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Respect For Acting
''Respect for Acting'' by actress and teacher Uta Hagen (Wiley Publishing, 1973) is a textbook for use in acting 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 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 Actin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 profoundly truthful actress." Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, her film opportunities dwindled and she focused her career on New York theatre. She later became a highly influential acting teacher at New York's Herbert Berghof Studio and authored best-selling acting texts, '' Respect for Acting'', with Haskel Frankel, and '' A Challenge for the Actor''. Her most substantial contributions to theatre pedagogy were a series of "object exercises" that built on the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and Yevgeny Vakhtangov. She was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981. She twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and received a Special Tony Award for Li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 textbooks and other books used in schools. Today, many textbooks are published in both print and digital formats. History The history of textbooks dates back to ancient civilizations. For example, Ancient Greeks wrote educational texts. The modern textbook has its roots in the mass production made possible by the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg himself may have printed editions of ''Ars Minor'', a schoolbook on Latin grammar by Aelius Donatus. Early textbooks were used by tutors and teachers (e.g. alphabet books), as well as by individuals who taught themselves. The Greek philosopher Socrates lamented the loss of knowledge because the media of transmission were changing. Before the invention of the Greek alphabet 2,500 years ago, knowledge an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 range of skills, including a well-developed imagination, emotional facility, physical expressivity, vocal projection, clarity of speech, and the ability to interpret drama. Acting also demands an ability to employ dialects, accents, improvisation, observation and emulation, mime, and stage combat. Many actors train at length in specialist programs or colleges to develop these skills. The vast majority of professional actors have undergone extensive training. Actors and actresses will often have many instructors and teachers for a full range of training involving singing, scene-work, audition techniques, and acting for camera. Most early sources in the West that examine the art of acting ( grc-gre, ὑπόκρισις, ''hypokrisi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Substitution (theatre)
In acting, substitution is the understanding of elements in the life of one's character by comparing them to elements in one's own life. For example, if an actor is portraying a character who is being blackmailed, they could think back to some embarrassing or private fact about their own life, and mentally superimpose that onto the character's secret. In Respect for Acting, Uta Hagen compares acting to make believe, saying, "My strength as an actor rested in the unshakable faith I had in make-believe. I made myself believe the characters I was allowed to play and the circumstances of the characters' lives in the events of the play." And later in the book, "I use substitution in order to 'make believe' in its literal sense-- to make ''me'' believe .. in order to send me into the moment-to-moment spontaneous action of my newly selected self on stage." Hagen is clear that substitution is a means to further connect actors to their characters and the actions of the play, as opposed to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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."About Harold Clurman" ''American Masters'', PBS, 2 Dec 2003, accessed 15 Nov 2010 He was one of the three founders of New York City's Group Theatre (1931–1941). He directed more than 40 plays in his career and, during the 1950s, was nominated for a as director for several productions. In addition to his directing career, he was drama c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 time." Atkinson became a ''Times'' theater critic in the 1920s and his reviews became very influential. He insisted on leaving the drama desk during World War II to report on the war; he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his work as the Moscow correspondent for the ''Times''. He returned to the theater beat in the late 1940s, until his retirement in 1960. Biography Atkinson was born in Melrose, Massachusetts to Jonathan H. Atkinson, a salesman statistician, and Garafelia Taylor. As a boy, he printed his own newspaper (using movable type), and planned a career in journalism. He attended Harvard University, where he began writing for the ''Boston Herald.''"Atkinson, (Justin) Brooks." The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-fiction Books About Theatre
Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with being presented more objectively, like historical, scientific, or otherwise straightforward and accurate information, but sometimes, can be presented more subjectively, like sincerely held beliefs and thoughts on a real-world topic. One prominent usage of nonfiction is as one of the two fundamental divisions of narrative ( storytelling)—often, specifically, prose writing—in contrast to narrative fiction, which is largely populated by imaginary characters and events, though sometimes ambiguous regarding its basis in reality. Some typical examples of nonfiction include diaries, biographies, news stories, documentary films, textbooks, travel books, recipes, and scientific journals. While specific claims in a nonfiction work ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
