A review by orestesfasting
Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.75
This feels a bit like when I watched the Godfather years after everyone else and had a real epiphany and everybody else was like “your Godfather epiphany? Groundbreaking”. But it’s similar - a book which has absolutely changed my understanding of performing, of texts, of method, which literally everybody says will do that to you.
Something which I haven’t heard discussed enough in current conversations around method, though, is in all the discussions of bad method acting (Leto, Ledger, DDL Hamlet) there is never a discussion of Hagen specifically warning against this, at least in the mainstream, and discussing safety in performance.
The drawback here is that whilst one must always believe one’s world, there is not a huge amount of allowance for different styles of performance, particularly the stylised. Maybe Hagen would argue that it comes from the same place of belief - and of course it must - but those unique challenges are not covered at all in a world of emotional substitutions etc. It’s work-outable but would be very interesting to hear Hagen’s take. An utter master of the form.
Something which I haven’t heard discussed enough in current conversations around method, though, is in all the discussions of bad method acting (Leto, Ledger, DDL Hamlet) there is never a discussion of Hagen specifically warning against this, at least in the mainstream, and discussing safety in performance.
The drawback here is that whilst one must always believe one’s world, there is not a huge amount of allowance for different styles of performance, particularly the stylised. Maybe Hagen would argue that it comes from the same place of belief - and of course it must - but those unique challenges are not covered at all in a world of emotional substitutions etc. It’s work-outable but would be very interesting to hear Hagen’s take. An utter master of the form.