**Meisner Technique - Workshop 2 (Independent Activities)**

Monday, November 13 - Friday, November 17 6-10pm

Strictly Limited Places: Maximum 12 Actors
(only for those who have taken Workshop 1 with Steven)

Apply now :
https://www.directorslab.org/applynow/

2 workshop: 390.- € / EARLY BIRD SPECIAL 350.- € until Oct 1, 2023
*For those who repeat a workshop, there is an extra discount of 25.-€ for each workshop repeated.

Observers price: 175 Eur/5 days or 40 Eur/ day

If you want more information:
+370 682 42709
cu@directorlab.org
www.directorslab.org/meisnervilnius

Visit Steven's website Meisner International
www.meisnerinternational.com

WORKSHOP 2 - INDEPENDENT ACTIVITIES

This workshop continues the training we started of really doing. Acting is doing. When we are not really doing on stage we have stopped acting. I say continues because part of what we have strengthened with Repetition is the ability to really listen and listening is a real doing.

Developing Concentration!
Now we are going to add an element to the repetition exercise called Independent Activities. Meisner said, “The quality of your acting depends on how fully you are doing what you are doing.”

This activity will demand real concentration in order for you to complete it. Once an actor places the totality of his concentration on the accomplishment of some concrete, specific, and truthful goal, he cannot help but react truthfully, from the core of his self and experience.

One actor in the room will concentrate on an activity (with a meaningful reason out of his imagination for doing it) while the other actor will come to the door, like what we did in the last workshop (now with a specific reason to come to the door out of his imagination).

We must always be in response to what is happening. A truly difficult activity will demand that you place the entirety of your concentration on it AND you must still respond to your partner - to what is actually happening from impulsive moment to impulsive moment!

Remember – the exercise has no agenda. There is nothing that is supposed to happen. The point is to really do, really listen, and truthfully respond. If you do this, you create real contact between the partners. Not intellectual contact but emotional contact. And when this happens, strong truthful acting occurs.

This work is challenging and very rewarding. I can’t wait to work with you again!

Sincerely, Steven Ditmyer

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Steven Ditmyer
Actor/Director/Acting Teacher
Founder, Meisner International

STEVEN is an Actor, Director and Acting Teacher who studied with SANFORD MEISNER, UTA HAGEN and ZOE CALDWELL. He is a graduate of THE NEIGHBORHOOD PLAYHOUSE SCHOOL OF THE THEATRE in New York City where he later was invited to train as a teacher of THE MEISNER TECHNIQUE.

In addition to being a guest teacher at THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF DRAMATIC ARTS in New York City, He is the founder of MEISNER INTERNATIONAL currently teaching workshops in NEW YORK, LONDON, AMSTERDAM, PARIS, ROME, BERLIN, VIENNA, HELSINKI, VILNIUS, TALLINN, RIO DE JANEIRO, SAO PAULO, QUITO, GUAYAQUIL and BOGOTA with new workshops starting in SWEDEN, GREECE and BUENOS AIRES.

As an actor, Steven worked with many great artists such as AL PACINO, ARTHUR MILLER, TONY RANDALL, RON RIFKIN, SAM WATERSTON, DIANE WIEST, BLYTHE DANNER and more.

As a director, he directed the OFF THE PAGE READING SERIES for TONY RANDALL’S NATIONAL ACTORS THEATRE in NYC (2005-2008) with such notable productions as: THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA with ALEC BALDWIN, GOLF WITH ALAN SHEPARD with JACK KLUGMAN, CHARLES DURNING, LEN CARIOU and JOHN CULLUM and LADIES IN RETIREMENT with ROSEMARY HARRIS. He has directed many productions in New York working with such notable playwrights as ROBERT ASKINS, JAMES MCCLURE, BRUCE JAY FRIEDMAN, ALBERT BERMEL, JACK GILHOOLEY, GAIL SHEEHY and with notable actors as MARIAN SELDES, BRIAN MURRAY, DANA IVEY, JOHN PANKOW, RICHARD BEY, BRIAN GERAGHTY and many more. Steven was the Co-Artistic Director of the WORKSHOP AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD PLAYHOUSE (1999-2003) where he directed over 20 new plays and was the Artistic Director of THE NEIGHBORHOOD THEATRE COMPANY in Naples, Florida (2003-2005) where he directed THE SYRINGA TREE. He was a founding director of the A-TRAIN PLAYS in NYC (written and performed in 24 hours) where he directed THE CASSEROLES OF FAR ROCKAWAY by SETH BAUER – winner of THE 2004 SAMUEL FRENCH FESTIVAL. He will be directing an adaptation of Ionesco's EXIT THE KING in Italian opening in Rome, Fall 2019.

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History of the Meisner Technique.

In the 1930s, Sanford Meisner was an actor in the Group Theatre, the most important repertory theatre in modern American History, which spawned the major American acting teachers, and several of the most important playwrights and directors of the 20th century. Meisner and his fellow actor Stella Adler fell out with their director Lee Strasberg over his use of Emotional Recall, a technique in which the actor used personal emotion from his own past memories to feed the acting process. Meisner and Adler chose to use the imagination to stimulate emotion and involvement in a play's imaginary circumstances. Both Strasberg's and Meisner and Adler's techniques came out of the work of Konstantin Stanislavski in Russia, but they differed on which parts of his work was most important to the actor's work and training. The Group Theatre broke up partially because of the conflict over these techniques. Meisner, Adler and Strasberg all went on to become acting teachers who had a profound influence on American acting and culture, as well as a strong influence on European acting.

At the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, Meisner created a full-blown acting technique which would train an actor to create all the layers of a complete performance over a two year period. It was, and still is, one of the most systematic and complete acting techniques in the Western world. Meisner's work was based on the principle that acting found its most profound expression in specific behavior that came out of the actor's real human response to circumstances and other people. The technique is based on truth. Meisner said “Acting is the ability to live truthfully under given imaginary circumstances.” Because of this, his entire training method relied heavily on accessing the actor's impulses, through which real responses and real behavior were accessed in the moment. This technique was not only applied to improvisation with another person, but also to the actor's way of finding things to do in rehearsal, interpreting a script, and creating the specific physical characteristics of each character the actor played.

The basic exercise that Meisner invented to train the actor's responses is called the Repetition Exercise. In this exercise, two actors stand across from each other and respond to each other through a repeated phrase. The phrase is about each other's behavior, and reflects what is going on between them in the moment, such as "You look unhappy with me right now." The way this phrase is said as it is repeated changes in meaning, tone and intensity to correspond with the behavior that each actor produces towards the other. Through this device, the actor stops thinking of what to say and do, and responds more freely and spontaneously, both physically and vocally. The exercise also eliminates line readings, since the way the actor speaks becomes coordinated with his behavioral response. As the exercise continues over a period of months, more detailed imaginary circumstances are added to the exercise, and it gradually becomes a kind of improvised scene. When this is fully developed, the actors are ready to start working with actual scripts. The course gradually makes its way through more complex script material and work on creating characters incorporating all the student's training