For actors at all levels of experience, this class is a practice space that uses Meisner exercise work. Develop your tools and process for crafting a role, whether working on stage or on camera.
Learn to be grounded and alive in the moment. Respond to your scene partner on impulse. Find and experience the full range of your voice with all its untapped possibilities.
Using Larry Silverberg’s Workbook, you are introduced to Sanford Meisner’s Repetition exercises. Working in pairs, receiving and responding from your truthful point of view, in the moment-to-moment exchange of the repetition you learn to be fully available to your partner. This is essential in the process of building your score and testing actions when working on a part.
How you go about fulfilling your objective rests with your partner. Does your partner bring you closer or further away from what you need? How does what you receive from your partner put you in verbal action and keep you responding on impulse instead of “thinking” or planning? How does it get you to the next thing you need to do, verbally or physically or both?
Continuing with the technique, you craft exercises using your imagination and an “element of truth” — a relationship with someone extremely meaningful to you, and for whom you are doing a physically difficult activity that serves as your objective. These are partnered improvisations. Further exploration is applied to text, realizing these techniques while working on a monologue or scene.
Students are encouraged to audit before enrolling in the class.
Expected rehearsal time outside of class: 3-6 hours / week
ACTING WITH PARTNERED EXERCISES INSTRUCTOR:
Rochelle Oliver
Required Reading: THE SANFORD MEISNER APPROACH: WORKBOOK ONE, AN ACTOR’S WORKBOOK by Larry Silverberg
Recommended Reading: THE SANFORD MEISNER APPROACH: WORKBOOK TWO, EMOTIONAL FREEDOM by Larry Silverberg
Available for purchase online via our registration system or in-person at the registration office.
For more information on other HB Studio acting classes in NYC, please feel free to download our course catalog.