Summer Acting Courses Meg Hennessy 02 - Maggie Flanigan Studio

Summer Acting Courses Meg Hennessy 02 - Maggie Flanigan Studio Q: Can you talk a little bit about the steps that led you to train? You're from Ireland. Did you come to the States specifically to study? I always was acting from a very young age. I caught the bug young, and I always knew I wanted to do it. I always wanted to move to New York, as well as individually. It wasn't until I discovered the Meisner technique that I was like, "Oh my God. This is huge." It was then a youth theater, and it was a friend to my parents who had come to give us a little taster of it, and I was amazed. It was just like a gateway into what acting could be. Then, I studied in college in Ireland, and I was unhappy because I knew that what I wanted to do was to act. I felt like I was wasting my time, even though I'm not sure if I was. All I wanted to do was be in New York and be immersed in theater all the time. When I found the studio, I thought that it seemed like a safe space. It just seemed like somewhere I wanted to be. When I researched it, I was like, "Okay, that seems interesting or intriguing for me," so I auditioned, and I was so over the moon to get in. I did decide to move to New York specifically for the training in the Maggie Flanigan Studio, and it was tough for a while, but I do not regret that decision at all. Q: You mentioned it's when you found the Meisner technique that acting started to become interesting to you. What is it about the Meisner technique that connects with you? The Meisner technique centers explicitly around the imagination. Before I had found the method, I had been trying to develop my way or my style. I'm trying to become the character, live in nature, as the character. Sometimes, I found that aspects of the character were sticking to me, and I couldn't differentiate between who I was and what the role was. My behavior would be a bit all over the place, and I would get confused once projects would finish. I was like, "Oh, I need to learn a safe way to do this." I looked at the method, and I looked at Stella Adler, and I looked at Meisner, and I just thought Meisner, because it was centered in the imagination, I thought it was so much more of an opportunity to be creative and explore that. With the first year of the program, it's finding out who you are as a person and what you're capable of because we're taught to suppress that in society. You can't differentiate who you are between a character until you know yourself. That was the first year of the training for me. Then, the second year is adding character. I'm learning how to just with self-care, take a character off at the end of the day and just come up with a safe way of disappearing into somebody else. Maggie Flanigan Studio 153 W 27th St #803 New York, New York 10001 (917) 789-1599 www.maggieflaniganstudio.com/new-york-ny https://flic.kr/p/2jomJ5c