Performing Comedy Using the Meisner Technique: Part I

One of my greatest pleasures in life has been performing comedy. I delight in the euphoric feeling of when a joke hits, the tension before the audience gets in on it, and the process of figuring out how to achieve that beforehand. Next to comedy, another one of my greatest joys in life has been studying the Meisner technique, an acting modality that asks us to forget results and stay in the moment, never knowing which way things are going to go. As the prolific Meisner teacher William Esper said,

“The moments bind together, forming an endless wave which the actor rides like a tiger, never knowing where the tiger will turn next, never caring, if the truth be told. For the actor knows that there is never an outcome and never an ending. There is only the ride.”

Great idea in theory, but when our goal is to make an audience laugh, how do we give up caring about their buy-in as the outcome?

I recently got to originate a comedic role in a new musical called Bestie Island and felt compelled to share the process, as performing comedy can be such an elusive subject. While the Meisner technique can be incredibly freeing, to put the constructs of comedy back around the loosened grip that it allows many of us white-knuckling perfectionists can feel counterproductive. However, the concepts surrounding giving up control, among other principles in the Meisner technique, are what I’ve found to be the keys to effective comedic acting, not its inhibitors. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing a three-chapter series of what I did with “Becca,” the yogi-influencer in the dark musical comedy Bestie Island by Sarah Caroline Billings and Colby Lapolla, and what has helped me consistently to perform comedy with precision while maintaining the “fuck-it” fluidity that Meisner has also helped me to achieve.

… … …

When I was 7 years old, my first onstage experience was as a walk-on role with The Kentucky Opera in their production of The Mikado. I was playing The Lord High Executioner’s assistant and my only blocking was to hold an enormous ax (primarily made of foam), follow the executioner onstage, hand him the ax, and walk off when our time came to exit.

The rehearsal process was unremarkable and opening night arrived without ceremony in the fall of my second grade year. Backstage, I felt glamorous wrapped in my heavy costume and took a moment to admire my black bob of a wig. Upon giving her a final pet, I headed to my entrance and took the giant foam ax in my 7 year old hands. My partner The Lord High Executioner headed onstage and I followed, carrying out my blocking and casually handing him the prop ax. As rehearsed, he crumbled under the ax’s weight, shooting me a dismayed look. I didn’t expect much after that.

However, like two loving palms cupping my cheeks with approval, I was surprised to feel the audience begin to rumble with laughter. Wanting to smile myself, I all but turned to them, wondering what was funny but knowing that I was a part of it. The executioner continued the bit, milking the audience’s joy for the contrast between how heavy the ax was for him and how effortless it had been for me. I felt the connection between the audience and us and experienced a rush from their laughter like I never had in my little life before.

I was hooked and couldn’t wait for the next shows. Throughout the remainder of the run, I anticipated our big moment and began to play with how serious I could be as I coldly stared back at him or how confidently I could walk onstage, holding the ax with strength and ease. I loved the rhythm of the bit and how it changed based on what the executioner was getting from the audience, how long he would drag out some parts and how sharply he would clip through others depending on the shared energy between us and them.

My love of performing comedy had begun and grew steadily throughout the rest of my childhood. We didn’t have cable TV so I’d watch taped reruns (mailed to us by my eccentric aunt) of The Muppets Show and The Little Rascals, their frenetic but tight pacing impacting how I understood jokes to unfold. Being a child of the 90s, I was influenced by the comedic genius of Robin Williams. Being born to Boomer parents, I internalized the timing of Monty Python. I made jokes that got me in trouble at school, learned what was “too far” (something I’m still working on), and through trial and error, developed a dexterity for my personal sense of humor that supported my love of sharing it onstage.

I say all of this less to boost myself up and more to drive home the point of how much each individual’s history with, taste for, and love of comedy impacts the unique way that they perform it. When the Meisner technique came into my life over a decade ago, the guiding principle of it struck me deeply:

“You are enough.”

- Larry Silverberg, Author and Master Teacher of the Meisner technique

Performing anything outside of our comfort zones, especially something as vulnerable as comedy, can feel like we have to place something on top of what we already inherently have. In Meisner, our work as artists is more about stripping away things that keep us from trusting that we are enough rather than adding more to support the belief that we aren’t.

In the wake of the fresh experience of fleshing out a role that had never been performed fully in Bestie Island this fall, I want to share three concepts about comedic acting that align with both the Meisner technique and what I’ve found to be true over the years as to how to make an audience laugh while staying true to oneself.

The first:

Bring to the comedy what you naturally are.

Two comedic role models for me are Amy Sedaris and Madeline Kahn. Now, if I were to try to emulate Sedaris’ chaotic quirks or Kahn’s oozing aloofness, both would look bizarre on me. While it’s incredibly valuable to have comedic performers whom you look to for inspiration, I’ve found it much more impactful to identify what makes you inherently yourself as a primary step in choreographing comedy.

For instance, I know that:

• I am dry

• I’m often told that I am intimidating

• Because of my aforementioned love of The Little Rascals and The Muppet Show, I have an ingrained sensibility for slapstick, stupid humor

When I began working on the role of Becca, as a Meisner actor would with any script or score, I first learned it mechanically, without placing any meaning onto the lines or memorizing any inflection. Then, as I dug deeper into the songs and scenes, I started noticing what lines felt natural and which ones felt more foreign to me.

I’ll outline two lines: one that felt incredibly “me” and one that I wasn’t sure to do with, walking through how I used my core “Jillian-isms” to make them feel easier and therefore funnier.

One of my lines that felt so natural was “I want to shine a light on this astounding island culture.”

To me, Becca is the epitome of a white woman sloppily appropriating a culture that wasn’t hers. Looking back to the core things that make me who I am, specifically my love of base humor, I love inserting a silly voice - give me an accent where it doesn't make sense or a rise in pitch where it’s not usually done and I’ll likely be laughing. I thought it would be funny, therefore, for Becca to assume that saying “culture” with a nondescript accent outside of her American one would make her seem like more of a humanitarian than she was. I tried saying one day in rehearsal with steadfast earnestness, “I want to shine a light on this astounding island cool-toor.” It got a lot of laughs and the flipped r and and rounded embouchure stayed throughout the rest of the run.

Here’s the thing about choreography or planned moments of any kind within the Meisner technique: the parameters can remain but the impulse can change (I’ll write at length about this in Part II of this series). Once I found that saying that line with a misplaced accent was funny, I allowed myself to stay flexible while still knowing that I was going to say “culture” with a voice. My physical impulses got to remain free, the intention behind how I said the line honored whatever I was feeling in the moment, but the comedic notion that Becca thought she was being respectful by saying “culture” with an accent but was doing the exact opposite remained like a sturdy bumper that I got to bop around with while feeling confident that the joke “worked” show to show.

A line that didn’t feel as close to what I would say in real life was, “How could you do this to me? Question mark.” The premise came from one of my favorite Real Housewives shows and the idea was that I was voice-texting something serious and needed to add punctuation. As much as I loved the gag, I struggled at first to find what I uniquely brought to it that would make it work. After trying it a few ways and still feeling that I wasn’t doing it justice, I talked to my director, who brought me back to the Meisner idea of, “Just say the words.” A huge principle of comedy and one that I’m sure you’ve heard before is not trying to make the lines funny and I think I’d gotten too hooked on making a meal out of this one.

To trust the words even more, I looked back at my core Jilly-isms and decided to rely on my knack for dryness. I said the line with wry firmness and it clicked. It was another learning experience for me back to the core tenets of Meisner that we very rarely need to add more to something to make it good. More often than not, we need to strip it down more to simplicity: “What do I do that’s inherently ‘me?’” and find the humor in there.

To do this in your crafting of a comedic role or piece, I’d encourage you to start by making a short list of things that you just are. If you need to start with a large brain-dump and narrow it down or ask for input from those who know you well, both of those are excellent ideas to begin with. As you do this, make sure to be honest with yourself about what your natural tendencies are rather than to create a list of things that you strive to be. My dryness is something that creeps up on me - it’s frequent that I’ll intend to make a joke only for it to come across as a biting remark. Of course I wish that I could exude more warmth when people first meet me, however no matter how soft and sweet I try to be, I keep getting feedback that I’m intimidating. Ideally my sense of humor would be more elevated by this age but there’s something about someone farting or getting hit in the face with a pan that makes me laugh harder than anything else. The thing is, self-improvement is for your personal life, not for muddling your art with. These are attributes that are just part of who I am at this juncture and while I can try to change them to keep growing personally, for now I can use them as assets artistically.

As you identify these core traits about yourself, it’s important to note that they don’t have to be particularly interesting or unique to you.

“The interpretation is best found in what really moves you. Not complicated, not necessarily original. You. It’s you.”

-Sanford Meisner

These inherent Jillian-isms have helped me to shape comedic roles and pieces to be my own style while still honoring what the composers and playwrights have outlined. My Baroness von Schrader in The Sound of Music made even compliments seem cutting. My Sharpay Evans in High School Musical thrived off of her intimidation factor. My Kira in Xanadu was exceedingly shtick-y in her skating. This idea of embracing what we naturally are is something that the Meisner technique gave me the tools to do in spades (tool, spades…pun intended, see how funny I am?). Even if this is the only principle that you use from this three-part series, I think that it might be the most crucial to the relaxation and specificity that comedy requires.