our core curriculum

The Meisner Technique

Created by Sanford Meisner of New York Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater, the Meisner Technique creates truthful, emotionally-connected actors. Meisner-trained actors include Gregory Peck, Steve McQueen, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, James Gandolfini, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Allison Janey, Dylan McDermott, and Chadwick Boseman.

The Meisner Technique gets you out of your head and into the moment. Using a brick-by-brick process, Meisner gives actors a strong foundation in being emotionally available, truthfully responsive actors. The technique places a heavy emphasis on listening, reacting, and fully engaging with scene partners, thereby creating a natural and spontaneous performance.

Whether you are an actor interested in deepening your craft or someone looking for greater confidence, spontaneity, imagination, and intuition in your everyday life, the Meisner Technique can help you on your journey.

Meisner’s innovative approach begins with his iconic “repetition exercise,” which serves as the foundation of his technique and is where all training at Actors Bridge begins.

Your meisner foundation

Meisner Foundation Module 1: The Repetition Exercise
Meisner Foundation Module 2: The Independent Activity
Written Progress Review
Meisner Foundation Module 3: Emotional Preparation
Interview with Teaching Team

The Repetition Exercise

Meisner Foundation: Module One (Weeks 1-5)

The repetition exercise, a deceptively simple yet powerful tool that requires actors to truly listen and respond, allows authentic emotions to emerge naturally. By breaking down barriers and inhibitions, this exercise is a powerful vehicle through which actors access their true emotional selves, laying the groundwork for performances that resonate with a profound sense of truth and vulnerability. Actors Bridge students begin their training with five weeks of practice and study with the repetition exercise.

in Module One, students will:

Develop the ability to be in the present moment with a scene partner.
Learn to effectively read human behavior, assign meaning that is personally significant to that behavior.
Recognize their organic impulses to stimuli.
More deeply trust their intuition, and act upon those impulses and intuition in the immediacy of the moment.

The Independent Activity

Meisner Foundation: Module Two (Weeks 6-10)

Meisner famously described good acting as “the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” The Independent Activity exercise puts this maxim into practice by giving students a difficult but tangible task that must be completed in a short amount of time for a compelling reason. The focus on the "doing" rather than the "acting” allows actors to bypass the temptation to perform emotions and instead channel their energy into authentic actions.

in Module two, students will:

Develop “actors faith” and ability to create and believe imaginary circumstances.
Respond instinctively to stimuli with emotionally authentic behavior.
Gain an awareness of “public solitude” and how to build it.
Apply Meisner’s principle “to act before you think” in order to move from “impulse to impulse” rather than “cue to cue.”

At the end of 10 weeks, students receive a written evaluation of their work in 4 areas: participation, preparedness, works to full ability, attitude/commitment.

Emotional Preparation

Meisner Foundation: Module Three (Weeks 11-16)

Sanford Meisner's concept of Emotional Preparation can be one of the more elusive aspects of the technique because it is highly individualized and deeply personal. At Actors Bridge, we explore Emotional Preparation using text from Edgar Lee Masters’ "Spoon River Anthology” to investigate a rich tapestry of characters and their stories, each encapsulating a life's worth of emotions, regrets, and aspirations.

in Module three, students will:

Apply all the skills built in the first 10 weeks to monologue work.
Gain practical experience with Meisner’s concept of Emotional Preparation.
Learn to analyze text and make the language your own.
Learn Meisner’s approach to memorization of text.
Develop characters with distinct points of view through 2 contrasting monologues.
At the conclusion of the third module, students will interview with Meisner faculty to determine the best track to meet their needs going forward.

Since the pandemic, many of our students have expressed interest in more rigorous acting training. To accommodate these students as well as those whose life circumstances require them to move at a more moderate pace, we have created two tracks for those seeking further professional training:

IMPROVISATION TRACK : 12 weeks

This track is best for students who know their work/life schedule will allow them to focus on their acting 3-5 hours per week in-class work and rehearsal with a partner.

These improvisational exercises are built to deepen actor’s faith as students create believable relationships with complex points of view to explore character and motivation under more sophisticated imaginary circumstances.

While attendance is mandatory, students can move forward on the Improvisation Track as long as they have not missed more than 2 weeks of class.

SCENE STUDY TRACK : 20 weeks

This track is best for students who can commit at least 5–10 hours per week on their acting training including in-class work, memorization, research and rehearsal with a partner.

In these classes, students will work with a partner on a scene chosen by our Meisner instructors. After memorizing it in the Meisner way, they will discover how to authentically embody a character’s point of view and respond with the reality of doing as Sanford Meisner conceived it. Students must be available for all classes in the series. Students who miss more than one class will have to repeat the course before moving on to the next.

The Advanced Scene Study class culminates in a public showcase and reception.