I LIVE I
Advanced Meisner Technique
with Ashlie Walker
January 21, 2026
Helsinki, Finland
Thursday 16:30 - 21:30
Space is limited.
This workshop is an intensive and in-depth experience for trained actors.
A focused workshop for professional actors and experienced performers who are looking to work on the Meisner Technique at an advanced level, guided by Ashlie Walker (UK).
We will work with the Repetition Exercise, Independent Activity and Emotional Preparation, challenging our acting muscles and deepening our ability to connect to truthful impulses and emotions under imaginary circumstances.
Through practical exercises, we will explore presence, truthful responses and the ability to remain connected to yourself and your partner while allowing the work to unfold moment by moment. The workshop creates space to work with greater freedom, precision and responsiveness.
Participants may also bring a short piece of their own material, such as a short scene — to explore through the work where appropriate.
An artist discovers their genius the day they dare not to please.
–André Malraux
Who is this Workshop For?
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For professional actors, experienced performers, Actors Academy alumni and actors interested in applying for the Advanced Actor’s Lab.
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Previous Meisner experience is welcome, but not required. The workshop is intended for actors who already have a solid foundation in their craft and the capacity to be challenged, and are looking for a demanding training environment where they can work seriously without having to step back.
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For AA alumni, the workshop offers an opportunity to return to the Meisner work, continue developing the practice and work with the exercises at the level they are currently at.
WHAT DO YOU GAIN?
Through this workshop you will:
• strengthen your ability to connect with your partner.
• learn to express and be yourself more freely and bravely
• create more freedom to be present and live in the moment
• strengthen your self-confidence and connection to your intuition
• strengthen your capacity to really listen and connect with another
• deepen your emotional expression and understanding
• warm-up your acting muscles and revisit the core exercises of Meisner Technique
• broaden your ability to incorporate the Technique into your craft
• deepen the connection to your craft and be creatively challenged
INFO
• Price: 145€ including VAT 25.5%
• Class time: Thursday 21st January 2027, 16:30 - 21:30
• Location: Pursimiehenkatu 26H, Helsinki
• Place is limited and will be filled on 'first-come first-serve basis'.
• The booking for all events and workshops is binding. You can cancel 30 days prior the event and receive a 50% return of your payment or you can pass on your spot to another person without an extra fee.
• Teaching language is English (Please keep in mind that you do not need to have perfect English skills, and you do not need to worry about accent and pronunciation).
• All rights to changes reserved.
• You can find the event on Facebook in this link here.
Space is limited and spots fill quickly. Book early to secure yours.
ABOUT THE COACH
With a wealth of experience as a professional actress for 20 years and extensive training in Meisner Technique, Ashlie is a highly respected international teacher, tutor and personal coach. As a tutor, she especially focuses on unlocking the actors' instinct for truth, elevated by dramatic choices in performance. She guides actors to deepen their understanding of the craft, experience emotional freedom, build their actors' faith and, perhaps most importantly, to take risks. Alongside teaching, Ashlie has numerous directing credits and holds a Bsc (Hons) in Psychology and Diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy, both of which expand her capacity to work with and empower her actors on and off stage. As a personal transformation coach, Ashlie guides those living in fear, anxiety and stress to discover a life of freedom, purpose and joy. Ashlie's soul calling is to guide others back to love and into their light.
ABOUT MEISNER TECHNIQUE
The Meisner technique is an approach to acting which was developed by the American theatre practitioner Sanford Meisner. The focus of the Meisner approach is for the actor to "get out of their head", such that the actor is behaving instinctively to the surrounding environment. To this end, some exercises for the Meisner technique are rooted in repetition so that the words are deemed insignificant compared to the underlying emotion. In the Meisner technique, there is a greater focus on the other actor as opposed to one's internal thoughts or feelings associated to the character.
Meisner Training is an interdependent series of training exercises that build on one another. The more complex work supports a command of dramatic text. Students work on a series of progressively complex exercises to develop an ability to first improvise, then to access an emotional life, and finally to bring the spontaneity of improvisation and the richness of personal response to textual work. The techniques developed the behavioral strand of Stanislavski's. The technique is used to develop improvisation skills as well as "interpreting a script, and creating the specific physical characteristics of each character the actor played”.
Sanford Meisner said that his approach to training “is based on bringing the actor back to his emotional impulses and to acting that is firmly rooted in the instinctive. It is based on the fact that all good acting comes from the heart, as it were, and that there’s no mentality to it.”
Learn to live in the moment as an actor, and let go of any idea of result. Learn what it means to really “do” and to respond truthfully to a given moment based on what you get from your partner. Through improvisation, emotional truth and personal response learn to resonate authenticity within a given circumstance. Only in this way will you begin to understand the definition of real acting, which is “to live truthfully under the imaginary circumstances”.
“If you want to reach every person in the audience, it's not about being bigger, it's about going deeper.”
- Sanford Meisner
MEISNER WORKSHOP IN NOVEMBER
Guided by Ashlie Walker (UK), whether you’re returning to Meisner training or encountering it for the first time, this workshop provides a focused and supportive space to rediscover authentic emotional connection and freedom in your work. A space that encourages you to listen deeply, respond truthfully, and rediscover the joy of spontaneous play. Click here for more info.
ADVANCED TRAINING IN HELSINKI
Advanced Actor’s Lab — a Meisner Technique based, international actor training designed for trained professionals and Actors Academy One Year Training alumni, who are ready to challenge themselves and take their craft and careers to the next level. Click here for more info.