Method Acting: The Pros and Cons for Acting Auditions

It’s long been argued whether Method acting is a good technique or whether it leads the actor down the wrong acting path.

Beginning in New York City in the 40’s and ‘50’s, method acting was created by Konstantin Stanislavski and made popular by Lee Strasberg. It is a technique in which actors try to draw upon their own emotions, memories, and experiences to create a lifelike character in their performance.

It’s detractors say Method acting is difficult to teach and constrains the actor to a limited amount of emotions in their own life upon which to draw on. It also poses a risk to the actor to bring his or her own life into the performance, making the character him or herself instead of becoming another character.

Sanford Meisner taught a similar but altered version of Method acting which he simply named The Meisner technique. This technique did away with Strasberg’s “sense memory” and taught his students to fully immerse themselves in the moment of the character, experiencing all emotions as the character would.

Stella Adler, who’s students include Brando and DeNiro, also believed that actors shouldn’t use their own memories to draw emotions from but to use circumstances instead.

The actor has to decide whether Method acting is right for themselves and if they do use it, whether it’s right for that particular role.