UTA HAGEN'S NINE QUESTIONS

Let me give you an insight on Uta Hagen journey as a performer and an actress.She is surely an epitome of acting as she had fruitfully devoted her life to the Stanislavski acting.As per my previous post on character development questionnaire,I would further elongate Uta Hagens questionnaire on acting which are eventually important in every scenario.

Names like Meisner, Adler, and Lee Strasberg loom large over the American acting technique-and Uta Hagen is right there with them. 

    

 UTA THYRA HAGEN

  (12 June 1919 – 14 January 2004)

She was an 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 The Best Actress In a Play and received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999.

so now lets head towards the important questions of uta hagen's and how one can achieve character through it.

1.  Who am I?  (character-search for character’s life prior to play’s/scene’s beginning)

2.  Where am I? (environment:  location, conditions)

3.  What surrounds me? (persons, objects, color and texture)

4.  What time is it? (hour, minute, date, year, century, era)

5. What are the given circumstances? (those events, facts, and conditions occurring before or during the play/scene that affect the    character and /or action)

6. What is my relationship? (to all of the above and to other characters-solid or shifting?)

7.  What do I want? (Objectives or Intention –includes the overall character objectives as well as more immediate beat-to-beat intentions).

8.  What’s in my way? (Obstacle)

9.  What do I do to get what I want?(ACTION – VERBS; physical, verbal, psychological)

So now lets talk about character biography,its like an approach towards your character which will indeed give you an hint of the background and its being established.

CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY

Taken from the video “Building a Character”

Play Title:

Character Name:

PHYSICAL-

Age:

Center of Gravity:

Posture:

Cleanliness:

Dialect: 

Hearing:

Eyesight: 

I.Q.:

Tempo/Gestures/Movement/Speech

PERSONALITY

Secret:

Religion:

Prejudices:

Curiosity:

Imagination:

Ambition:

Education:

Ability to Reason:

Alertness/Daydreamer:

Self-Image/Ego:

Giving:

Reliability:

Jealousy/Fear/Pride/Inferiority:

Thoughts About Other Characters:

Other Characters’ Thoughts About Him/Her:

ENVIRONMENT

Parents/Status:                                                              Siblings/Status:

Other Relatives/Status:                                                Husband/Wife Status:

Residence/Status:                                                          Job/Salary/Social Class:

Previous Action/Off-Stage Action:                              Childhood:

Super objective:

Secondary Objectives:

Obstacles:

Passion(s):

Short-Form Role Analysis This form was developed by Jerry Crawford, University of Nevada-Las Vegas and was distributed at a regional American College Theatre Festival workshop.