By Barry Williams

A recent visit to the Playhouse West on Lankershim Boulevard brought me to the headquarters of an intriguing and intellectually stimulating acting style known as the Meisner Technique. Under the capable direction of one Robert Carnegie, Playhouse West has been in the business of training actors, directors, and writers since 1981. Mr Carnegie is a tall, congenial and affable fellow that has been teaching the Meisner Technique for many years and has directed the affairs of Playhouse West since its inception. Playhouse West is the only theatre in Los Angeles that offers exclusively the opportunity for actors and other interested parties to pursue this unique and often controversial form of theatrical study.

The Meisner Technique, named after Sanford Meisner, one of the founding members of the infamous Group Theatre in New York from 1930-1940, is an acting construct that has as its foundation the emphasis on “truth in acting.” Bob Carnegie and the students that comprise his following feel very strongly about the Meisner experience and many students that come to Playhouse West often wind up spending years in study there.

It is this fervency and dedication that led to our interest in the Playhouse West Theatre and, subsequently, this article. While, on the surface, the Meisner Technique seems to be simplistic in its origin, its dynamics are not readily understood by the outsider. As Carnegie explains, these acting “constructs,” this whole ideology, is not something that is easily put into words. “When you ask me to give you an overriding explanation of the Mesiner Technique or to stummarize it for you in a few sentences, I can only reply that the entirety of the Meisner Technique is something that is only best understood after years of study. But, boiled down to its most basic form, we believe that acting should be real, not fake.”

Well, having been a student of acting myself for many years, and having had more than a passing knowledge of matters theatrical, this conceit struck me as odd. To begin with, aren’t most actors in pursuit of a so-called “real” performance? Actors certainly don’t set out to become “fake” in their portrayals, although many do fall prey to “stagey” or contrived acting techniques. What, then, made the Meisner Technique the ubiquitous solution to bad acting and the heart and soul of the Playhouse West formula? This was the quest I undertook as I began to familiarize myself with Bob Carnegie and his theatre.

To begin with, the Playhouse West informational flyer describes The Meisner Technique as follows: “At the root of the Meisner exercises are two clear guidelines: (1) that acting is more instinctive than intellectual, and (2) that it is vital for the actor to connect with his working partner.” All of this has as its foundation much of the landmark work that was being done in Russia at the Moscow Art Theatre at the turn of the century by Constantin Stanislavsky, certainly one of the most celebrated actor/directors of all time and author of many acting texts that rely heavily on the “acting towards truthfulness” ideas as their basic construct.

How Sanford Meisner, Harold Clurman, Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg took these intelelectual properties and manifested them into the Group Theatre was and still is considered to be one of the remarkable turning points in the evolution of the American Theatre. While each of these individual personalities took the Stanislavsky ideas and branched out with them in their own direction (thus redefining the intrinsic ideology of “acting towards truthfulness”), it is Meisner’s theories that Bob Carnegie has adhered to over the years. “I was maybe 16, 17 years old and having the opportunity to witness these teachings by these great people (Carnegie was the youngest student Stella Adler had ever taught) completely revolutionized my life and I decided, ultimately, that Meisner’ s ideas were more closely in alignment with my own ideas of what acting is really all about.”

What acting is all about is something that everyone that visits the Playhouse West and attends one of the group’s performances will certainly understand. While much of the work the actors are doing onstage may seem particularly fraught with emotion and histrionics, there’s no doubting that these actors are giving it their all in regards to “truthfulness.” One of the Playhouse West’s recent offerings, Aaron Gillespie Will Make You A Star, is a scathing satire on Hollywood and its inhabitants. A maniacally egocentric and ruthless acting coach puts his students through a number of personal exercises that are structured to break down their existing “bad habits” and rebuild them in the mold of Gillespie and his ideals of what comprises “good” acting. Much of the piece is highly comic, but its brutal assessment of contemporary Hollywood mores and practices gives the impression that, oftentimes, the piece goes a little too far. In Aaron Gillespie, there are moments onstage in which the actors (as characters) have personal vulnerabilities exposed and attacked from a number of fronts. This is the sort of fine line in theatre that, once crossed, seems to make an irreparable impression on the audience. It’s as if the playwright and the collective consciousness of the theatre (many of the plays presented at Playhouse West are the direct results of improvisational study that arise directly from the classes taught there) are striving to be so decidedly singular in their “acting” presentation that they revel in saying “Fuck you” to anyone who doesn’t come round to their own notions and ideas. The audience finds themselves in the middle of what could most certainly be deemed a psychological study.

The audience as guinea pig, of course, is a different discussion. Is the audience capable of handling all of the “truth that is being diplayed and hurled at them from the actors onstage? Is it the audience’s responsibilty to take part in this armchair psychology? I have always be-lieved that the theatre should educate and enlighten as well as entertain, but the Playhouse West makes no bones about putting it directly in your lap and seeing how you respond. This is defintely a theatre to provoke and probe and even to take stands. Carnegie is quick to point out, however, that politics, as he sees it, has no part or place in his theatre. “I once threw a guy out of here that came in to get people registered to vote. Politics has no place in theatre, certainly not this theatre.”

This struck me as a bit of a conundrum as one of the theatre’s most popular shows is entitled, Welcome Home, Soldier, A Tribute to Vietnam Veterans, ostensibly about the protest movement. Many people have walked out of the show, as its content apparently struck too close to home though many still cite the acting as superb. It’s the content that hits too close to home. So, is Carnegie and his Meisner coterie doing their job? Should the theatre become so abrasive, so unnerving that people are fleeing their seats?

Carnegie: “Our classroom study becomes our performance. Our repertory ensemble create and write just about everything we do. And, we have had some fine students from here over the years that have gone on to become fine actors in their own right, and very popular actors as well on the screen.”

After all, as Bob Carnegie continues, there have been some notable names to emerge from the Meisner School of Thought, “Bob Fosse, Jon Voight, Steve McQueen, Sydney Pollack, Marlon Brando, David Mamet, Jeff Goldblum, Robert Duvall, to name but a few, are all students of the Meisner school. These are respected and revered names in the industry.”

While there is no doubting that many fine actors have emerged from the Meisner Technique, there has always raged critical disparity as to the viability of the Meisner Technique and its long-term benefits for the participating actor. Many people that have participated in these Meisner exercises often come away feeling as if the exercises are self-aggrandizing and indulgent, as if their emotions are being manipulated by the very exercises they are studying. Still, whatever the inherent shortcomings of the Meisner Technique, one thing is certain. The actors that become involved with and committed to it become staunch advocates of its validity and importance to the overall significance of acting and the Method.

One of the Playhouse West’s instructors and the central character/author of Aaron Gillespie, Scott Trost, describes the Meisner Technique as follows: “Since the entire construct is based on the Stanislavsky idea of a systematic method of teaching actors truthfulness in their work on stage, there is a tendency towards guaging the actor towards his own ability to exploit his passion and emotional vulnerability onstage. Out of this mindset have resulted some of the indisputable acting teachers in this country Adler, Strasberg, Clifford Odets and, of course, Meisner. There may have been, and still remain, a split in the individual philosophies of these teachings, but truthfulness onstage has remained a cornerstone of their acting methods.”

Trost goes on to explain how the Meisner Technique enabled him to get rid of a lot of the calculated “trappings” and bad habits that actors accumulate over the years. “The Meisner idea of ‘living truthfully under imaginary circumstances’ became a great challenge for me. And, I think, it is the challenge that Bob puts to the actors that come to study at Playhouse West. The training at Playhouse West encourages actors to try and achieve this and it enables them to become more expressive with their work.”

Expressive? Definitely. But does it, however, give an actor a broad range of study, enough to sustain them in Hollywood and New York? Trost elaborates on how an actor can play different dramatic moments onstage and still explore his varied options. “Strasberg was big on actors getting back to past traumatic events to get their creative juices going — the whole idea of sense-memory. His philosophy is centered on the notion that you take the tension off of the other person (actor) and go back into yourself. We believe, at Playhouse West, that a group of people onstage dwelling on past, traumatic events can be unhealthy. Sandy encourages using the imagination, tapping into the emotional self, and strengthening the imagination and relaxation techniques that free the actor to focus his attention on the imaginary circumstances surrouding his character, and not on the fact that he is standing onstage, in front of an audience. Bob is big on character, developing individual integrity and making the most of yourself as a person. Bob believes that this is the only way that actors can really illustrate what theatre is all about — that by knowing themselves completely and having a broad world view, they can then do their best to show and report on the human situation and its dilemmas and educate people (audiences) with the characters they portray.”

So, the Playhouse West is definitely a place to visit the next time you want a truly intense, albeit truthful, acting experience. Bob Carnegie will guarantee that whatever else the evening holds, the actors will certainly be presenting a committed and thorough re-examination of the human condition and its relevancy to the characters onstage, whatever the subject matter. The Meisner Technique may not be for everyone, but it is definitely at the center of Playhouse West. At the very least, bring your significant other and check it out for yourself. It will certainly make for stimulating and provocative weekend discussion.