TPP 3173C - Acting III

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This immensely popular and ever-practical book on acting takes a scalpel to the heart of actors' persistent fears, helping them to release their talent on stage. It is straightforward and unpretentious, with a spirit of artistic and personal freedom.

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"Using Hamlet as illustration, the author provides the tools for students and practitioners to use as they investigate plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, motivation/obstacle/conflict, theatricality, and the other crucial parts of the superstructure of a play."

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Uta Hagen, one of the world's most renowned stage actresses, has also 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 new 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.

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From the coauthor of The World Only Spins Forward comes the first cultural history of Method acting--an ebullient account of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood. On stage and screen, we know a great performance when we see it. But how do actors draw from their bodies and minds to turn their selves into art? What is the craft of being an authentic fake? More than a century ago, amid tsarist Russia's crushing repression, one of the most talented actors ever, Konstantin Stanislavski, asked these very questions, reached deep into himself, and emerged with an answer. How his "system" remade itself into the Method and forever transformed American theater and film is an unlikely saga that has never before been fully told. Now, critic and theater director Isaac Butler chronicles the history of the Method in a narrative that transports readers from Moscow to New York to Los Angeles, from The Seagull to A Streetcar Named Desire to Raging Bull. He traces how a cohort of American mavericks--including Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and the storied Group Theatre--refashioned Stanislavski's ideas for a Depression-plagued nation that had yet to find its place as an artistic powerhouse. The Group's feuds and rivalries would, in turn, shape generations of actors who enabled Hollywood to become the global dream-factory it is today. Some of these performers the Method would uplift; others, it would destroy. Long after its midcentury heyday, the Method lives on as one of the most influential--and misunderstood--ideas in American culture.

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Part 1: The actor. Concept ; Identity ; Substitution ; Emotional memory ; Sense memory ; The five senses ; Thinking ; Walking and talking ; Improvisation ; Reality -- Part 2: The object exercises. The basic object exercise ; Three entrances ; Immediacy ; The fourth wall ; Endowment ; Talking to yourself ; Outdoors ; Conditioning forces ; History ; Character action -- Part 3: The play and the role. First contact with the play ; The character ; Circumstances ; Relationship ; The objective ; The obstacle ; The action ; The rehearsal ; Practical problems ; Communication ; Style.

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This clearly written guide to the Stanislavski method has long been a favorite among students and teachers of acting. Now, in light of books and articles recently published in the Soviet Union, Sonia Moore has made revisions that include a new section on the subtext of a role. She provides detailed explanations of all the methods that actors in training have found indispensable for more than twenty years. Designed to create better actors, this guide will put individuals in touch with themselves and increase personal sensitivity as well.

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Guides your advanced acting students beyond contemporary American realism into the territory of historical periods and genres.