The Spiritual Artist Podcast

Meisner-Trained Acting Teacher and Coach Terry Martin Explains the Power of Presence

May 26, 2020 Christopher J. Miller Season 1 Episode 4
The Spiritual Artist Podcast
Meisner-Trained Acting Teacher and Coach Terry Martin Explains the Power of Presence
Show Notes Transcript

Host Christopher Miller interviews actor/director/teacher Terry Martin on practicing intentional presence during the creative process. Reveal your authentic point of view by turning off the critical editor in your head, withholding judgment and walking through the fear. Terry shares insights into the repetition exercise, the foundation of the Sanford Meisner Technique, discusses “Intention of Attention” and the importance of being in the moment when acting or doing any creative process. Discussion includes quotes from Anne Bogart’s “What’s the Story: Essays about Art, Theater and Storytelling” and the challenges of performing in “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey” by James Lecesne. According to Terry, “Your unique point of view is your voice to the world.”
For more information, visit https://terrymartinact.com/

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the spiritual artists podcast. This is Chris Miller. I invite you to join me as I interview artists from a variety of disciplines. We'll share powerful stories and lessons learned while making their art. Good morning. This is Chris Miller and you are listening to the spiritual artist podcast. I am so excited about today's guest. He is an actor, a director, the head of fine arts at Greenhill school in Addison, Texas and he is also a teacher of the Meisner method in acting. He is finally, and most importantly, my husband. When I get up in the morning, I'm often excited about ideas that have arrived in the middle of the night and I like to share them over a cup of coffee. I have been so surprised about how many of my concepts that I teach to be a spiritual artist align with that of acting. I'm looking forward to sharing these ideas with you so you can discover how to be more present in your work and authentic with what you create. Good morning, Terry.

Speaker 2:

Good morning. How are you? I'm good.

Speaker 1:

I was, I was just telling my listeners about how we have these wonderful talks in the morning over coffee. Yeah. And, and so I want to share once again with you. Um, you know, as I've progressed in and put together this book, the spiritual artist, I've, I've learned something about my own practice when I paint. And that is the importance of kind of turning off my mind and letting something underneath some subconscious, something react with the canvas. And I remember on one of our mornings that I shared this with you and you started to explain the Meisner method, uh, which is something you teach. And so explain that to our, to our listeners.

Speaker 2:

Well, very briefly, the, uh, Sanford Meisner was a, an actor from the early thirties began to teach a particular type of, uh, our style of acting, which was realism really. And, um, and, uh, he developed this technique that became known as the Meisner technique. And I was fortunate enough to study that in New York. And so as a teacher myself, that's what I teach. My main teacher was a guy by the name of Fred Carmen who had studied extensively with Sandy Meisner. To get back to your question about, you know, the Meisner technique and, and, and how it relates to being present, as with any kind of art form our biggest enemies and to success or the editor that we have in our head, the voices that we have in our head that hold us back from being fully expressive, no matter the medium, whether it's a painter like you or a musician or an actor, being fully and finding a way to be fully expressive with your own personal spirit, your own point of view is essential to, to being successful and what Meissner called a master at any craft at any art form.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's interesting cause as the spiritual artists progressed, as I realized that there are the similar techniques in, in any creative endeavor like, yeah. Yeah. And so when you, when you do this with students, how does it work? Explain how to the, to the listeners how it works exactly.

Speaker 2:

The marginal technique centers on a, um, um, begins with a foundation exercise called repetition, which I like to, uh, explain this kind of like a ping pong game where you put your attention on one actor and that actor puts their attention on you. You make an observation like you have on a black shirt and then you simply repeat that from your point of view. You have on a black shirt I have on a black shirt and you continually repeat that to the point where it becomes almost hypnosis. And I mean that in a loose hypnosis in a loose sense. And so much as that you began to think about the meaning of the words and it becomes pure expression of what you're getting from the other person, whether it be tone of voice, behavioral that will look in their eye connected to how those things make you feel. And through that loose hypnosis process, you learn through this practice to get out of your head and be present in the moment. As with any skill like this, it takes an incredible amount of practice because we are in our society taught to second guess. And think about everything we say before we say it or before we express it. And, and that kind of editor, uh, is the enemy to any full expression of any kind of art form. So through the development of this exercise, we learned to stop editing and be present in the moment and um, and, and be fully expressed.

Speaker 1:

So it's almost like you, you get caught up in a reaction. You, you react back and forth with the other person.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's funny that the last part of, of the word react is act right? Yeah, absolutely. It's reacting. Um, you know, there are, there, there's a famous saying and actually a book I think, I don't know the title of it now called acting is reacting, um, is really acting, is reacting, reacting to what you're getting from the other actor, uh, and the connection that you have with that other actor can be described as chemistry, uh, however you want to describe it. But it's the back and forth between those two individuals that, that makes that connection so apparent and so vibrant that we as an audience are drawn into what's going on. On a very intimate and, and intense level between those two people.

Speaker 1:

So it's, it's, is it almost getting down to just a raw emotional level? Um, well it's certainly,

Speaker 2:

it can be raw, raw, but simplistic than that. I mean, emotions can come up certainly with any kind of, I mean, I, you've, you've tell me sometimes that you're painting and suddenly for a reason that you have no way of knowing exactly why you're incredibly moved. Whether it's the action of putting the paint on the canvas or the colors that you have chosen together or just the, the, the mood or the way the spirit is working through you in that particular moment moves you to an emotion. Acting is the same way. We can be moved to emotional things that don't necessarily have to have a name or a reason, but, but we're moved and, and, and that comes from, from, from being present, uh, and being truthful and being organic and being spontaneous. When we as, as people find that being in the moment or it's described sometimes as being in the zone, when we are in that zone, we become pure emotion. In a way that is vibrant. And I like to say it's almost like mercury in that it's not it, it flows and it moves. It's not a static thing. So because it's not static, it can't really be described. But yes, absolutely emotion is a huge part of it.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's interesting because I noticed this, I look at people's creative work. For me, an indicator of of the power of that piece is whether it's sculpture or painting or music is when I noticed that there's, there's just some energy about it, some power that you see that that person was really consciously connected to what they were doing, not just kind of going through the motions, you know?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I mean, I talk, I talk in my acting classes a lot about intentionality, you know, and intention is, is, is incredibly important in any kind of art form. Not necessarily a specific intention, but the intention of attention. You know, you, you want to be intentionally putting your attention on the other actor, not passively waiting to be, uh, waiting for something to react to, but intentionally looking for something to react to. There's so much there to react to, which is the strongest one. So that intentionality of attention is huge. And I know you and I have talked before that's very much about the way you approach making a painting. You know, um, you have to intentionally put your attention on that canvas and that color and that paint. And it's very interesting in acting. I talk a lot about the fact that acting is about action. You know, again, the word actor comes from being active, not being passive, not being emotional, but about doing something. And the modular technique we talk about the reality of doing. You don't act like you're doing something. You really do it. And when you really do it, then there's an emotional one, a spontaneous and a uh, uh, organic response that comes out of the doing of the thing that you say you're doing. And when you intentionally do something like that, then expression and behavior comes out of you that can't be planned. You don't plan, you don't plan, sit down and plan exactly what a painting is going to look like before you start it. You just start with intention. And it goes somewhere

Speaker 1:

and, and it always, it's interesting. So I was just going to say the painting, I always believe a painting has a story to tell and your job is to let that story out. Absolutely. Absolutely. I brought a book here because I've shared this book with you and you actually, I took it from your shelf and I love it so much. And Bogart, um, wonderful, wonderful teacher director. Uh, what's the story? Essays about art, theater and storytelling. And um, I love this line in here. She says in this brain, state time disappears and one loses a sense of the self. The focus is totally on the task at hand, the artist becomes absorbed in and at one with the work, the sensation, the experience seems to be orchestrated by outside forces. I just think that's such a powerful thing about you almost giving it up, giving it up to, to something greater where it just has a flow to it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And has an, it has a remarkable way with words that just touch and move me. But yeah, I mean, she's talking about that, that sense of being in the zone that I talk about. You know, that to the point where you, you, you stop thinking about the fact that you're on stage and acting and become obsessed and hungry for the process of the doing. Um, and it's, it's not, and it's hard for people who don't, who are not actors or artists maybe to understand that it's for us actors, it's not about applause. Certainly. That's nice and that feels good. And it's not about winning any kind of awards. Certainly that's nice and that feels good. But it's becoming hungry and in love with the process of creation, creation of moments that are moments of organic and, and, and, uh, organic inspiration and that come from someplace bigger than us and yet can only happen coming from us. You know, it can't happen coming from anybody else. Maybe not. Yes. Not the same way. It can certainly happen. Any actor can, any good actor can create a, a wonderful interpretation of, of a role that's been written, but it's only will be that way when that actor does it. And the wonderful thing about acting on stage, it will only be that way on that night. It will be something completely different on another night. And how wonderful and exciting and inspirational is that

Speaker 1:

that that is, that is really wonderful because I think it's so authentic. It's when we talk about authenticity, it's the authenticity of that moment.

Speaker 2:

That's why I worked so, so hard with my actors to create, um, their ability to understand that their point of view is so important. And I think that that's something any kind of artists needs to understand. And that's what's what has been so spiritual about the process of becoming an actor, uh, and developing my craft. And also, um, why I am so passionate about sharing this with other people is that the having a point of view, having your unique point of view is your voice to the world. And, and that's all we really have as artists is our point of view. We don't really have anything else, you know, but our point of view, our way to express and experience and respond to the world we're living in. You're responding to the canvas. And the paint and the day that you're making the painting. I'm responding to as an actor responding to the audience that's there, the actor that I'm working across and the text that I have been given to speak the, the, the story that I have been given to tell. I am responding to all of that, but it's all, but it's my point of view of all of those things.

Speaker 1:

That's really interesting because when you talk about that process, you talk about, you know, the back and forth with that Meisner method. I, I've seen it in action. It's this back and forth, like you said, a ping pong game of energy back and forth and back and forth and, and you can have that. I have that with a painting where I just fall into the flow. A few years back I tried to replicate that exercise with an art student where I would paint something and then she would paint something and then I would paint something and she would paint something on the same canvas and I found that she started erasing everything I did. She, she went back and end. And so I felt like there was a counter energy to what I was trying to do. She didn't go,

Speaker 2:

yeah, it caused a response in you. Yeah, it did. It did. You know, it's not like she was negating what you were doing. Although I understand why it would feel that way. She was just doing something different than what you would do and your spirit, your, your expression responded to that. Right. Which may have made you want to erase what she did or just, or just make bigger, bigger strokes, things that she could that she couldn't erase as quickly. Exactly. So I imagine you teach that in the process. There is some resistance may be perhaps from people going in the doing the training. Oh, absolutely. Because you know, I joke, but it's kind of a truth that, uh, um, our parents and our school teachers in our societies have our, they're our biggest challenges about being really good actors because we have been taught to think before you speak can always be polite and don't say the wrong thing. And all of those voices that are in our head that makes us pull back on the reins of our expression to make sure that we're, it's a safe place to be fully expressive before we let ourselves do it. And it becomes a habit. It becomes a habit. And is, as with any habit, it's incredibly difficult to break, to get to the point where you can be fully expressive, um, without that editor going on in your head. That's saying, no, don't do that because it may be wrong. You know what is wrong in an artistic expression? There is no such thing as wrong. You know, it just is. And if we can get that in our, in our psyche, that expression is just expression. It's pure there. It's not static. It's not a block. It's a wave or a movement of, of something like mercury. And if we can get that in our, in our heads that just go with it. See where it takes you. You can always paint over it. You can always rehearse the line. You can always feel something different as you, you know, you felt something when, when, when she erased what you had just painted, but you felt something. And so breaking that habit is really, really hard. I always like to say, you know, when that car cuts us off on the tollway, all of us have that slight second of an impulse where we want to ran that car. But we don't do it because we know the consequences of that, right? You know, we'll have to pay for that car. They may shoot us. Who knows what will happen. So we don't do that. That's part of living in a polite society. Being an artist is not a polite society. It's, it's being in a place where you can be fully expressive. I tell my actors all the time, being, uh, a lady or a gentleman or a really polite person, never and will never make you a better actor. It doesn't mean that you should be mean and hateful. You should always be humble and empathetic, but you also need to tell the truth and be responsive to what's in front of you. That's how we train ourselves to be full actors. Matt believed the murder was justified. He didn't think he was a bad guy. How do we create that if we're judging well, yeah, we have to do

Speaker 1:

that leads. That's definitely something I always, I believe that you need to turn off when you're in the creative process is that judgment, that judging mind. Yeah. You know it, it takes you out of the creative flow that Ann Bogart was describing it. It takes you out of your presence.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. And it takes, it's a lot of work to stay in the presence, to stay in the zone, to stay in the moment. It takes a lot of work to be able to get there because you have to break those habits because there are always distractions. You know, there are people who are going to say, your work is not good. There's always going to be some sort of distraction, you know? But, but the work is doing it anyway. The work is continuing to practice the craft. Whatever your chosen craft is, right point where you can be at least most of the time in the zone. Nobody's in the zone a hundred percent but if you can get to the point where you're in the zone most of the time, or even better, learn what to do when you recognize that you're not in the zone. That's a huge lesson. You know, I'm acting away and I'm all up in my head worrying about the lines that I dropped. You know, the paragraph before. Instead of staying in the moment and being present and reacting to what's in front of me through practice, practice, practice, practice, you learn how to recognize when you're not in the zone and what to do to get back in. But that takes practice, right?

Speaker 1:

I know when I started on my journey, I realized that I could, I could exercise. It was a muscle. It was like a muscle that I was exercising and in each time I could do it longer and longer and for example, working on a small painting was easier for me than a large painting because I had to hold that presence for a longer period of time. When when you're painting on a five by five painting, you have to hold that presence or I'll sometimes you'd find, and it's not bad, like you said, one part of the painting has a certain energy to it and the other part has a totally different energy because, because time goes by and things change. Right. I have to mention this about you because it's one of your incredible talents that I've seen you do over and over again is is your ability to do these one man shows where where you take on all the characters of of the play. The most recent was the what? The absolute brightness of Leonard Pelkey. Is that correct? That's correct. That's written by James was saying, well, how do you, okay, so we're talking about the miser method and obviously it's one thing to go back and forth between another person, but in this case, you, you were on the stage alone. How do you, how do you do that? How do you find that character?

Speaker 2:

Well, the more you work as an actor, you have to, um, you also have to develop your imagination and your suggestibility. Um, there are other exercises as you get into the modular technique that teach you how to expand and exercise not only your presence in this ping pong game that we're talking about, about being present and getting out of your head, but exercises to stretch your imagination and what I call suggestibility. So that if a, if a script, uh, or a director or most importantly yourself, makes a suggestion to you of, um, an emotional state that a character requires to tell the story through your imagination and suggestions to yourself, you can actually create a reality of an emotion that comes out in behavior in you. So that's the first step through the practice of, of suggests suggestions to myself and the use of my imagination. Um, I personally, um, I have always been gifted with the fact of observation, uh, and a slight sense of the ability to be a mimic. Um, I know that that's not something that all actors to do. I was gifted with that so I can do accents and voices very well. And so through that gift, through them, the imagination and the, the um, suggestibility and my ability through observation and watching people move and how they will have one particular gesture that defines them as a person, whether it's the way they stand or the way they move or the way they move their head or toss their hair, I can zero in on those things to, to define a behavior and then match that with a voice or an accent that allows me to create the reality, uh, of being another person, even though I may not have a costume change or anything like that.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's interesting because in our last we interviewed Lisa coil and we were talking about your body, mind connection and how your body does relate to your mind. It's kind of an interesting concept to think that we, that our mannerisms themselves are telling, so to speak. That,

Speaker 2:

yeah, that's very interesting because actually I have found that if I can through observation or my imagination, imagine what, how our character may stand or sit by my taking on that posture. It does something to me emotionally, you know, think about, think about somebody with bad posture and what psychological reasons may be that they have bad posture, how having bad posture may affect your voice, how you move, all of those things. The instrument, you know, and enacting the instrument is our body. Um, it's, it's, it's very interesting that once you get to the point where you're, you're really responsive to your body as an instrument of storytelling and expression that you have the ability to by just taking on another posture, change your emotional state. Um, and it comes without an intellectual thought at all. You know, it doesn't come from an intellectual thought. It comes from someplace bigger and much more organic than I can even describe.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's, it's kinda like I say, uh, you know, I've always believed that, that that through presence, I am connected to a greater power. You know, a greater presence and whatever you want to name that, whether you want to call it God's spirituality or the one or it's this connection to something bigger and, and through your, your body. I do think we are, we're whole beings. I think some people try to focus just on the mind, but we are whole beings, mind and body. Um, and I think that that's interesting that that seems to be your, a doorway for you into the character right now. You know it. And like I said, you're incredible. I will sit there and watch you on the stage. Someone that I've spent my life with and go, who, who's that little woman there with the glasses in the purse. That's, that's the guy I live with and I believe it. I believe it. It's not, I don't see you anymore. I don't see the Terry. I know. I see a character in the absolute brightness of Lennar Pelkey. Right.

Speaker 2:

Well that's, that's such a, that speaks to the power of the theater to me as well. And is that we as, as witnesses to the event that this particular artist or is creating for us, that we have the ability without much effort really to, to let go of of our, to have a willingness of disbelief. I mean, I'm willing, you know, to let go of my willingness to disbelieve this and completely believe this, this person who is standing there and dressed like a man but has a pair of women's glasses on and is holding the purse, I am completely sucked in and I believe that now I am when I'm watching a woman

Speaker 1:

cause. So I CA I guess going back to what I was asking you originally, you know, when you do the miser method, you're reacting to a person across from you. Um, in these roles. I would imagine you're reacting to the script or the writing itself.

Speaker 2:

Yes. And you know, absolutely all of those things. But there's also the part of imagining what the person that you're talking to in this instance, what their responses would be. You know, if I am talking as a, as this old woman with these glasses on, and I imagine that the person that I'm talking to is responding to me with scorn, then the way that I say the lines are going to change. If I worry, imagine that that person is responding to me with support or amusement or laughter that's going to change the way that I deliver those lines. So all of that becomes part of what I have created in these, these, these little one, one person shows where I'm playing multiple people in. Each one has a, you know, a series of monologues about a theme. Then I, with my imagination, create the other person so that I know what I'm responding to. So in my imagination, the person that would be there in the Meisner, ping-pong, exercise, repetition, exercise is there in my imagination.

Speaker 1:

And so your imagination is, is personal. It's unique to you. Absolutely. Which is why one person doing the role of the absolute brightness would be totally different from your interpretation of that show. Absolutely. I want to mention one other thing, um, because people don't realize this about you, but you also have done a bit of writing and when you rewrote this uncle Vanya, uh, several years back did an adaptation, is that correct?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it actually was something that I had been working on for a really, really long time. I think I might have started it right after college. I fell in love with, uh, Anton checkoffs, um, writing, uh, for those folks who don't know, um, checkoff was a Russian writer in the late 18 hundreds, many believe he was the first playwright to, um, um, bring characters with full psychological backgrounds and psychological motivations, um, to his writing up. Then writing had been very stylized. So I fell in love with that because I've always been at my core, a realistic actor. So, um, there was something about this play that I really loved and so I began to think, Oh, wouldn't it be great if, if, if we could adapt this so that it's a little bit more, um, accessible to a modern audience without all these Russian names that everybody gets confused about and how we do that. So I began to just play with it a little bit. And then once I was running Watertower and was doing theater full time, I just kept working on it and I decided to just finish it one day. And it coincided with me doing a lot of genealogy research I grew up in, I grew up in a small town in Alabama, so I was doing a lot of genealogy research. And so I was working on this adapt tation of this play, this Russian play while I was doing genealogy research, thinking about my early ancestors and um, the earliest 20th, early 20th century in South Alabama. And suddenly the characters begin to speak to me, um, as my family talks. So I found it's fine. I found that it was set suddenly it was set in Alabama in 1922 when it seemed to make sense and it worked. And uh, we did a reading of it at Watertower and then we did a full production of it and, uh, it was very successful and I won, um, uh, an award for best new play in Dallas that year. I can't believe that was 2004. Wow.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh. I can't believe that. No. Well, you know, that's interesting. How, how did that process, you know, writing is very different from acting or is it it, was it a similar creative process or did you find, find yourself challenged by changing the craft, so to speak?

Speaker 2:

Well, the, um, to be fair, um, writing a, a free free adaptation of, of an older play is certainly a lot easier than writing something completely out of your head. At least it is for me. Um, um, because the character definitions are already there. The basic plot structure is already there. So we really, the, the challenge for me was, was much like playing that one man show. I became each of those characters and rethought, um, how they would speak in this new time. Uh, and, um, based on my experience of growing up in the South, those voices came out of me from my experience and my imagination and just like I work on those other characters. So it was not so much about plotting and, and, and character definition, but kind of as an actor and putting myself in those roles and letting them speak through me that I was then able to put on paper. Now, once that was done, I had to make some flat changes because it didn't, it didn't work completely. Being set in Russia originally suddenly said an Alabama had to change the structure. Somewhat character names had to be changed obviously, and things like that. So it's, but was it a difference? It was hard and probably the most, um, frightening thing I've ever done is to put something that I wrote and characters that I wrote, um, up on stage for people to watch because as opposed to acting somebody else's words for the first time, you're doing every, it's, it's all you. I mean, yes, I use checkoffs plot, but I don't know. It's very, um, it was very scary.

Speaker 1:

Well, I, I imagine, uh, going back to when we talked about with the presence, um, being president is scaries, you know, it's, uh, there's a vulnerability to it. Um, definitely

Speaker 2:

has to be, you have to learn to, you have to learn to, um, you have to learn to accept and embrace that, um, a vulnerability and a vulnerability is, um, if it's, if you're not taking a chance mean I think this is about any art. If you're not taking a chance, if you're doing something that doesn't feel risky, then it's not worth doing. In fact, I think there is an Anne Bogart about that very thing that if it's, if you don't feel frightened, if you don't feel scared by it, then it's not worth doing. You're not bringing anything of value into the world.

Speaker 1:

Wow. I think you're right. In my mind, I'm hearing Anne Bogart say something like that and then you're right, it, there's an authenticity about it. And uh, and creativity is, is being really consciously present. And sometimes it's scary. And, and breaking new ground. So, yeah. Well I appreciate you sharing these thoughts with me and as you know, there's always more to talk about, but we could go on and on and on. Right. And I'm sure

Speaker 2:

talk about, I could talk about this for days at a time.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I know. It's, it's, it's great. I love it and I love doing this podcast. I look forward to it. So, um, I want to thank you for joining us on this, on the show. Um, the insights. Great. And, um, I'm sure we'll have you back cause there's so much, there's so much more to learn.

Speaker 2:

Thank you Chris. All right, talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.

Speaker 1:

Thanks again for listening to the spiritual artist podcast, whether you're watching this show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google play, or iHeartRadio, make sure you choose the subscribe button so that you will receive updates when new segments are released. Most importantly, be still listen and know that you are a spiritual artist.