I LIVE I
Authentic Me
Meisner Technique workshop
with Nita Arpiainen
March 10 - 11, 2025
Helsinki, Finland
Welcome to an empowering two evening Meisner Technique workshop, where you will open to and activate your most important skills for both acting as well as relating with others: listening, truthful presence and connection to you feelings and impulses.
This workshop helps you to access and express your truthful feelings based on your partners behaviour, through exploration of the famous 'Repetition Exercise'. The workshop suits beginners and all levels of Meisner students, actor students and professional actors, as well as anyone wanting to learn to connect better with their authentic self, their truthful emotional impulses and others.
For more advanced practitioners we will move towards 'advanced repetition', emotional preparation and working with text if they feel called to it.
Monday 16:00 - 21:00
Tuesday 16:00 - 21:00
About The Event
Ever since early childhood and throughout our lives we've learnt to close ourselves from our natural impulses, senses and emotions. This workshop is held in a very safe space and will help you to dive back into your true self, especially into your emotional life and its empowering spectrum, through Meisner technique alongside with other warm-ups and exercises. In a variety of group and partner exercises we will re-learn to express ourselves with freedom and flow, to listen to another and to be present.
The capacity for emotional intelligence and presence is a highly valued skill in todays world, not only in acting platforms but in any types of relationships and interactions, whether in business or personal.
TO WHOM THIS WORKSHOP IS FOR?
For actors and non-actors. Anyone wanting to understand and tap into their rich and empowering emotional life and the authentic human connections. For anyone wanting to learn to be fully present and trust themselves deeper in any situation. For anyone wanting to create more freedom, courage and awareness in themselves. For anyone wanting to learn about the Meisner Technique or the basics of truthful acting. Also great for directors, writers, artists and creatives.
WHAT DO YOU GET
Through this workshop you will:
• learn to express and be yourself more freely and bravely
• create more freedom to be present and live in the moment
• strengthen your self-awareness, -confidence and connection to your intuition
• strengthen your capacity to really listen and connect with another
• deepen your emotional expression and understanding
• develop your communication and relationship skills
• find healthy and organic ways to let go of fear and feel more relaxed and confident in any types of performances
• enhance your capacity to drop down masks and live in your authenticity
• strengthen your sensitivity and awareness of the other person's emotional life and expression
• get many useful tools to finding authentic emotional expression to any performing platform
• as a director get highly applicable tools and approches on how to gently help actors connect to their truthful emotional life
INFO
• Price: 215€ incl. VAT
• Time: 10.-11.3.2025 / Monday & Tuesday16:00 - 21:00
• Location: Actors Academy Studio 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).
• No previous experience needed, the course is open to anyone.
• All rights to changes reserved.
• You can find the event on Facebook in this link here.
ABOUT NITA ARPIAINEN
Nita Arpiainen is an acting coach, actor and a holistic coach and the founder of Actors Academy Finland. In her previous careers she has been a professional snowboarder and also worked as a TV presenter and producer. Nita's deep passion and curiosity for acting, learning and personal growth is the underlying motivation for AAF to come alive. The vision for AAF was formed while Nita attended numerous acting schools and workshops in London at the Actors Studio, Giles Forman Acting Studio, City Academy and the Actors Temple to name a few, ultimately falling profoundly in love with the Meisner Technique, and it making a powerful and lasting impact on the way she viewed not just acting, but life and relationships as well. Her first studies and the journey into the world of the wonderful and forever-inspiring world of Meisner Technique started in 2015, and she has been lucky to have worked and learned with many great international teachers along the years.
TESTIMONIALS
"Nita's holistic way of coaching is absolutely inspiring! Nita doesn't let you go easy but the way she pushes one to go beyond one's comfort zone is very gentle and also insightful. Nita makes everyone feel welcome and accepted just as they are. Also the way Nita encourages everyone to stick together and encourage one another within the group, is a beautiful thing."- Jonna
"The experience was fenomenal. It was true and unique existing in a special moment and people. The workshop was very beneficial for me because I got a chance to connect again with my inner soul. I truly cherish this experience and am very thankful for it. Nita was absolutely fantastic. A true soul and an artist with genuine desire to share, help and guide with love and compassion. The best aspects in the workshop were the unique and honest work and safe surroundings to be and work in. I will and already have recommended this workshop to my colleagues." - Timo-Pekka Luoma
"This single Meisner workshop was one of the most emotional and powerful things that has ever happened to me. It has been a month, I still think about the experience, and it makes me smile. The connections between people - I never knew that this is even possible and I am sincerely happy to know now that it is, that this magical world exists. I feel different now, I smile a lot more, I am a lot more curious about people and I definitely do want to explore more. Thank you for all of this!"
- Paul
"Something really shifted for me during this workshop. It was shocking to see how often we cover our real feelings with a smile, for example, and oh so liberating to explore some of the deeper emotions. I feel like I finally have the capability and “permission” to express myself more freely and I’m taking that with me to where appropriate. I find Nita’s ability to create and hold space for people to open up and get vulnerable so quickly really something! And she’ll push you past your comfort zone, I like that! Five out of five stars from me. If anything, I’d like the workshop days to be longer."
- Aivar
"Nita - your course shook me to the core in the best possible way. I never knew that this sort of connection between people is even possible and you showed me (or rather you shoved me into) this magical world. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I will be forever thankful for this."
- Anti
"Stepping into being fully yourself with your guidance was really amazing to feel. These exercises where we were fully present, being with another in a truthful honest connection, as well as experiencing how it feels to be in front of a crowd, being observed - was a fantastic journey. To also feel the other participants so truthfully was really touching. Your guided meditation at the end felt breathtaking. It touched me and opened my heart and feelings. The workshop has already helped me in my life in many ways. Being my truthful self has immediately brought much deeper and authentic friendships for me even in the business world. Nita you are full of love and purpose in your work. You activate people in living truly form their hearts and I thank you so much for this. The workshop changed a lot in my life, and because of you I can be more of me than ever before."
- Hansi
"I was shaken in the best way possible by Nita’s workshop. I learned so much about myself as a performer and it opened for me an entirely different way to approach the craft of acting. Even with a group of persons that I had never met before I felt safe, connected, and free to explore my capabilities as an actor. I would so recommend this workshop to anyone and everyone! Even if you are not an actor, it is a way to tap back into the humanness of the self. FIVE STARRRRZZZZ!"
- Marja
"Thank you very much for the workshop. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nita was a very patient, compassionate coach. The workshop was intensive and challenged everyone to be brave and open to the unknown depth and dynamics of our rich inner life. Nita made sure that we felt safe and supported in doing so. What I find most useful and important in the Meisner training is its focus on the other. By being utterly present with the other, I can be free to feel the emotions that arise from the circumstances, authentic feelings, not manufactured in my head. I think this sense of inner liberation in authentic human connection is something anyone can benefit from, not just actors. I can only wish that the course like this would be available more often and for longer periods."
- Yuko
"I absolutely loved it. It changed me forever and I can’t wait to have more of it. I so needed to go to those places within me and feel liberated and I am literally so hungry to learn more and make use of those tools in my career. Nita is a wonderful soul and guide and I’m so grateful to have met her. Thank you thank you thank you!”
- Mayela
"Nita you are a pure diamond in this Universe. Thank you so much!
I was scared when I entered the studio on Friday, about to spend two days with total strangers and the to be honest the idea to reveal the inner me to those fellow students felt scary as fuck. But as terrifying as it was - now I just want to learn and explore more. I am so grateful for the whole workshop. I feel free, I feel brave and weightless. I feel so present and I feel more ready for the whole life than in ages - so it was magnificent. So whether you’re interested in acting, or just exploring what’s inside, digging deeper or interested in human behaviour, I highly recommend it. Oh and what comes to Actors Academy Finland and Nita - solid five stars! So yeah, go for it people, it’s totally going to be worth it.”
- Tintti
"This two day Meisner technique workshop with Nita was way more eye opening- or I should say heart opening than what I had thought it would be. I only have a glimpse of the repetition method now but I already feel like I opened up as an actress - and more - also as a person. After the first day I wrote down things I realized about authentic acting through this method and after the second day I wrote about three pages about everything I learnt about my feelings and my relationships through this method. Now I want to do more Meisner to become a better actress. Thank you for the course Nita!"
- Iiris
"Thank you Nita for the course. It's wonderful how it just dropped on my path and was something that I had longed for and needed, even though I wasn't yet aware of that. These few nights woke something in me that I didn't know existed. Thank you, thanks for your authenticity and for all the wonderfulness these evenings were. I learned a lot.”
- Sara
See more testimonials about Nita here.
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
ACTORS RETREAT IN IBIZA
Ibiza Retreat in January? Come and join an unforgettable holistic retreat in Ibiza with our founder Nita Arpiainen. This praised Authentic Me Ibiza Retreat will be the third of its kind in this beautiful and magical island. Are you ready for deep and inspiring workshops, the Meisner technique, a group of like-minded people, yoga and breathtaking hikes and much more? Click here for more info.