Module 30: Defending Our Humanity In A Society That Values Human Connection Less and Less

Defending Our Humanity In A
Society That Values Human
Connection Less and Less
Michael DeBlis III, Esq.
Partner
DeBlis Law

Word Repetition Exercise
• There is a brilliantly conceived exercise
developed by Sanford Meisner called the
“Word Repetition Exercise” that is at the
very core of the Meisner technique.
• This exercise trains two muscles of an
actor:
–The ability to look and see; and
–The ability to listen and hear.

• The exercise is a pure thing. It teaches you
how to leave yourself alone.
• No dyes or artificial sweeteners may be
added.
• You be you; nothing more nothing less.

• Acting is about reacting to stimuli. The
creative genius of this exercise is that it trains
the actor to listen to what their partner
means, not just to what they say. In essence,
you become a “sensitized responder.”

• You become better in tune to experiencing
human behavior and body language and
answering truthfully from where it goes inside
you.

• This is important because while the playwright
gives an actor the words, it is the actor’s job to
pick up the impulses.
• As Stella Adler once said, the words as written
in the script are dead until the actor infuses
them with life.

• Word Repetition Exercise
– Two people stand (or sit) a few feet apart from
one another, facing each other.
– Repetition begins by one person putting his
complete attention on the other person and
finding something concrete about them that holds
some interest for him, regardless of how small.
(this allows you to attach yourself to something
outside of yourself)

• What could be more stimulating than a living
person?

– The exercise begins by one person making a
concrete and specific observation about the
other person – something that immediately
catches their attention about the other person.
What strikes you about the other person that
you like? This could be a physical characteristic
or something descriptive about the other
person’s clothing.

– Proper examples: “You have red hair;” “You have
blue eyes;” or “You’re wearing a soft green
shirt.”
– Improper example: “You have a head.” It’s too
general!

– The other person repeats back exactly what the first
person says changing only the pronoun “You” to “I”
– It's critical for the other person to repeat accurately
and miss nothing. If you get sloppy and start missing
a word here and a word there, eventually it will
undermine your ability to listen in the heightened
way that the exercise is designed to reinforce.
– Example: “I have red hair;” “I have blue eyes;” or
“I’m wearing a soft green shirt.”
– Keep the connecting words. They too carry meaning.
• Partner A: “You are laughing.”
• Partner B: “I am laughing.” Not, “I’m laughing.”

– The repetition continues in this fashion without any
pausing in between. Pausing is a cauldron for
thinking because it allows for the wheels inside your
head to turn. But thinking has no part in this
exercise.
– The temptation to go into your head and to vary up
the monotonous repetition will be overwhelming.
Indeed, your mind will always be trying to anticipate
and to stay one step ahead. Resisting the temptation
to vary it up or to say something cute or clever is not
futile; but does require an enormous amount of
discipline. Do not anticipate the exercise in the first
moment or take anything for granted.

– If you repeat what you get from your partner, you
won’t be at a loss for something to say.
– Don’t speak over your scene partner. Remember,
you can’t repeat any faster than you can hear.

• There will come a point during the exercise
when the repetition changes – organically.

• There are four ways in which this can happen:
– (1) The honest answer: Always keep the truth in
your answer;
– (2) The pileup: The formulation of an impulse
from the accumulation of the repetition;
– (3) Point of view; and
– (4) In response to your partner’s behavior.

The Honest Answer
• If you have to change a word in the repetition
to make your answer honest, do it. Every time
you withhold a truthful response, you actively
hurt your development. This is not an excuse
for turning the repetition into a pissing
contest. But the idea is to work from your
honest responses. Don't edit them in order to
be perceived as “nice.”

The Pileup
• The pileup happens as an organic reaction to
the process of repetition itself. If you are really
listening and really responding, the sheer
repetitiousness of the repetition will begin to
play on you internally and create an impulse,
which makes a change.
• Sooner or later one of the partners will have
an organic impulse to change the course of
the exchange.

The Pileup
• Should you change up the repetition and vary
it up when you feel like nothing is happening
and it's going nowhere? No.
• Thinking your way into a shift is a mortal sin.
It's calculated, like trying to manipulate a
conversation. The purpose of repetition is not
to develop your mind; instead it's designed to
develop your instincts.

The Pileup
• Everything that happens in repetition should
be driven by impulses. You must respond to
what you hear from your partner without
thought. Any time you engage your mind
during repetition, you'll suppress your true
impulses and throw yourself off.

The Pileup
• We've had impulses all our life. If you stubbed
your toe as a tyke when you were running
barefoot on concrete, your impulse might
have been to cry or to yell, "Ouch!" You didn't
have to stop and think about it. The moral of
the story is that you can't think an impulse. It's
instantaneous.

The Pileup
• A connection with one's impulses is the
biggest gift that you can give yourself. Why?
Who you really are is revealed by your
spontaneous impulses. Not the "you" that
you'd like the world to see you as or the "you"
that another person wants you to be, but your
true self.

The Pileup
• To be your true self, you must act before you
think. That means, "repeat before you think.”
This may seem counterintuitive to what you
were taught in the past (i.e., look before you
leap, think before you speak), but I suggest
just the opposite: speak before you think; leap
before you look. This is the only way to be
spontaneous; to come to life in an invigorating
way.

The Pileup
• The repetition elicits all that is unique, lively,
and unpredictable about the people who do
it.
• Leave your intellect at the door!

Point of View
• The third way the repetition can change is
when you express an opinion or, a point of
view.
• And this can happen virtually at any time
during the repetition, so long as it surfaces
from something that really exists, i.e.,
something that's really going on between you
and your partner. Not something that’s
manufactured!

Point of View
• Inherent in this is the notion that you must
know how you feel about everything.
• The development of this connection with
yourself, your point of view, can take a long
time and is a major area of this work.

Responding to Your Partner’s Behavior
• The fourth way that the repetition can change
is by responding to your partner's behavior.
• When your partner’s behavior changes, the
words of the repetition must change in order
to reflect it.

Responding to Your Partner’s Behavior
• Your concentration must extend beyond just
listening carefully to what the other person
says to include your partner's behavior. This is
because a person's behavior communicates
more truthfully what they really mean than
the words they're speaking.

Word Repetition Tips
• Follow your impulses and allow them to
dictate the changes. Allow it to go wherever
it goes. Don’t walk in with an agenda or with
a general idea – that will only lead to
manipulation of the exercise.
• You’re not here to play your idea out of what
you want to happen. Be open to what you
encounter. As my acting instructor likes to
say, “Take what you get, not what you want.”

Word Repetition Tips
• Don’t deny real sense of what’s going on.
Treat it as a reality; not as an exercise. “You
snapped at me.” “You’re angry but you’re
crying.”
• Remember, “the best-laid plans of mice and
men often go awry.”

• There will come a point during the repetition
when you feel the urge to say something
different. Honor that impulse and express what
you’re feeling without explaining it away or
minimizing it. For example, if you’re feeling
frustrated, express your frustration through the
phrase you’re repeating (i.e., through tone,
voice inflection, and body language). If you
don’t follow that impulse at the moment its felt,
then it will be lost.

• This is easier said than done because the
tendency nowadays is to follow your instincts
only when they are socially acceptable. We fear
being branded as uncivilized.
• But in this exercise you must have a clear point
of view and respond from that point of view,
regardless of how awkward or vulgar it might
be.

• Otherwise, what we’re left with is two pleasant
people that are committed to staying pleasant.
There can be nothing more dull and
uninteresting than two accommodators.

• The lubricant of life is manners. As a result, we
curb our impulses too much. But in this exercise,
manners are a hindrance because they prevent
you from responding truthfully.
• The idea here is not to present the version of
yourself that you think is acceptable. You are a
more dynamic person than you have the freedom
to express in real life. There is more to you. Don’t
settle for anything less.

Your Rich Inner Life
• How you live in everyday life is not all of you.
We have a much richer inner life than we let
out. If our full potential was represented by all
of the keys on a keyboard, most of us would
spend our entire life playing the same two keys
despite the fact that a keyboard has 88 keys and
vast tonal capabilities.

Your Rich Inner Life
• We have not even scratched the surface of our
tremendous creative powers and abilities. They
remain dormant and unused as long as we
don’t know about them or as long as we deny
them. The best and most human parts of you
are those that you have inhabited and hidden
from the world!

• This exercise gives you the freedom to tap into
these parts and to raise your voice and be
heard!
• The way this happens is by putting all of your
attention on your partner, leaving yourself
alone, and surrendering to it. Don’t self-edit
yourself or censor yourself. Give yourself
permission to let go and be free!

• Slowly, the exercise will push you out of your
comfort zone and into new heights. You’ll
being to feel as “free” as a bird.
• When you have artistic freedom, a much
richer version of you emerges.

• We want to see the real, authentic you – not a
shadow of you.

• Tips
–An actor’s greatest strength is his
vulnerability – his ability to be affected by
things both real and imaginary.

–You’re entitled to 100% of your partner. And
your partner is entitled to 100% of you. If
your partner dies away, he’s dying away on
you.
–This is a dreadful exercise for those who like
to be in control and/or have trouble letting
go. Give up, give way, give in!

– You must become emotionally available. In other
words, you must be open and receptive. You have
to drop your guard. This gets in the way of
openness. You’re a much more attractive person
when you’re open and receptive.

– Focus all of your attention on your scene partner
and receive him or her. Don’t allow any energy to
leak out. Everything good from this exercise will
come out of the contact between you and your
partner.

– You must listen like you’ve never listened before.
The casual listening that we do in everyday life is
inadequate. You have to listen not only to the
words that are being said but to the meaning
behind the words. These changes might be subtle.
Listen for the changes in the person – the
agreement, the disagreement, the annoyance, the
despair, the excitement.
– In other words, you have to listen to what your
partner means, not just to what he says.

– Why? Words don’t always carry the truth. In
life, we don’t always say what we mean. A
person’s behavior might reveal something
radically different than the spoken words.
– Truth versus fact: Deal with what the other
person is really doing to you and respond to
that, no matter how awkward it might be. In
other words, hear the meaning and then
respond to the meaning behind the words. Is
your partner being bossy? Is she blowing you
off? Is she manipulating you?

– Repeat back exactly what is said. Avoid the
tendency to make it conversational. The topic is
that one singular moment that you’re in right now.
There is no subject – only the moment you’re in.
Don’t try to connect it logically to the first point.

– The logic of the exercise is the emotion. The
feelings that are created come from the contact
(i.e., repetitive exchange) between you and your
scene partner. The feeling created by the contact
brings the repetition to life.
– When the exercise is going well, it follows the
pattern of a heart monitor.

– Commit to repeating the words with enough
energy that they reach your partner. You have to
really reach your partner in order to complete the
transaction. You want your partner to hear you
the way you need him to hear you. Repeating the
phrase in a monotone voice wrings the meaning
out of the answer and will cause the exercise to
flat-line.
– You want to be in the answer. While the words
might be redundant, we still want to know that
there is a person in there.

– If the words are being uttered in such a way that
they are hollow and empty, or like they could be
set to a metronome, the repetition will die.
– The more you look, the more you’ll see. The more
you listen, the more you’ll hear.

– The dreadful thinking pause. Don’t pause in
between or give yourself the opportunity to
compose yourself. In that pause, you’ll be able to
“think” how to respond and deliver a chosen
response. This is not Anderson Cooper talking to a
foreign correspondent in Kandahar while
broadcasting from a studio in NYC with a thirty-
second delay. If the pause is so long that you can
drive a train through it, the repetition will die a slow
death.

– Repeat immediately even if what comes out is
mangled or gibberish. This is not about right and
wrong. Fumbling, flubbing, and stuttering are a
painful reality of this exercise. However, what we
might label as “screw ups” are the richest gifts!
– Don’t anticipate what to say next or attempt to vary
up the monotonous repetition just for the sake of
making it clever, witty, or interesting. Trust that it will
become interesting. Repetition holds the step
forward.

– The biggest stumbling block is getting caught up in
linguistics, but it’s not about the words. Instead,
it’s about the feelings behind the words – i.e., the
life that is created between the two people. If you
listen attentively and really take your scene
partner in, something about him or her is going to
change you.

– In other words, when there is genuine contact of
some kind that comes from really looking and
really listening, whatever is going on in the other
person is going to show up somehow in you. If you
let the other person in, they’ll do half the work!

– It’s impossible to stay the same in this exercise
unless you shut down completely.
– Don’t fall into the trap of being a reporter and
jumping from one random observation to another
or being a cop and looking for information. There
is no logic to the exercise. Nor is the exercise
about making casual observations – it’s about
experiencing what you’re feeling on the inside and
allowing it to live in the exchange. In other words,
answer from where it goes inside you. Be in the
answer!

– Take what is happening personally. Remember
that everything happening in the exercise is real.
Annoyance, anger, hurt are real emotions. They
have momentary value. Just like in acting, the
people are real and the things that are happening
between them are real. The only thing that
doesn’t exist in this exercise is the imaginary
circumstances.

– You cannot respond to anything that you cannot
receive. Let yourself be affected. Acting is a felt
experience. Some of us are Teflon while others are
Velcro. Teflon is a non-stick surface. Velcro is a
surface where everything sticks. People who are
Teflon don’t allow things to happen to them. They
put up a wall. If you are Teflon, you have to fight
through that armor.

– The key is involvement. Everything good comes
out of involvement. Involvement comes from
listening to what was just said and repeating.
– If you are really involved in the other person,
the changes will take care of themselves.
– If you are really involved in the other person,
then you won’t have the time to watch
yourself doing it or to guard yourself. You’ll
only have the time and energy to do it.

– Don’t get into the habit of explaining things away,
describing yourself, or justifying yourself. Not only will this
take you back a couple of steps, but you’ll heap the
attention back on yourself which will make you self-
conscious. Keep the repetition in the present by taking
from the living moment with your partner. The point is that
you’re not trying to play the story, just the moment. Be
open to whatever you encounter and answer impulsively
from moment to unanticipated moment.
– How do you express what you’re feeling on the inside if
you can’t describe yourself? If you’re feeling
uncomfortable, you might say, “You made me
uncomfortable” instead of, “I’m uncomfortable.” Make it
personal.

– Stay away from asking questions. Questions are
disguised opinions and are less risky than making
a bold, affirmative statement. Asking questions is
a sign that you are being careful and cautious.
– Don’t shy away from conflict if it really exists. In
life, we recoil from encounters. In acting, we have
to meet them head on.
– As my acting instructor says, “An actor goes to
acting like a tiger goes to meat.”

– Trust your response. If you’re really feeling
something, express it. If your partner looks
unhappy say, “You’re unhappy.” Don’t say, “You
seem unhappy.” If something is it, say it.
– This exercise is not about “right and wrong.” If
your partner disagrees with something you said,
he or she will correct you because they must
answer truthfully from their point of view.

–Stay away from guessing. Instead, see what
is really there.
–Nor should you agree with your partner just
for the sake of being cordial. When that
happens, it’s not honest. Don’t be anything
but truthful.

– If you feel like your mind is wondering or that
you’re losing the connection with your partner,
get more involved in him. A common pitfall is not
putting enough of your attention on your partner.
– Remember that you’re only one moment away
from getting re-connected. It’s called, “the next
moment.”

– Don’t manage and compose yourself. If you do,
you’ll get a chosen response. That part of you that
dials it down and laughs it off is no good. The best
moments are the ones when you aren’t in charge
of yourself. Don’t keep one hand on the steering
wheel!

–Purpose
•This exercise is much more than a
slightly innocuous word game.

–It’s going to reveal something!
• “Mechanical repetition is monotonous
and robotic, but it’s the basis for
something.” Sanford Meisner

• “Mindless repetition is invaluable. It
eliminates a need for you to think and to
write dialogue out of your head in order
to keep talking. And the illogical nature of
the dialogue opens you up to the
impulsive shifts in your instinctual
behavior caused by what is being done to
you by your partner. This is fundamental
to good acting.” Sanford Meisner

• “If you stick to the repetition, which is
illogical and comes purely from what you
hear, you’ll overcome a tendency to use
your head logically.” Sanford Meisner

• The repetition exercise, in essence, is not
boring.
• “It plays on the source of all organic creativity,
which is the inner impulses.” Sanford Meisner
• There are things that are going to begin to be
done. “The illogical nature of the dialogue
opens you up to the impulsive shifts in your
instinctual behavior caused by what was being
done to you by your partner, which can lead to
real emotion. This is fundamental to good
acting.” Sanford Meisner

Summary
• Repetition forces you into real contact with
your partner.
• By real contact, I’m referring to emotional
contact – not intellectual contact.
• It takes two actors and rubs them together so
that sparks of life begin to happen.

Summary
• When the exercise is going full-tilt, it is so
spontaneous that every moment is new and
unexpected.
• It becomes a pingpong game of impulses!

Module 30: Defending Our Humanity In A Society That Values Human Connection Less and Less

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Module 30: Defending Our Humanity In A Society That Values Human Connection Less and Less