to know about different training techniques. That type of kid has occasionally posted here.</p>
<p>My own son did not do any of those types of programs and hardly knew what Meisner was when he was applying to colleges. Studying up on the different approaches to training at the NYU studios helped us learn.</p>
<p>PayingOurDues, I think it’s hard to know enough to really understand a method after one summer. If Meisner gives your D the creeps, she can steer away from Rutgers and UArts, but she would probably be comfortable with one semester of it at a school where it was one of many techniques being taught. </p>
<p>I’ve seen my own D go through a lot of different feelings about different techniques, but she has learned from every one. IF I were your D, I’d cast a wide net, apply to programs that don’t focus tightly on one technique, and then visit her different choices, sit in on classes and see which one feels best. If she loves her school and admires her teachers, she’ll be happy, even with a semester of a training she’s not crazy about.</p>
<p>Not knowing who here knows what and in what depth, I think it should be pointed out for those interested that Meisner is a widely misunderstood technique. There are two major books on it entitled On Acting by Sanford Meisner and The Actor’s Art and Craft by William Esper that only cover the first year of the training which consists of a layered series of exercises starting with the famed repetition and door exercises. The problem is that there are a lot of people who having read those books believe that is all there is to it when, in fact, the first year exercises very much build into interpretive work the second year which very much includes text analysis, recognition of an active subtext, emotional preparation, impediments and physical characterization. Not being a committed Meisnerite myself, I don’t keep up with which teachers are which, but I know some who get very annoyed by the proliferation of “Meisner teachers” in LA who claim to teach it when, in fact, they’ve never studied it with a qualified teacher themselves and don’t know what the hell they’re doing other than what they’ve gathered from those two books. Then, there is no shortage of Charlatans claiming to teach any number of things in LA, so that’s not just confined to Meisner technique.</p>
<p>Fishbowl – I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. As I ask around about acting teachers here in LA, I hear lots of people spouting Meisner, followed by people saying, “Oh that’s not really Meisner.” (Honestly, it’s like talking to a true Pilates devotee about who’s teaching “real” Pilates.) So that when my daughter says she doesn’t like Meisner, I’m really not sure if she’s been fully exposed to the whole technique; from what you’re saying, I think possibly not. But it seems that some version of Meisner technique creeps into almost every acting school, and the question becomes: What are they really teaching, and do they even know?.. I wish every school was as upfront as, say, Rutgers or some of the NYU studios about their approach(es) so we could know what we might be signing up for…</p>
<p>My S went to RCS this summer but didn’t experience the pure outside-in, text-based learning your D experienced, PayingOurDues. He is actually a very inside-based actor, although he also uses text to inform his interpretation of character. I have to wonder how much is the individual student and teachers. </p>
<p>This applies to American schools as well. A school may officially be Meisner based, but this can mean a whole lot of things, as several people have pointed out, and how it impacts your learning can depend greatly on who is doing the teaching, what the department vision is, and how this all impacts the student. I don’t know how much this helps though. Btw, Northwestern is not Meisner-based.</p>
<p>My son said something very interesting regarding the training he is looking for. He says he wants to learn methods that are not innately inside him just in case he confronts a role that what he has been doing up till now does not work. This way he would have another process to call upon. </p>
<p>I think someone on CC once told me the method that he is using but I’ve forgotten it. I know he remembers other experiences where he felt the same feeling.</p>
<p>This is actually a good point of conversation when your S or D goes on auditions and if he/she has the opportunity to ask a question. My D asked this question whenever she got a chance and her goal was to find a program that used a toolbox approach rather than one specific method or direction since she knew that she wanted to be versatile and if she did not feel a method fit her that she’d have other methods to work with.</p>
I asked a friend of mine who is a committed Meisnerite and knows who all the teachers in town are about this. According to her, there are only four in LA who really studied the technique with Meisner and were approved by him to teach it plus two others that studied with William Esper in the Rutgers MFA and at his New York Studio who were approved by him. This shouldn’t be a big deal because many say that while Meisner created the technique, Esper is actually the better teacher because he doesn’t carry Meisner’s psychological baggage that he’d often take out on his students. Dude was cray cray … </p>
<p>The first four are William Alderson, Martin Barter, John Ruskin and Alex Taylor. The two approved by Esper are Elizabeth Mestnik and Joanne Baron. Also, Robert Carnegie and Jeff Goldblum at Playhouse West studied with Meisner, but were not officially approved to teach it like the rest. What happened there was that they had a study group that became popular with outsiders and they ended up opening a studio to meet demand. Meisner would occasionally teach out of there when he was in town, so it could be inferred that he at least somewhat approved of it even if he didn’t officially approve them as teachers. </p>
<p>My advice on all this is to keep an open mind when it comes to choosing schools based on your prejudices about a specific technique they might spend some time on. I actually had a strong prejudice against the teachings of Lee Strasberg when I started not so much from personal experience but from having had a couple of teachers who may as well have characterized him as the devil himself. I’d read a lot of rantings by Meisner and David Mamet, too, which led to taking in [further</a> misinformed and presumptuous rantings like the one by this clown](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP1XGOTUjiw]further”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP1XGOTUjiw) who I’ve since found should be taken about as seriously as your typical wingnut political commentator … I didn’t realize it when I decided to go, but my program did some of that work first year and once I dropped my preconceptions and just gave myself to it, I really did make some valuable discoveries that inform the way I work to this day.</p>