''Respect for Acting'' by actress and teacher

Uta Hagen Uta Thyra Hagen (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004) was a German-American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' by Edward Albee, who called her "a p ...

(Wiley Publishing, 1973) is a

textbook A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textboo ...

for use in

acting Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode. Acting involves a broad r ...

classes. Hagen's instructions and examples guide the user through practical problems such as: "How do I talk to the audience?" and "How do I stay fresh in a long run?". She advocates the actor's use of

substitution Substitution may refer to: Arts and media *Chord substitution, in music, swapping one chord for a related one within a chord progression * Substitution (poetry), a variation in poetic scansion * "Substitution" (song), a 2009 song by Silversun Pi ...

in informing and shaping the actions of the character the actor is playing. Hagen later said that she "disassociated" herself from ''Respect for Acting''. In a follow-up book, ''Challenge for the Actor'' (1991), she renamed "substitution" as "transference". Although Hagen wrote that the actor should "identify" the character they play with feelings and circumstances from their (the actor's) own life, she also makes it clear that "Thoughts and feelings are suspended in a vacuum unless they instigate and feed the selected actions, and it is the characters actions which reveals the true 'you'," as the character in the play.

Critics Review

"''Respect for Acting'' is a simple, lucid and sympathetic statement of actors' problems in the theatre and basic tenets for their training wrought from the personal experience of a fine actress and teacher of acting." —

Harold Clurman Harold Edgar Clurman (September 18, 1901 – September 9, 1980) was an American theatre director and drama critic. In 2003, he was named one of the most influential figures in U.S. theater by PBS.

, Theatre critic "Uta Hagen's ''Respect for Acting'' is not only pitched on a high artistic level but it is full of homely, practical information by a superb craftswoman. An illuminating discussion of the standards and techniques of enlightened stage acting." —

Brooks Atkinson Justin Brooks Atkinson (November 28, 1894 – January 14, 1984) was an American theatre critic. He worked for ''The New York Times'' from 1922 to 1960. In his obituary, the ''Times'' called him "the theater's most influential reviewer of his ...

, Theatre critic

References

Non-fiction books about theatre Non-fiction books about acting {{theat-book-stub