Sam Rockwell is a trained Meisner actor who recently received an Oscar for his performance in “Three Billboards OutSide Ebbing”. In this video Sam talks with students at Maggie Flanigan Studio about vulnerability and anger. The key to being a tough guy is actually vulnerability, because under the rage that you see is vulnerability and hurt. A lot of times, not always true depending on your background, but then you'll see in class the women will cry first and then get angry. Not always. Depends where you're from. The men will get angry and then eventually they'll cry, right? A lot of times you see that. These are good things to think about, that underneath the rage is great sadness and vulnerability. I think that's a big key to emotional power. People like John Malkovich, Alfre Woodard, Viola Davis, Phil Hoffmann, and Gary Oldman, have emotional power. When you see that on stage or in film, and you're like, "How f*** did they do that?" That's a gift. You've all got it, it's just accessing them. We've all got that power, I think. You just got to access it. Yes? Learn more about the Meisner technique and the acting programs at the Maggie Flanigan Studio by visiting the studio website or calling 917-789-1599. Maggie Flanigan Studio 153 W 27th St #803 New York, New York 10001 +1 917-789-1599 www.maggieflaniganstudio.com/ goo.gl/maps/oxqqExybwL32 plus.google.com/112291205845820496849 https://flic.kr/p/GMJV2e
via vulnerability sam rockwell maggie flanigan studio
by Maggie Flanigan
Summer Acting Programs Interview - Amilia Shaw - Maggie Flanigan Studio[/caption]
Summer Acting Program Interview with Amilia Shaw at Maggie Flanigan Studio[/caption]
Meisner Summer Acting Programs - Meisner Summer Intensive - Call 917-789-1599[/caption]
Spontaneity: Charlie Sandlan in Class - Maggie Flanigan Studio - Call (917) 789-1599[/caption] There are a number of fundamental 
Spontaneity and the Meisner Technique - Acting Students in Class - Maggie Flanigan Studio Call (917) 789-1599[/caption]
Film History Class for Actors - Jeff Richardson - Call (917) 789-1599[/caption]
Film History Class for Actors at the Maggie Flanigan Studio with Jeff Richardson[/caption]
Maggie Flanigan Studio - Alumni Nicole Villamil - Call (917) 789-1599[/caption]
Nadine Malouf, Jessica Love, and Nicole Villamil[/caption] Did she, like the others, take refuge there? Or did she disappear forever into the maw of America? As Inna tries to unearth the answers she gets trapped in a situation of her own. Ms. Majok is herself an immigrant, born in Poland. Her breakthrough play, “Ironbound,” produced at the Rattlestick in 2016, prefigured “queens” in dealing with the double disruption of being a woman who ventures, or is forced to flee, beyond the familiar discomforts of home. More recently, in the excellent “Cost of Living,” seen at Manhattan Theater Club in 2017, disability stood in for geographical and cultural alienation. In that play, two characters chafe against the way that a wheelchair, like color or language, can be a marker of disfavored status within the larger, normative society. But “queens,” which opened on Monday night in an LCT3 production at the Claire Tow Theater, is even more ambitious, if not as successful. When Inna (Sarah Tolan-Mee) arrives at the basement in 2017, the landlady, a Polish immigrant named Renia, recognizes her as someone who might be her own daughter, or herself. In a long flashback, we meet Renia (Ana Reeder) on the day she showed up in 2001 in desperate need. From there the story branches farther and farther afield. Much of the first act, which establishes the play’s fractured chronology, takes place as that younger Renia is provisionally welcomed into a polyglot ménage that includes icy Pelagiya (Jessica Love), tight-lipped Aamani (Nadine Malouf) and furious Isabela (Nicole Villamil). Isabela is packing her bags before returning to Honduras, where her daughter is waiting and her mother is dying. It is typical of Ms. Majok’s wit and empathy that Isabela evaluates each item of clothing not in terms of dollars but in terms of the number of low-wage hours it took to earn — and the number of hours away from her daughter it represents. A sweater that cost two hours is too dear to leave behind. The women are hilariously wary of the United States, of one another and especially of Renia, who won’t share her story. Still, the movement of the first act is from mistrust and recrimination to solidarity. When the roommates change into clubbing clothes to toast Isabela with whatever sad staples they can scrounge, the lamest farewell party ever becomes, briefly, one of the most joyous. Playing both ends of the scale like that is a distinctive trick Ms. Majok uses to release emotion without sentimentality. These women are tough, and not in a glamorous way: Their expectation of mistreatment is no pose and no metaphor. They are angry at the world yet nurture that anger, recognizing that in it may be the beginning of progress. Certainly there is no progress without it. This makes for thrilling writing. But as the play further complicates its story in the second and third acts, it loses control of its effects. We are offered too much information for the frame to contain, even if it’s vital: How Inna got from Ukraine to Queens after a six-month stop as a potential internet bride in Florida; what brought Renia to the basement and how she becomes its landlady. New characters come and go as well, their identities and stories blurred because they are played by the same actors who played the previous ones. After seeing “queens” and reading the script carefully I was still confused by many plot points. Confusion can be salient, of course, in plays about confusion, whether moral or existential. But “queens” isn’t squishy that way, so its confusion is subtractive. It may in fact be the result of cutting to keep the production under three hours. (The timing of the acts is lopsided.) If so, I think Ms. Majok would have done better to expand her scope rather than contract it. The material is so important, so ripe and so multi-stranded that it might have been better off as a marathon or a mini-series. Squeezed into its current shape it can do little more than check the boxes on its trenchant to-do list. This puts excess pressure on the production to provide coherence, but Danya Taymor’s direction opts for suggestiveness rather than clarity. The powerful set design by Laura Jellinek — dominated by a vast ceiling that lowers and lifts over the stage to create feelings of containment and freedom — is more successful in sculpting moods than in defining space or telling the story. (You are never sure where the doors to this basement are.) Action specified in the script is not always clear onstage: a problem of focus. And the fine performances, especially by Ms. Reeder and Ms. Tolan-Mee, dissipate under the excessive dramatic pressure. For all that, “queens” is still a notable work, or maybe several. It strikes at the heart of the immigrant experience, which is often unfair, one way or another. “You? Are lucky,” Renia tells one of the women. “Which means that maybe other people: not so much.” Welcome to America. This article appeared here originally: 
