Day 13: Meisner Technique from a Software Engineer perspective

In our daily life, we always put walls to deal with people, we brush anger off, we put up when we receive a fake smile, or we give a smile to someone who we don't really care or hold our happiness or tears because we don't want to look weak, and so on. How amazing could be to be always authentic without caring of the consequences?

Three years ago, after a big life changing event, I got totally lost and decided to do something unconventional for me, something that put me out of my comfort zone and challenges me, and practicing the Meisner Technique was surely the most uncomfortable thing I've ever done and yet one of the best thing I've done in my life.

I'm a software engineer and I'm socially awkward. People tell me: "Fed you're not socially awkward" until they know-know me. I'm not the typical computer nerd, I'm Italian therefore borderline-metrosexual (it means that I shower, do my beard and generally take care of my look), but aside my appearance, I am socially awkward, probably because I'm overly social, probably because I'm random at time or too genuine and impulsive, which is a good thing, but can lead to awkward silence and situation, ergo I am socially awkward.

I never studied acting before mostly because of (unnecessary) [personal insecurity]
(https://steemit.com/writing/@rainelemental/day-1-started-from-the-bottom-and-now-i-m-here-ny-story-of-my-life-part-1).

Anyway, on my first day, the teacher, Tanya Badiyi introduced herself, and put 2 chairs one in front of the other, a guy and a girl sit there and started shouting words, they start getting angry, then one start crying, they seem in love. It looked like two long time friends or lovers, but they just met. I was in wow!

The purpose of the technique is to be truthful and to live moment by moment, in an imaginary situation. With the final goal to apply this authenticity in a movie or in a theater scene. The basis of the technique is the repetition.

Here how it works: you sit or stand in front of another person, you notice something in the other person and express how it makes you feel, they repeat what you just said, and you repeat again, until something trigger a new point of view in either one, here's an example of an advanced repetition:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BH2SICWAc-o

This technique takes a long time to be mastered. It starts simple, noticing physical things that catch your eye, e.g. "you're hair are red", "you eyes are blue", "you're wearing a weird necklace". Then you start noticing emotions like "you seem angry", "you seem happy", then you go more advance and start adding a point of you, "you're looking to me in way and it makes me feel uncomfortable", "you're condescending and I'm getting fucking angry", "you look alone and I want to be there for you".

Here are other examples of a repetition:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BIuZu97gO0U
https://www.instagram.com/p/BJQLjAHALDe

At an advanced level, the technique gets more challenging and fun because you start working on scenes and activities, such as door and activities, opposite point of view, nursery rhymes and more, so you start to learn how to apply the technique on this scenes. I did my second year with Michael Warner, a great teacher who made me understand how important is to express how someone makes you feel in order to be really vulnerable.

The Meisner Technique made me better understand myself, made me to better understand my walls, it helped me to better control my feelings or to not control them being authentic, I learned how to be fully present and focus on a conversation, giving real compassion or shouting back something you don't like, improving my social connection skill.

I recommend to anyone, especially if you've social anxiety, to try this technique for fun, you don't need to have a final goal to become an actor but simply to improve your communication level. It's scary but worth it.

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This post is part of the Writer challenge: 30 articles in 30 days.

Federico Ulfo

Creative Software Engineer

https://twitter.com/feulf
https://linkedin.com/in/federicoulfo