On the Necessity of Training  

Handpicked and trained by Sanford Meisner, as an actor and teacher and as his Associate Director at the Neighborhood Playhouse Professional School of the Theatre for twenty years, I feel qualified to explain why training in a bona fide technique is essential for success.  

We don’t really know where talent comes from, but we know it when we see it. Talent needs the discipline of training. A good professional and technical technique will do that. If acting is your calling in life, you certainly need to learn how to do it in a professional manner. It must be quite clear to anyone watching that you know what you are doing.  

While you are following your dream, some little voice from time to time must be saying to you, “you should study acting seriously,” or “you need real training.” Most successful people have put in thousands of hours studying and practicing their art. Think of the time a ballet dancer stands at the bar perfecting those five positions that make up ballet. Even with genius, at some point someone had to say to Yo-Yo Ma or Pablo Casals, who by the way practiced every day, “This is a bow. You play by pulling the bow across the strings of this other instrument called a cello.”  

When I was young, after seeing a movie, I would select specific moments and act those out for friends and family. What I did not realize was those moments I liked in the actor’s behavior were coming from the inside. I was only imitating them externally. That ability to go inside and live the part truthfully can be taught up to a point; but eventually the talent has to take over. That is when we see the actor do things that cannot be taught. So there are actors who are effective and there are actors who are affecting. The latter makes audiences feel and think.  

The kind of training given at the William Alderson Acting Studio is geared towards affecting acting. Stanislavski professed that your acting must come from your soul. If in place of that rather highfaluting word “soul” we put “emotion”, it is easier to understand. When an actress, acting a part, says to her husband “your friends don’t like me,” and as she says it she breaks into sensitive and hurtful emotion, then one can say that at that moment her acting was coming from her soul.  

When I was a young boy my escape from reality was the movies. I had no idea that acting was a craft and that one could go to school and study it. I had no idea that movie stars were real people with training in acting, singing and dancing. I remember as I got older once saying to my stepfather that I would like to be in the movies. He responded with, “Have you ever listened to the way they talk? They don’t talk like you do.” I had a pronounced southern drawl. His remark was a kind of awakening. These movie stars spoke well and had resonant voices. Yes, they were real people, but had put in time and work getting to where they were. Mr. Meisner tells this story: Sitting on the front porch of their home, his father was rocking in a chair and the cat’s tail was swaying back and forth under it until one of the rockers and the cat's tail finally connected. The cat let out a screeching, ear-piercing sound. His brother said, “dchaheardatcatpa?, meaning, Did you hear that cat, pa?” Sandy said I suddenly knew I had to do some speech work if I was to become an actor. And We did. 

Some young people kid themselves. They take courses in script interpretation, on-camera acting, cold-reading classes, audition classes, etc. These classes are, by and large, band aids of acting. It seems that the art of acting has lost its appeal. An awful lot goes into the making of an actor because it is both an art and a craft. Americans are spoiled. Instant gratification has taken over. Yet it still takes nine months to have a healthy baby. Yes, it is an organic process and so is good training. Actors are born but they do not pop out of the womb with “the reality of doing” instilled in them. It takes many exercises that are steeped in the reality of doing for it to take root. It must be made habitual. It is the cornerstone of the Meisner Technique. 

If only young people would not rush through their studies. If they would develop their character ruthlessly then and only then can the art of acting have its true value. Will you become a great actor? Will you be highly successful? The acting profession is a hard row to hoe. But if it is your calling you have to live out your dream and meet your destiny. 

As Mr. Meisner used to say, “you may never make it as an actor, but you can have a lot of fun trying.” All you can do is try. You will be going on a journey that is in the direction of your dream, and with good training you will have prepared yourself to meet your destiny. It may well be a long road, but the Meisner Technique will have paved it with truth.  

I hope your journey is a wonderful one and I wish you the very best of luck, 

Bill