Brazilian model Luma Grothe re-emerges in an expanded fashion story for Vogue Arabia’s November 2022 issue. Daniel Gonzalez Elizondo styled Grothe in images by Fernando Gomez [IG]. About 1/3 of these images were published in Vogue Arabia’s November issue in 2019: Luma Grothe By Fernando Gomez for Vogue Arabia November 2019. The remainder are new.

Visiting the aspiring actor’s IG, she is deeply involved in her studies — specifically working on learning the Meisner Technique. City Academy in London explains the Meisner Technique — practiced by Robert Duvall — and compares it with the more well-known Method Acting.

Method Acting focuses on using internal sources for developing a character, such as memory and emotional recollection; stories of the lengths many method actors go to in search of authentic performances have become the stuff of legend. By contrast, Meisner Technique focuses on external sources for inspiration, with actors reacting to their fellow performers and their behaviour. Much of Meisner Acting is based around improvisation, enabling an actor to be spontaneous and respond to live moments as well as rehearsed situations.

The New York based actor Sanford Meisner was originally part of a 1930’s group of actors including Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford, Hatold Clurman and Stella Adler, who were prominent in developing Method Acting in a theater company called Group Theatre. The approach was a collective one, and PBS does a deep dive about the intentions of the American actors in a political sense. It feels very right for these times.

Meisner broke away to align himself with the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York, developing new techniques based on more spontaneous interaction among the actors — a skill that must be learned. This is the technique that Luma Grothe is studying at the William Esper Studio in Manhattan, founded in 1965.

Here are her classmates on graduation day — which was not for Luma, who has another year to hone her acting skills.

The purest form of the Meisner technique is taught in Los Angeles at The Sanford Meisner Center.