THE PILLOWMAN

THE PILLOWMAN  

‘The Pillowman,’ a play by Mar tin McDonagh.  

I play the character of Tupolski, a high-ranking police officer in a totalitarian dictatorship. In this scene Tupolski is interrogating Katurian whose brother is also being interrogated and tortured by another police officer in a seperate room. Both brothers are being interrogated about the murders of several children in the area.    

In this video I am practising THE REPETITION EXERCISE created by Meisner.    

‘I decided I wanted to an exercise for actors where there is no intellectuality. I wanted to eliminate all that head work, to take away all the mental manipulation and get to where the impulses come from. And I began with the premise that if I repeat what I heard you saying, my head is not working. I’m listening, and there is an absolutely elimination of the brain.’   

- Meisner, Sanford Meisner on Acting    

The Repetition exercise is done in pairs. Two actors sit opposite of each other, and one repeats what the other actor says. For instance, if one actor says, ‘Your hair is shiny,’ the other actor says ‘Yes, my hair is shiny’ or ‘No, my hair is not shiny.’ This exercise must not go too far. First, there is the mechanical repetition. Then there is the repetition from one actor’s point of view and finally there is the repetition from the other actor’s point of view. There comes a point when the verbal contact changes between the two characters and that is based on instinct. In this exercise, your instinct dictates a change in words which can also imply silence. Silence is a moment filled with meaning.   

The purpose of the “Repetition Exercise” or the “Repetition Word Game’ is to shift the actor’s attention away from their own self-consciousness and onto the other actor. It also helps to emphasize spontaneity and greater listening between the actors.    

This exercise is usually used before the actors start the rehearsal of the scene or before an improv and sometimes it is also used at the end to conclude the rehearsal.   

‘I’m a very non-intellectual teacher of acting. My approach is based on bringing the actor back to his emotional impulses and to acting that is firmly rooted in the instinctive. It is based on the fact that all good acting comes from the heart, as it were, and there’s no mentality in it.’  

- Meisner, Sanford Meisner on Acting   

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987

MA Acting for Stage and Screen.

Acting for Stage. Teacher: Tony Bell

* This is a project for my MA in Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2021)

** Original image used to create my main image is from https://stageagent.com/shows/play/1434/the-pillowman