Getting Out of Your Head: Mastering Mental Focus in Acting

Meisner Activity – Acting Program – Maggie Flanigan Studio – (917) 794-3878

Getting Out of Your Head with the Meisner Technique

When I interview prospective students for my studio, I find a common concern. Perhaps you can relate to this, maybe you’ve graduated from a BA or BFA program, you came to NYC to pursue your career, and have been told by your past and current teachers that you need to get out of your head! You need to function from your spontaneity! These are ubiquitous teacher notes, but they have real meaning in terms of determining the quality of your acting. What most acting classes and teachers can’t provide is an actual concrete process to make this happen. This is why many serious, aspiring actors look to the Meisner Technique as a way to solve this problem. It was designed by Sandy Meisner to fix this fundamental issue directly. It is an actor problem that Meisner training works on every class for two-years!

So how do you get out of your head? The Meisner Technique addresses this immediately. There is a core set of fundamentals that the first year of the Meisner training instills in students, the first is your placement of concentration. The key to freedom and spontaneity in your acting must begin with getting the attention off of yourself and onto the other person or onto what you are doing. Concerns about being liked, worried about how you look and what others may think of you, and the fear of embarrassing yourself are the issues that all of my students confront when they enter my acting class for the first time. It’s very understandable, as these worries follow us throughout our lives in many different social and work settings. These insecurities, however, are exactly what keep you in your head, unable to be fully free and spontaneous. The freedom and authenticity you crave in your acting starts with your ability to “act before you think”. This is a famous Sandy Meisner quote that was so important to him that he had it hanging on the wall above his teaching desk.

When your placement of concentration is rooted on the other actor, when the present moment is all consuming, and you rid yourself of the pattern of editing, judging and withholding the truth of you, then the acting instrument opens up. If not, you will continue to hesitate in your acting, which crushes your ability to be impulsive. And when you lack the ability to be impulsive, you cannot then be spontaneous. And spontaneity is everything. It is the key to your authenticity, it is the essential skill that will allow your uniqueness to come to the surface. This cannot be learned in a scene study, improv, or film & tv class. It is why you are still frustrated by getting the same note over and over….get out of your head. The Meisner Technique can fix it.