Respect for Acting

by Hagen, Uta; Frankel, Haskel

• ISBN13: 9780025473904
• ISBN10: 0025473905
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1973-09-15
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

Respect for Acting "This fascinating and detailed book about acting is Miss Hagen's credo, the accumulated wisdom of her years spent in intimate communion with her art. It is at once the voicing of her exacting standards for herself and those she [taught], and an explanation of the means to the end." --Publishers Weekly "Hagen adds to the large corpus of titles on acting with vivid dicta drawn from experience, skill, and a sense of personal and professional worth. Her principal asset in this treatment is her truly significant imagination. Her 'object exercises' display a wealth of detail with which to stimulate the student preparing a scene for presentation." --Library Journal "Uta Hagen's Respect for Acting . . . is a relatively small book. But within it, Miss Hagen tells the young actor about as much as can be conveyed in print of his craft." --Los Angeles Times "There are almost no American actors uninfluenced by Uta Hagen." --Fritz Weaver "This is a textbook for aspiring actors, but working thespians can profit much by it. Anyone with just a casual interest in the theater should also enjoy its behind-the-scenes flavor." --King Features Syndicate

Author Biography

UTA HAGEN was born in Germany in 1919 and made her Broadway debut in 1938 as Nina in the Lunt-Fontanne production of The Sea Gull. Among some of the twenty or more Broadway productions in which she has starred are: Othello, Key Largo, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Country Girl, Saint Joan, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Recently she starred in the Twentieth-Century Fox film The Other. Even during her playing engagements she has never stopped teaching at the HB Studio. Geraldine Page, Fritz Weaver, Jason Robards, Jack Lemmon, Steve McQueen are only a few of the many fine actors she has helped to send on their way. She has also performed and directed at the HB Playwright's Foundation in numerous productions. Miss Hagen has been ably assisted in the writing of this book by Haskel Frankel, drama critic of The National Observer.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: The Actor.

Introduction.

1. Concept.

2. Identity.

3. Substitution.

4. Emotional Memory.

5. Sense Memory.

6. The Five Senses.

7. Thinking.

8. Walking and Talking.

9. Improvisation.

10. Reality.

PART TWO: The Object Exercises.

Introduction.

11. The Basic Object Exercise.

12. Three Entrances.

13. Immediacy.

14. The Forth Wall.

15. Endowment.

16. Talking to Yourself.

17. Outdoors.

18. Conditioning Forces.

19. History.

20. Character Action.

PART THREE: The Play and the Role.

Introduction.

21. First Contact with The Play.

22. The Character.

23. Circumstances.

24. Relationship.

25. The Objective.

26. The Obstacle.

27. The Action.

28. The Rehearsal.

29. Practical Problems.

30. Communication.

31. Style.

Epilogue.

Index.