The Meisner Act 4 Art Foundation was founded in December 2014. It is the only studio in Poland specialised in the Sanford Meisner technique. It organizes artistic and educational activities that are meant to promote the famous cofounder of the legendary Group Theatre (together with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler), an actor and teacher in Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York. The website of the foundation states that:
We teach actors to stay in contact with each other, to be authentic and emotionally open. One of the most basic rules in the Meisner technique is deeply listening to one's partner and an instinctive response to one's partner's words and doings.
An effect of such an approach to acting is Cantata for Four Wings presented by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute in Warsaw. The performance is a black-and-white adaptation of Robert Brutter’s tragicomedy with comic scenography. It is the story of an ordinary girl in an extraordinarily tough situation. She has just lost her family and job and feels lonely and helpless, and the only solution seems for her to commit suicide. The protagonist is familiar to viewers because, as Łukasz Lewandowski notes, we all have to face pain at some point of our lives. The director stated:
Cantata for Four Wings is an attempt to describe the moment that we all experience in a lifetime but that we are not able to talk about. Each of us has experienced grief and despair or is going to. Reasons may vary, ways of handling are as complicated as painful. Despair is like the nethermost depths – it scares us but sometimes can lure us in and not let us go. Many of us look then for help in somebody or something but facing this experience we are truly lonely and helpless. Who or what may help us? This is what we want to talk about.
The premiere of the play took place on 2nd April 2016 in the Theatre Institute in Warsaw.
In the performance we saw: Sylwia Kaczmarek, Judy Turan and Marcin Zarzeczny.
Source: press materials, laboratoriummeisnera.pl, compiled by Anna Legierska, March 2016, translated by Antoni Wiśniewski, April 2016