Uta_Hagen

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Uta Hagen 1919 - 2004

Uta Hagen Acting Class on DVD (DVD Notes) "Theatre should contribute to the spiritual life of a nation" "There should not be the tiniest thing around you which you have failed to make personal or relate to yourself if you want to soar into an exciting new life. " Notes: The Acting Craft 1. Suspen Suspensio sion n of Disbel Disbelief ief 2. Teach studen studentt 2-3 small small things things at a time time so you don’t don’t overwhel overwhelm m them. 3. When you don’t don’t realiz realize e someone’s someone’s acting acting then then they’re they’re doing itit right 4. Begin Begin w/se w/self lf eval evaluat uation ion.. Your Your 3rd eye is watching. 5. Use a psycholo psychological gical substitute substitute as a tool. tool. 6. Emoti Emotion on takes takes us, us, we don’ don’tt take take it. 7. Allow Allow nothi nothingn ngness ess to breat breathe, he, to exist exist 8. Observer Observer your environme environment. nt. People People don’t just just stand around around and do nothing, the they y look, scratch, scratch, look at their watch to check the time. 9. Don’t Don’t avoid comedi comedic c snips in in times of of drama, drama, these things things happen. happen. Notes: Doing 1. People People always have a destinatio destination, n, when moving moving & if someone look looks s uncomfortab uncomfortable, le, they don’t don’t have a sense of where they’re going. If you don’t know where your going or what you’re you’re doing, you get very tense. If you DO know where you’re you’re going, you become relaxed and free. People are always DOING something something (ie. adjusting their belt.) belt.) Where is the body? Where is your reality? Is it staged? 3 Steps: What was I just doing? What am I doig now? What do I want? …and go for it. Start w/rehearsal w/rehearsal of doings, of actions People don’t pace, walking walking back and forth forth is unnatural. 2. We have have very very little little experi experience ence watchi watching ng ourselve ourselves. s. 3. We are FULL FULL human beings, beings, there there are parts parts of us we don't like. like. No cliches, cliches, portray portray the the full human being. 4. If 2 charact characters ers in the the scene scene want the same same thing thing then itit will will be flat. flat. What is is the main main conflic conflictt in the scene? what is the subtext? Notes: Behavior 1. Let things things go in a direction direction so people people can see for themselve themselves s how wrong they they are. 2. Bored/stragler on stage staring at his hands, not paying attention stands out like a sore thumnb. 3. You MUST immerse yourself into the character, fully. fully. You must become the character character so while while you are playing the role there is no division between you and the character. There is only the character 4. Start Start w/your w/your body, not thought thought.. Where there there is action, action, there there is behavior. behavior. 5. Practice Practice specifi specific c behavior, behavior, character character behavio behaviorr and natural natural behavior behavior 6. Be part of your surroundi surroundings, ngs, look around, around, notice notice people, watch, watch, cell cell phone, you hear noises. noises. 7. React to to what you see and hear. hear. What is is in the script script cannot be seen seen or heard. These These are up to the actor to react to naturally

Uta Hagen (Notes by Peter Walters)

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Notes: 1. When an activity (ie. folding pants) becomes more important than the emotion/subject matter, you've lost the scene. 2. Substitution defines behavior. In substitution, you hold the relationship you have w/the person, then transfer that inner feeling/emotion onto someone else. You don't directly see that person as the person you've imagined. 3. Physical confrontation should be rehearsed so it doesn't look rehearsed. When people look to oout of control the viewer becomes aware of "acting" 4. Timing - Don't deliver on tempo, receive before you send back. The 6 Steps 1. Who am I? Who is the CHARACTER? ◦ What is my present state of being? ◦ How do I perceive myself? ◦ What am I wearing? 2. What are the Circumstances? Where am I? ◦ What time is it? (The year, the season, the day? At what time does my selected life begin?) ◦ Where am I? (What city, neighborhood, building, and room? Or what landscape?) ◦ What surrounds me? (The immediate landscape? The weather? The condition of the place and the nature of the objects in it?) ◦ Where am I coming from? What just happened? ◦ What are the immediate circumstances? (What has just happened, is happening? What do I expect or plan to happen next and later on?) 3. What are my RELATIONSHIPS? ◦ How do I stand in relationship to the circumstaances, the place, the objects, and the other people related to my circumstances? ◦ Who am I with and how do I feel about him/her? 4. What do I want? What's my OBJECTIVE? ◦ What is my main objective? My immediate need or objective?j ◦ What do I want from this person? 5. What is my OBSTACLE? ◦ What is in the way of what I want? How do I overcome it? 6. What do I have to do to get what I want? ◦ How can I achieve my objective/ What's my behavior? What are my actions? 7. What are the STAKES? ◦ How bad do I want it? How much will I risk to get it? Will I risk my life or not even a dollar?

Uta Hagen Exercises Exercise >>> Destination 2-3 minutes exercise should be 1-2 hour rehearsal Exercise >>> Telephone conversation Test how your attention goes out to the 4th side. 4th side - what the actors are looking at. Markers piked out, it's freeing to look at something. The audience can disappear Exercise >>> Changes of self People are capable of behaving in very different ways. When am I arrogant, stupid, funny, angry, smitten, irritable? You don't pretend to be someone else, you find the character persona within you.


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Exercise >>> Immediacy - Looking for lost item 1. The hunting, the expectation of possibly finding it somewhere. 2. Dealing with the problems of anticipation while searching for something lost or mislaid. Exercise >>> Imagine inner item w/a subconscious activity ie. you button your jacket while thinking about groceries and in your mind your thinking about/visualizing the grocery store - the shelves. Exercise >>> Conditioning Forces - Endowment Recreating physical sensations. An endowed reality (ie. Hot iron w/steam, dangerous, distracint. Use fake steam, A dull knife, hot water/pot) 1. Endow a physical sensation. Body is wet or clothes are all wet 2. Sensation of having to pee 3. Drunkenness - Key is to isolate a part of the body that is out of control and you struggle against that w/your arms or your head. You don't stumble out of control your body parts struggle to stay in control because things give out. Your knees give yout, your head flops over. You struggle to over come it. When sitting, it's the head, elbow and hands that struggle. The eyes try and focus on an object, the head and hands struggle to go there w/too much weight. It's an attempt at normalcy. 4. Conditions - wet, looking, crawling, night-time or very low light, hard to walk, walk in sand, injury. Exercise >>> Waiting The ultimate test. Fidgets, looking around, meandering, inner objects, lack of activity to fiddle w/objects. Exercise >>> Three Entrances Preparation and its influence on the entrance. Exercise >>> The 4th Wall The guarantee of privacy while using, not ignoring, the visual area of the audience. Exercise >>> Talking to yourself • When we talk to ourselves we usually are unaware of it and we are also usually preoccupied w/an activity • For every monologue ask yourself, what wouldI do here if I wasn't talking? What behavior? • Try acting a scene out without the dialog. • Don't stick to a mask. What's going on underneath? People never say what they mean. Don't play the part (mask) too well. Show what's underneath the surface. • We talk to ourselves to regain control. • Don't demand immediate horror, let discovery happen • We laugh when we recognize ourselves • When the actor tries to be funny or thinks they're funny, then they stop being funny • Don't discuss a scene too much


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Exercise >>> Talking to an audience - Inner Monologue • Eyes locked to targets above audience • Find your place, grounding • Interaction between 2 people who are smitten, they steal glances. • Actor who is so pent up that it's hard for them to be grounded is a born actor and needs to be on stage all the time. Emotional trigger transferrence Action "The doing" Inner Life Images Exercise >>> Simple task in historical costume and setting 1. The costume can pull out a character. A hat, shirt 2. Actions will be because of reasons. (ie. Victorians wore corsets and thus sat up straight) 3. Fashion and social morals are the only things that have changed in humans 4. Does the actor love the character 5. Staggar conditions exercise Notes: 1. Do you really understand the scene? 2. When you send the action how does one receive? Don't overpractice the receiving. 3. See what you see and react to it. Hear what you hear and react to it. Exercise >>> Outdoors 1. Your relationship to space and nature 2. Finding forward-moving occupation without the help of furniture and props.


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Uta Hagen "The Art of Acting" (Book Notes) 1. Some of the greatest actors worked relentlessly on the background of the character. Being surrounded by their world, by their people. Investing themselves so heavily that through their history they become them. 2. Representational Acting - Bernhardt, Flamboyant, external, formalistic actor, comedic, Formalized, external, tends to follow fashion. Based on an objective result, which he then carefully watches as he executes it. 3. Presentational Acting - Duse, A human being, emotionally moving. Trusts that a form will result from identification with the character and the discovery of his characters actions, and works on stage for a moment to moment subjective experience. Internal acting rejects fashion and can become as timeless as human experience itself. 4. It is essential that an actor work on voice, speech and body through dance, fencing, etc. 5. To rebel or revolt against the status quo is the very nature of an artist. Rebellion or revolt does not necessarily find its expression in violence. To portray things the way they are, to hold up a mirror to the society can also be a statement of rebellion. 6. The productions that you should strive for are the ones that express your point of view about the world in which you live; in which you could even revel your soul through art. 7. To maintain one's ideals in ignorance is easy; to maintain them with the full realization of the existing circumstances is not. To accept "the way it is" is the opportunistic way out or the way of the ostrich; to attempt to battle it takes knowledge and character. 8. By the very nature of our profession we seem to develop slothful rather than discipline habits. There is no excuse to fritter away the hours that belong to the actor and his true work with partying and fun and games. Every actor must demand total discipline of himself is he really means to be an actor. A very gifted actor may be surpassed and outrun by a lesser talent simply because e is lazy, buck passing, superficial- an actor settling for the easiest choices. 9. Another reason for the collapse is sloth and egomania. The theatre is a communal adventure. 10. Stanislavski - "Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art" 11. We continuously mouth our objections and our revolt against the status quo individually, but we feed the status quo collectively. If we realize our individual responsibilities to an art form, we must not only live up to it as individuals, but remember the collective form of this art, and that more than anything else it is one for all and all for one. 12. Search within your own life experience to bring forth a new human being on stage. 13. First, you must learn to know who you are. You must find your own sense of identity, enlarge this sense of self, and learn to see how that knowledge can be put to use in the characters you will portray on stage. 14. Look, observe the extraordinary things/events/behaviors in real, everyday life. 15. The inner image in our heads/thoughts and the outer image of the way we really look are drastically different. 16. The more I discover in myself, the more I realize that I have endless sources within myself to put to use in the illumination of endless characters in dramatic circumstances. 17. We, each of us change depending on who we are with and where we are. In each situation your very idiom changes, your self image changes and so our behavior also changes. 18. Previous circumstances and existing circumstances will bring about a different you - messy, hot, cold, elegant, awkward, in command. 19. We must learn to understand and accept the facets of ourselves which we don't wish to recognize - shyness, greed, envy, panic, lack of control, stupidity, etc. We must become self observant enough to connect them with the behavior that ensues. 20. If we get into a violent argument, we know how we felt but we rarely know how we behaved. 21. It's important for the audience to feel that you are unpredictable. Example of a cat. The art is that I can aim for the cat's spontaneity and execute it by design.


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22. Your own identity and self-knowledge are the main sources for any character you may play. 23. Having backgrounds in "middle America" we are shaped by a society which is ashamed of spontaneous emotion: "don't cry", "Don't laugh", etc. 24. We must overcome the notion that we must be regular - Be like one of us, don't put on airs, don't get so fancy. It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre. This insistence on conformity, on being like everyone else, often prevents us from potentially training something as practical as our speech. 25. To become aware of usually subconscious and intuitive, spontaneous behavior in order to make use of it for creating a character will NOT make you self-consciously affected or unreal. Nor will it block intuitive or spontaneous behavior in our daily experiences. 26. If you are affected in your daily life, calculatingly self aware in your relations with others, you will undoubtedly be a bad actor, because your attention is narcissistic. 27. Instead of losing yourself, try finding yourself. One should reflect the desire to show off, that one should not wallow in one's own ego, one should not trade on personal tricks. Instead, one should become involved with the performance without concern for its outer form or personal sale. 28. We must make a transference, of finding the character within ourselves, through a continuing and overlapping series of substitutions from our own experiences and remembrances, through the use of imaginative extension of realities, and put them in the place of the fiction in the play. 29. Substitutions can be used in every moment to moment part where you need it. Only you can pull those out of your memory, of things you've experienced. No director can do that for you. Memories of relationships, friends, enemies, family, loves, kinships, photos, moments, experiences, dig into yourself and find it or go out and seek it. 30. You can use anything that helps with the feeling, the imagination, memory in order to fully place yourself into that time, that place and those people. You can use bits and parts and it seems like an expressionist painter of pieces of your inner you to create a character and experience. 31. When an actor has difficulty in finding a substitution for the content of a given scene as a whole, he can usually find the root of the problem in the fact that he's being too literal. Many actors take the outer event and the outer words at face value. For example, the character says, I hate you under circumstances where he is actually crying out for attention from someone he loves. But the actor works only for the hate. You must work towards the inner event as well. 32. Actors must search for the psychological springboard which will send them into the immediate events. They must hunt out the psychological objective of the scene, and for that they CAN find the substitution. 33. What you transfer is the original essence, NOT the original event to the scene. It's a springboard, an inspiration not a literal transference. 34. Transference is like scaffolding around a building, Once complete you shouldn't need it anymore. I have completed my substitutions by making them synonymous with the actor on stage, the object, the word, the event . I have used the past to make the present real. I am not playing in the past but NOW. I believe the NOW, I feel the NOW. Your substitutions are complete only when they have become synonymous with this actor, this play's events, these objects you are using. And if you forget your original source - fine! 35. Be wary of taking the substitution on stage and not letting go, and giving in to the current moment/people. Holding onto the original substitution can be bad and disconnect you from all that which is happening. 36. There is another kind of substitution that is more personal and private. Such intangibles are colors, textures, music, elements of nature - essences. This cannot be taught. 37. DO NOT SHARE your substitutions with anyone, ever. It will change the way they perceive you. 38. Be particular. Nothing should be general. If there's an ashtray, where did it come from? What is it made of. Why does it have a chip in it? Making everything particular will change the way in which you act towards it. Load everything with meaning. The walls, the couch, the photos. 39. Building up an emotional state works occasionally, but not nearly always. The only thing that works consistently is the use of an object tied to an emotional event - a release object.


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40. Talk about a moment you've had. When talking think about the things around you from that moment, the sky, a necklace, a smell. The consequences are endless. You will learn to build a storehouse of little trigger objects. 41. When you claim that an emotion or a recalled object is wearing out for you by repetition that it has lost freshness, you are failing technically because of a number of possible reasons: 42. The recall of physical sensations. 43. The sensation occurs most fully at the moment when we are occupied with the attempt to overcome it, not when we wait for it while trying only to imagine and remember it. 44. A correctly functioning actor should, ideally, be the healthiest, least neurotic creature on earth, since he is putting his emotional and sensory life to use by expressing it for an artistic purpose. 45. As a nation we have become so desensitized that encounter groups, an essential part of whose programs seems to be learning to touch each other, have sprung up all over the country. The daily hue and cry about an inability of human beings to communicate with each other means that not only do we not reach out to touch, but that we do not contact each other visually or editorially. Our perceptions are dulled. Full human contact employs all the senses, the more intense they are, the more highly they are developed the more available is the potential of the actor and his talent. As I have said before, this area of high sensitivity is where true talent lies and what we make of this sensitivity determines whether or not we can call ourselves artists. 46. A great danger is to take the 5 senses for granted. Most people do. Once you become aware that the sources which move in on you when you truly touch, taste, smell, see and hear are endless, you must also realize that self-involvement deadens the senses, and vanity slaughters them until you end up playing alone - and meaninglessly. 47. The visual contact we make with another human being or with something in nature can act on us like a stroke of lightning if we really open ourselves up to it. If you really see a delicate white birch or a giant redwood tree you might weep. If you really look at a wave breaking on the shore with the sunlight shining through its crest and its foam, or a black cloud overtaking a little puffy white one, your heart may begin to pound. 48. You must listen for the intent of the words and not each individual word. 49. You may hear only 3/4 of words being said. You will be weighing what you hear against what you already know or think you know and your attention will often pursue your own paths, formulating the ideas in your own way. You may hear the same thing that was said previously within a new framework of understanding. 50. We listen with our eyes. Seeing is also balanced against expectations, immediate needs, and your past knowledge of the object. 51. We don' stare at people over-intently while talking to them because it would take us away from the inner objects that we are talking about. 52. Because of the enormous importance of the five sense, there should be continuous work on heightening and sharpening them. Unclutter yourselves. Open yourselves up to your fullest capacity - to give meaning to what you RECEIVE when you see, hear, taste, smell and touch. 53. Thought moves with such lightning rapidity that any attempt to slow it down is inaccurate and so must bring about false behavior. 54. Thinking involves behavior that is subconscious with the conscious mind thinking about objects. I never ask, "What were you thinking?" Instead, I ask, "What were your inner objects?" so that you will get out of the habit of even verbally analyzing your thought process. 55. Destructive distractions should be dumped. (A desire for success can move in on you. Who's out front? An agent? Someone you love? A critic? A rival? Vanity!) The fight against these intrusions on true thought can be conquered only by strengthening and enlarging the circle of inner objects belonging to the play, and by using them to produce the character's thinking in a true life style. 56. The larger your selection of inner objects within these areas, the more food you will have for forward-moving thought and action. You cannot dictate the order of your thoughts or attempt to pigeonhole them in compartments. You must keep them fluid for your character's needs. 57. If one gets up, what is the reason?


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58. The reason for walking is destination. The movement you create must come from carefully selected action which allows for the organic development of the character and the primary action of the scene. 59. Each movement of wandering has destination. Inner objects will drive us from one thing to another. And those objects are connected with what or who is going on in the scene. 60. The objects should be selected and dealt with to reveal something new about the character or the circumstances or both. The seemingly illogical objects you have contacted in a strange order must be substantiated by the logic of the play. 61. Wardrobe will substantially change the way you move, think, feel and behave. Correct clothing is vital. 62. Physical actions are the necessary balance for verbal actions. Ideally, the audience should be unable to differentiate whether he walks when he is talking or talks when he is walking! 63. 4 Emotional Memory 1. You are stopping to demand that you feel because you have not made your object synonymous with the one on stage. 2. You are anticipating how the emotion should manifest itself. 3. You have dwelt on the emotion for its own sake, rather than for furthering your stage action. 4. You are weighing the degree of intensity of previous use. 5. You are fearful that the emotion will elude you


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Uta Hagen "A Challenge for the Actor" (Book Notes) Practice standard American speech, use it in real life. This will increase your appetite for words and expand your vocabulary Read aloud 1/2 hour every day - sight reading Novels w/fine language Emerson & Thoreau Shaws plays Chekov, Ibsen, Shaw, Moliere, George Bernard Shaw Acting Styles Formalism - Artist predetermines their actions Realism/Presentational - Uses psyche for identification, moment to moment, subjective, Duse - the conscious use of subconscious promptings. Duse - The conscious use of subconscious promptings A selection of truthful actions Maintain such spontaneity "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom "It must be noted that it is often the colleague or direct disciple of a new thinker who gets stuck in literal interpretations of the work, tending to freeze the new ideas and language into an inflexible, static condition." … "(learning from the greats) does not lead to cold, pedantic answers or inflexible, dogmatic hypotheses. I always guard against clinical, psychiatric analyses. They deaden the creative process? " 1. Naturalistic acting is often confused with realistic acting. Reality is theatrical. There is nothing larger than life. 2. Realism entails a search for selected behavior pertinent to the character's needs within the prescribed circumstances of the dramatist. We must take from life. Naturalism is the antithesis of art. 3. Insight into human motivations. 4. The intersection of psychology and behavior. The Self 1. If I want to lose myself in a role, I must find myself in the role. 2. The basic components of the characters we will play are somewhere within ourselves. 3. We are all capable of different feelings, even if we think we aren't 4. Our self changes depending on who we're talking to, situations, clothes we wear 5. You change your sense of self a hundred times a day as you are influenced by circumstances, your relationship to others, the nature of the event and your clothing. 6. Train your self observation so that you can develop a warehouse of personas 7. In all forms of spontaneous role-playing, your own being is always at the center of it. You are revealing the myriad of facets within you. 8. Observations are useful, ONLY when it helps when it enlightens you about yourself. 9. When we are inspired but a great artist, we must try to inherit the concept of the work rather than the outer shape. Transference 1. If I were… (characters name) 2. You want to feel as if you're wearing the underpants of the character


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3. Tap into your own life experiences 4. Run through the backstory and place the characters name with "I" 5. Begin to make transferences from your own experiences to those in the play until they become synonymous with them. 6. Start to ask yourself questions like "where was I born? And answer. 7. Take each moment by moment and place a personal event or person to each one 8. Particularization - make each event, person and place down to the smallest physical object as particular as possible, exploring these things in detail to discover in which way they are relevant to the character. 9. Nothing should be left general or taken for granted. Everything must be specific. 10. Examine all objects you will interact with in detail, down to exact specifics. 11. These personal finds are simply possibilities or considerations. Don't be inflexible. Be open to other actors/director's suggestions and allow them to develop with others. 12. You can construct elements of your past with friends or family members. Improv parts of your past.


Uta_Hagen

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