Movement acting classes are essential for any serious actor and physical technique is important. Serious actors looking to improve their physical technique find movement acting classes very important to the process. Movement classes are important to serious actors. These classes help actors improve their physical performance technique. Actors are physical beings, whose movement technique, and sense of physical space need to be expanded, softened and heightened if they are to perform well.

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. Often, actor's tense up while performing, thinking too hard about their lines and a movement class helps them soften and open up more to the performance. As a physical artist, a tight, closed off body and face affects the quality of the emotional responses of the actor. If the physical aspects of an actor's "self" are closing them off too much to what's going on around them, their emotional reactions will be compromised.

It is the rare actor that can finely tune themselves into the environment so deeply that they are physically totally present as they act and can react physically in an authentic way. Meisner actors are intent on reaching a state of full physical openness to their physical surroundings a technique of the movement class. Everyone has ingrained physical reactions that become habits, based on our default emotional states. If we are tense, anxious, so is our body and our movement. If that is a habit we carry with us, we will carry into most our interactions. Limiting for the Meisner trained actor, this constricted physicality can lower the emotional quality of the performance. Meisner actors benefit greatly from work in a movement class that helps to break their pre-existing movement habits.

It is important not to define the phrase movement training in too narrow a sense. Movement as it relates to the craft of acting is complex. Initially, movement technique should be about developing an awareness of how one moves physically as they relate to other people and the space around them.

Physical and movement aspects of acting do not just pertain 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.

If an actor's physical self is constricted the voice will be also. It could be that if the physical state is too open when a constricted voice is needed, movement awareness can help. Any actor that strives to be exceptional can benefit from learning all aspects of movement and how it relates to emotional preparedness in Meisner. 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.