A Semester of Actor Training

This semester, I took the opportunity to take THEA454: Advanced Actor Training. This was originally intendend to supplement my Master's study but I have since decided to take some time out from my MA. This course focused on the Meisner technique and - although I felt there were some problems with the course/assessment design and objectives - gave an interesting appraisal of the technique. It is not my point here to talk much about details of the technique itself - that will be the detail of another post - but rather to make some general comments.

My main problem with the Meisner technique is that it does not account for the intention of a production. Although it can help the actors out in the heat of performance, it negates their autonomy in creating a performance. Indeed, it relies on the actor's removing their conscious control - yet it is this control which makes us who we are. If we are to deny control of ourselves then how are we to be true to our "selves"? For a person who is excluded from fully participating in society - due to race, religion, sexuality, gender identity, class etc - then the technique has the potential to uphold the social-control mechanisms that have served to subject these "alternative" identities to juridical control. Surely it is the place of theatre to question hegemonies rather than uphold the process upon which those hegemonies are predicated. At least I feel that is theatre's moral duty.