Zazzarino 1!

Joelle Zazzarino
Contemporary Acting Techniques
Meisner Journal
March 21, 2016
Meisner Scene Journal/Exploration: Childrens Hour
1. Character Journey
During the play: Mary Tilford, a manipulative, self-obsessed, twisted, spoiled rotten, and
willful 14-year-old girl attending an all-female private school, sets the story in motion when
she fabricates a lie about her two female teachers. In the beginning of the show, the author
Lillian Hellmanmakes note to establish Mary as a forgettable child, neither pretty nor
uglyundistinguished-lookingexcept for the sullenly dissatisfied expression on her face.
She appears in her sewing class, amid Shakespeare reading and Latin reviews, bearing
flowersthat she INSISTS she picked from a fieldfor the teacher as a cover up for her
tardiness to avoid being scolded. She cries to make the lie all the more convincing, and then
turns around and sticks her tongue out at another student. This first appearance sets the tone
for the rest of the show. Mary, time and time again, demonstrates her grasp on others by
demonstrating the different ways she can manipulate someone into believing her lies or
doing her bidding. She even goes so far as to inflict physical violence on some students to
get what she wants, blackmails another into backing up a lie, and gets revenge on her
teachers for treating her wrong. Mary has two modes: crying, victim, hurt, child Mary and
dominant, crafty, dark, brooding, cruel Mary. She utilizes them scarily well and changes
modes in the blink of an eye. If it werent for her lies constantly being unfoldedsuch as

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when Karen enters and realizes the aforementioned flowers were taken by Mary out of the
trash as a haphazard cover upthe adults around her would believe her victim attitude. In
fact, it is almost metaphorical when Karen uncovers this flower lie so early in the plot, for
Mary later goes on to manipulate her grandmother into believing that her teachers, Karen and
Martha, are having a secret lesbian affairand Karen is the only one who survives this.
Mary also follows her lies to the bitter end, never once admitting she was wrong or truly
finding the light or changing by the end of the show. Every lie Mary tells is to avoid
getting in troublethe ultimate sign of selfish childishness.
During the scene: It has just been revealed to Mary that fellow-student Rosalie will be
staying with the family for the night due to her mother being away. Mary, annoyed by this,
originally starts the scene just humoring the goodie-two-shoes Rosalie. Eventually, Rosalie,
not knowing the reason as to why she is being taken out of school, wonders why aloudand
Mary jumps at the chance to use Rosalieinsisting she knows the reason why and letting
Rosalies own natural curiosity to get her to jump on the trap. Upon Rosalie finding out that
Mary listed her as a co-conspirator/witness to the liethe lie that Karen and Martha are
lesbian loversshe gets upset, truly still not knowing the reason she was taken from school.
She insists shes going to tell someone, and Mary then uses this opportunity to blackmail her
and utilize her naivety, which Mary knew was there, to her advantage. Mary even goes so far
as to force Rosalie down and make her swear an oath to do whatever Mary wants. Mary
begins the scene lounging languidly around her Grandmothers home and ends it with a
demon standing in her shoes. Everything, with Mary, is about high stakes and power
struggles. This scene is a perfect example of the length Mary would go to to make sure her

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position is assured. Shes fourteen years old and she has the attitude and mindset of a
communist leader.
2. World of the Play
During the 1950s, the United States was the worlds strongest military power. The economy
was booming, and the fruits of this prosperitynew cars, suburban houses and other
consumer goodswere available to more people than ever before. In addition, because this
was the era of prosperity, it boomed in population: by the time the boom finally tapered off
in 1964, there were almost 77 million baby boomers. This boom began in 1946, when a
record number of babies3.4 millionwere born in the United States. About 4 million babies
were born each year during the 1950s. Construction around America also boomed: new
schools, new interstates, new highways. It was a time of consumerism and product
development and buying because of the excess. The people were sitting pretty and things
were stable for once.
However, the 1950s were also an era of great conflictthere were crusades against
communism, the cold war, and the red scare, and the civil rights movement was beginning.
McCarthyism also started to run rampantan anti-nationalism/air of disloyalty to America
started by Senator Joseph McCarthy when he claimed he had a list of names of communist
government officials. Then started a systematic 1950s-60s American witch hunt for
communists living among the people, among the Hollywood elite, and among the
government. Thousands were put on trial, threatened, marked, or even killed; no one was
safe. In a way, Mary is the McCarthy of her school, accusing people of various acts based on
faulty evidence and a weaved web of lies. Similarly, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as a

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response to the time.
Characters relationship to others in the scene: Mary Tilford certainly doesnt think highly
of Rosalie. She mentions a few scenes before that she believes Rosalie hates herneedless
to say, she isnt in her group of friends. However, Mary knows exactly the right buttons to
push/play/manipulate to get Rosalie to play her tune. They are essentially opposites. Rosalie
is kind, caring, goodie-two-shoes, earnest, and sweet. Mary is dark, hostile, cunning, selfish,
superior, and oppressive. The only thing they have in common, besides the school they
attend, is their natural curiosity.
Characters relationship to others in the play:
MarthaMary essentially ruins this young teachers life by, unknowingly, exposing her
secret love for Karen. In the end, Mary destroys everything she created: her institution, her
state of mind, her carefully covered love, and, eventually, her life. Martha and Karen note
toward the beginning of the play that they feel scared/frightened of Mary, as if she is an
adult, enough so that they wish for her to be removed from the schooltaken away by her,
somewhat powerful, grandmother, Amelia (whom they have nothing against because of her
generous donations, but her granddaughter makes everyday teaching a chore).
KarenMary especially doesnt like her. Mary and Karen have history and Mary strongly
dislikes that she cannot get a single lie past Karen, let alone manipulate her. In fact, Karen
often walks in on lies Mary has told and busts them/sets them straight, and then punishes her
preventing Mary from having any fun, which she loathes. In addition, Karens relationship
with Marys older cousin, in-school doctor Joe, puts Mary in a tricky situation. She tries to
use her familiarity with Joe into tricking him to be on her side, but he always chooses Karen

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over Mary, which leaves Mary hostile, backed into a corner, and feeling all alonebecause
she has no adult whom she feels truly understands herOR no adult that she is able to truly
manipulate (something she is accustomed to from her spoiled upbringing). Either way, it may
be this relationship that gave Mary her poisonous attitude, leading to the lie that began it all.
JoeThats Marys cousin, whom she tries to appeal to constantly, much like her
grandmother, Amelia, and always ends up getting laughed off. Joes relationship with Karen
is rock-solid, enough so for him to stick by the trials that Marys lieto get her out of going
back to school for the nightsets in motion.
AmeliaWhether or not Mary truly loves her grandmother is debatable at best. She utilizes
familiarity and familial love and trust to her absolute advantage, and its Amelias power that
starts the repercussions of Marys lie when she starts making phone calls. When Amelia
looks at Mary, she sees an adorable, and somewhat faultless, child with a certain playful, yet
spoiled, innocence that comes with young girlhood. By the end of the show, she quickly
learns she was wrong.
3. How do the characters respond to each other? Rather guarded. Theres an air of
awkwardness and tentativeness toward the beginning until Mary decides she is through
playing around and that she intends to get what she wants.
How do these characters relate to the world around them? Mary AND Rosalie both act
rather familiarly to the surroundings, in different ways. Mary, because its a childhood home
that she knows rather well. In addition, if Mary was in a place that was more unfamiliar to
her, she might have been more reserved in her full-on attack of Rosalie; she would have been
more behooved to keep up appearances in case anything happened/she was caught. Rosalie

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acts rather familiarly to the space as well, feeling relatively unthreatened for once. Its easy to
believe that, because Mary was among her family and the servants were around in the home,
Rosalie thought that she would be safe from any real harm because they were both on their
best behavior. Its also possible that Mary had never been physically hostile and violent with
Rosalie before, so she didnt expect the eventual outcomea naive line of thinking.
What are the pivotal circumstances that characters find themselves in? Mary finds Rosalie
staying over in her home, and realizes that she listed Rosalie as a co-conspirator, even
though Rosalie knows nothing about the scene and would blab if asked. She confronts her.
Rosalie finds herself pulled out of school for reasons unknown and staying with the popular
school bully, in the spiders web.
How do the characters react to these circumstances? Mary starts off coy, not revealing too
much, but assuring Rosalie that she has knowledge. She lets Rosalies curiosity do the rest
before she reveals her handblackmail and then violence, and then a verbal oath. In Marys
mind, she has blown up the idea of getting in trouble to be such a terrible thing that it must
be avoided at all costs, absolutely no exceptions. For this, she would be willing to go to any
lengthsshe is undaunted and not held back by the societal social acceptances of
adulthoodshe goes by her own playground all-out-fight credo and lives unsympathetic to
others pain. Rosalie, uneducated as to the outside worlds laws and rules and scared by fear
of the unknown, lets herself fall right into Marys trap, being convinced into submission by
Marys slapped-together depiction of female prison with no family.
Any new discoveries? Maybe just a moment where I had to sit back and ponder children.
Their morals, their attitudes, their inability to love or sympathize when hurting others, etc. It

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makes me wonder if society didnt intervene and establish codes of right and wrong and how
we should/shouldnt act, would we grow up to be the same people as the demonic child?
Look over your character description and responses to sections #1 and #2, has anything
changed? Perhaps my perception of Mary has become a little clearershe is adult like in
some ways, namely, all of her negative qualities, and childlike in others, namely, her motives
and reasoning. Underneath it all, the disconnection between these two things is causing this
poisonous attitude. She wants to be an adult, wants to be seen as an adult, but her mind isnt
fully developed enough for her to be oneshe still uses childish tricks and reasoning.
4. What happened in this rehearsal? Megan and I read through the text, rarely breaking eye
contact with one another. I stared her in the face, memorizing every crevice and plane while i
listened to her reply to Mary. The second reading was funny how it evolvedwe were
reading the text absolutely emotionless to one another, and suddenly we found we were
repeating each other, like in a Meisner exercise. Each of us tossed around the others line for
a few minutes before moving to the next one.
How does the unpunctuated text effect your delivery? It forces you to listen to yourself, to the
other character, and whats on the page. Preconceived notions of the character, brought in
from the outside, can effect an honest reading of what is actually on the page. Furthermore, it
makes you listen to the little nuances included in the script by the author. The relationship is
already there on the page, and this exercise demonstrates how it can be heard if truly paid
attention to.
What words jump out at you in the unpunctuated text? Whats happened, everything,
suppose, whooooo, liar, nobody, knees

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What words do the characters share in the unpunctuated text? The characters mention I
know and I didnt often throughout, which truly demonstrates the power of knowledge
within the sceneknowledge of truth, of lies, of society, book/street smarts, and more.
What new discoveries have you made regarding your responses in sections #1 and #2? That,
in reality, the way that Mary and Rosalie speak is incredibly similar. In fact, you could
probably break up their lines differently in this way. I had a hard time distinguishing where
lines ended and what lines belonged to either girl.
What new discoveries did you make with this exploration? Perhaps Mary and Rosalie are
more similar that originally believed? Or that this demonstrates the way that children or girls
have been taught to address and speak to one anothermaybe therein lines the problem.
That, somewhere in their minds, this kind of speech to one another is justified.
Look at your responses to #1, #2, #3, and #4, has anything changed? Maybe Mary doesnt
think Rosalie is naive at all. Maybe, in truth, she knows Rosalie can see right through her
and thusly she begins to see her as a threat that needs squashingin this scene. Suddenly
then, the motives for this scene and the stakes become more urgent.
5. Who is in the room? Megan was.
What is his/her activity? She was sewing the head back onto her doll.
Who is coming to the door? I am.
What is bringing him/her to the door? I need my bracelet back.
What is their relationship? They are frenemies. Joelle was the one who originally ripped the
head off of Megans doll in a fit of anger from a previous fight. They still have not
reconciled. In fact, Joelle is here to demand her mothers bracelet backshe didnt tell her

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mother she was borrowing it for Megan and her mother needs it for the party tonight. Megan
intended to keep it out of spite, especially after the doll.
What happened during this exercise? I came in guns blazing, fresh off of my fight with
Megan. I usually tend to treat these Meisner exercises as tunnels: GOGOGOGOGO GET
THE ITEM GET IT GET IT GET ITeither I go in with a purpose and come out the other
side, or I fail and am stuck in the dark. As soon as I came in, I began searching among her
things for my bracelet with the mindset that I am allowed to search for my property. I was
glad to help spur Megan on, she was almost reluctant at the beginning but by the end we
were spitting fire at one another. She helped me find a focus as well.
What discoveries did you make about your character? I realized just how willing Mary is to
chance it all in order to reap the rewards. Shes so sure of her ability to talk her way out of
any repercussions that she is willing to risk it all, and this situation is as high stakes as it
seems. She will stop at nothing to win.
What blocking choices did you make to begin your scene based on this exercise? We realized
that entry into the scene instead of it starting together already was a better way to go. There
is a clear beginning, middle, and end to the script that is evident.
6. I really feel that this approach helped me tremendously. The first time that I used Meisner, at
APA, I found him ridiculous, repetitive, and infuriating. Now, after understanding him and
focusing on him a little betterand analyzing him from the perspective of someone who has
been in a few more rolesI have a newfound respect for him. His non-selfish approach to
the role and focus on the other character and the written text really assisted me with this role,
and with other roles in general. I didnt realize it, but I was already applying some of his

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techniques in Julius Caesar when we revisited him.
Not to mention, the chapter on him in the book combined with my knowledge of him as a
person really shaped my new feelings on him. Stanislavsky is wonderful and a great basis for
acting, but his trying to approach the character how we would if we were themput me too
much into the character. Meisners approach of taking on the spirit of the text and reacting to
the other person really helps the character take on my bodys form as opposed to me trying to
take on a characters form. Meisners emphasis on honest and truthfulness is a breathe of
fresh air and something I truly believe I could improve upon. Sometimes my characters are
too forced, and I know it. Meisner helps me breathe in the corset of acting a little more, I
think.