Act the subtext. Acting isn’t about reading lines; the dialog is a symptom of the deeper feelings and drive of the character. Act for the subtext, or deeper meaning, not the dialog. Ask yourself WHY the character is saying a certain line, what is the underlying motivation for this comment, and is that motivation the real driving force behind the movie?
Whereas in the Stanislavsky system actors create life within moments, the Meisner technique, developed in the 1930s by Sanford Meisner, encourages the actors to use a method called “Substitution.” If the actor is playing a character who walks into his house and fi nds that his mother died the night before, the actor may not have had that experience of his mother dying to draw from. The Meisner technique allows the actor to substitute that experience for another, similar experience that the actor actually had in his life. Perhaps the actor walked into his house and found his dog had died. Although the situation isn’t the same, the actor is substituting a similar moment he experienced to motivate his performance on screen.
An important aspect of the Meisner technique involves repetition. Repetition exercises minimize the emphasis on the spoken word and focus on the nuances and subtext of how the words are being spoken. These exercises help the actor craft in-the-moment subtleties of body language and infl ection in the performance.
