‘Acting is Not Talking, it’s Living Off the Other Fellow’– Sanford Meisner

So back with these vlogs, where I’m responding to some clips from Meisner, this one will be ‘acting is not talking, it’s living off the other fellow’.  Acting is not spouting lines. So when he says living off the other fellow, what he means is, the actor is reacting.

So acting is not ‘I have these lines. I’ve memorized them. I prepared how they ought to be said’. Acting is actually looking at the person that you’re working with and making sure that your responses are fueled by what you’re getting from them. So that will be what dictates how you might say your line. So say, for instance, somebody is looking at me indifferently, that is going to change the way I say a line more than if they’re looking at me avidly.

So what he what he’s saying is, don’t put your attention on yourself and what and what you’ve prepared. Of course, preparation is important, but really acting is about responding to what you’ve got and what you’re on the receiving end of. You as the actor, may have prepared how the character responds, what they’re saying and have a real thorough understanding of that. But if you think about in life, we may have an extremely thorough understanding about something we’ve prepared for. But actually, in reality, it doesn’t often go the way we planned.  It goes the way it had to go based on the circumstances, based on what we got from the other person under those circumstances. And we all know that we can prepare arguments where we want to have it out with somebody and make a point, and then that person responds in a certain way or says a certain thing that makes your plan go completely out the window.

So that’s really what Meisner is trying to communicate. You put your attention on the other person. You respond to what they’re giving you. And that is what acting is by definition in the Meisner technique.