Movement acting classes are essential for any serious actor and physical technique is important. Any serious actor looking to add an improved physical technique to their craft has this kind of training. Movement classes are important to serious actors. These classes help actors improve their physical performance technique. Physicality is an important part of the actor's craft and movement technique helps them become aware of their own openness and the expansiveness of their movement while acting.

The Meisner technique, which is about creating imagined circumstances that are truthful, benefits greatly from a movement class that enhances an actor's physical awareness. A movement class also helps the serious actor to physically remain loose and open, rather than becoming tense and closed off, which often happens. The reaction of tightening up is common and seriously affects the emotional freedom an Meisner actor should be working toward. Actors are emotional and physical beings and they must remain open to all that is going on around them, or they will lose their emotional authenticity.

It is rare to find a person who is totally in tune with their environment physically, who is open to everything around them, and can truly use their physical self to communicate authentically and well. Meisner actors are intent on reaching a state of full physical openness to their physical surroundings a technique of the movement class. We all develop physical habits as we relate to others, physical habits often borne out of our emotional state. Tense bodies result from anxiety, and our movement is affected. A movement habit, such as this, impacts the emotional depth of our interactions. This can be highly constricting for a Meisner trained actor as they try to develop their craft. Meisner actors benefit greatly from work in a movement class that helps to break their pre-existing movement habits.

Movement training cannot be defined in a way that is too limiting. Movement as it relates to the craft of acting is complex. Movement technique is about becoming more aware of the physical relationship to people around you and the surrounding space.

Another misconception is that physical movement for an actor relates only to the body. In fact, movement relates to the body, to facial expression, body language and perhaps most importantly an awareness of sound. The voice, the sounds in a space, the sounds of another actor as they move around a space, their voice as they speak to you, are all extremely important to the acting process. Working with the voice is also part of movement training, how it fills up a space, how other actor's hear it, also effects the quality of a play as it is performed.

A constricted physical condition affects the voice. A voice may perhaps be too expansive when an emotional reaction needs to be constricted. Learning these types of nuances in terms of movement and how it relates to the emotional preparation of Meisner acting, can set an actor apart as exceptional. Movement training for actors increases their emotional range and their ability to become more fully human and expressive. Developing an awareness of movement and its affect on the authenticity of a performance, makes for a more human actor and a great one.