Online Meisner Fundamentals

Online Meisner Fundamentals Course

We are no long offering our 5 week Online Meisner Fundamental course.

This program was held over Zoom from September of 2020 through June of 2021. We began our online course because most schools had already moved their full training online and we were forced to offer an online class simply to stay ‘competitive’ in the industry.

Now we’re seeing that many schools intend to continue teaching classes online or incorporate online teaching into their curriculum. While we understand the business and monetary reasons why schools are doing this, we still disagree with many of their views of online classes. And these are the reasons we will not be offering online classes while we’re able to teach in person.

Myths of Online Acting training

“Same as working in person (or better)”

Blatantly false. There are two obvious benefits of online classes: no travel time to and from class, and “you have access to classes around the world that you normally wouldn’t”. Beyond that, the actual teaching of acting is hampered by being online. Period. No legitimate acting teacher will say online classes are equal or even better to being in person. Everyone simply came up with excuses to justify it. The fact that many Meisner schools are offering to teach the full 2 year Meisner Technique online, is disingenuous. It simply cannot be taught fully online.

Working from the comfort of home”

Many schools are claiming that you’ll take “bigger risks because you feel safe” being at home. Let’s start with the simple truth that this is not how you’ll feel and work on a set or in an audition room. So, training “in comfort” does not build what is required to actually go out and work. Most of our online students found that they actually held back, because of roommates, family members or neighbors they didn’t want to disturb or even have overhear their work. Also, students tend to be more “casual” at home. The commitment to staying focused and involved with the class is just not possible online if you’re allowed to turn off your camera and do whatever you want.

“You’re learning to work on camera
The majority of camera work you’ll do will require to you be unaware of the camera. And when you do work on camera, you’ll need to learn how to adjust for the master shot versus the close up, or the requirements of multi-cam show. None of these ‘real world’ experiences are learned through a webcam or worse, a cellphone camera. But even more importantly, you’ll almost never be working with a scene or acting partner through a screen. Period. The person will be live and present with you. You may be learning self-tape, and remote auditioning skills, but again, this is a limited case. There are schools doing scenes online while the students are holding and moving their laptops and cameras in their rooms to “follow the action”. This will almost never be done on a set/stage. Teaching this online is building horrible habits in the student.