Challenge for the Actor - by Uta Hagen (Hardcover)

About the Book

Uta Hagen, internationally renowned actress and author, has writen a major new book that is sure to be welcomed in the field of acting. Actor's World covers voice techniques, timing, and rhythm. It teaches how to establish the identity of a character, how to use physical senses and inner objects, and much more.

Book Synopsis

"Theoretically, the actor ought to be more sound in mind and body than other people, since he learns to understand the psychological problems of human beings when putting his own passions, his loves, fears, and rages to work in the service of the characters he plays. He will learn to face himself, to hide nothing from himself--and to do so takes an insatiable curiosity about the human condition."

Uta Hagen, one of the world's most renowned stage actresses, taught acting for more than forty years at the HB Studio in New York. Her first book, Respect for Acting, published in 1973, is still in print and has sold more than 150,000 copies. In her second book, A Challenge for the Actor, she greatly expands her thinking about acting in a work that brings the full flowering of her artistry, both as an actor and as a teacher. She raises the issue of the actor's goals and examines the specifics of the actor's techniques. She goes on to consider the actor's relationship to the physical and psychological senses. There is a brilliantly conceived section on the animation of the body and mind, of listening and talking, and the concept of expectation.

But perhaps the most useful sections in this book are the exercises that Uta Hagen has created and elaborated to help the actor learn his craft. The exercises deal with developing the actor's physical destination in a role; making changes in the self-serviceable in the creation of a character; recreating physical sensations; bringing the outdoors on stage; finding occupation while waiting; talking to oneself and the audience; and employing historical imagination.

The scope and range of Uta Hagen here is extraordinary. Her years of acting and teaching have made her as finely seasoned an artist as the theatre has produced.

Review Quotes

Praise for Uta Hagen and 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 teaches, and an explanation of the means to the end. For those unable to avail themselves of her personal tutelage, her book is the best substitute." --Publishers Weekly

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

"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

"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

"Uta Hagen is our greatest living actor; she is, moreover, interested and mystified by the presence of talent and its workings; her third gift is a passion to communicate the mysteries of the craft to which she has given her life. There are almost no American actors uninfluenced by her." --Fritz Weaver

"I held onto this book for dear life throughout my twenties, and still thumb through it when I need a tune up. If I lose my car keys and I'm frantically turning my house upside down trying to find them I look up at the heavens and hope she's having a good laugh." --Amanda Peet

"Uta Hagen changed my life. She changed the lives of thousands and thousands of other people as well. To have Uta's books and to be able to look through them at the drop of a hat keeps me going and keeps me inspired to keep going." --Austin Pendleton

"I was extraordinarily privileged to work with Uta Hagen in Circle in the Square's production of George Bernard Shaw's play, You Never Can Tell. She was committed to revealing the truth and we are the beneficiaries of her brilliant observations." --Victor Garber

"Uta Hagen's A Challenge for the Actor is simply the bible for any acting student serious about their craft. Even as a professional I refer to it time and again for the basics. It is a touchstone." --Laila Robins

"'Cynicism leads to mental illness and insanity.' Words of warning Uta Hagen spoke often to her students. Here in lies the difference between Ms. Hagen's classic Respect for Acting and its companion A Challenge for the Actor. She meets head on the soul killing demon that threatens the art and craft of all actors, cynicism. The challenge is to remain curious, caring, innocent, disciplined, educated, and life-loving amid dark times. To have the courage to fight the forces of apathy and disbelief in order to serve with all one's heart the profession that one loves." --Victor Slezak

About the Author

Uta Hagen (1919-2004) was a German American actress and theatre practitioner who made her Broadway debut in 1938. She starred in over twenty Broadway productions, including Othello, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The recipient of the National Medal of Honor for the Arts in 2003 and winner of three Tony Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, Hagen taught for over forty years at the HB Studio in New York and was one of the most renowned and respected acting teachers of the 20th century.