Respect for Acting

Respect for Acting: Part One After reading the first part of Respect for Acting by Uta Hagan I have a newfound respect for actors and all that they go through to obtain the true character in which they are playing. As someone who has never neither acted nor read anything about performing, this has opened my eyes to all of the work that these actors go through on a daily basis for the sheer enjoyment of their audience. While reading over the chapters in this book there are a few key concepts that I found to be interesting. One concept that was discussed in the book is identity. Before an actor can truly perform at their best you must learn to know who you are. The more an actor develops a full sense of his own identity, the more his scope and capacity for identification with other characters than his own can be made possible. We must become self observant enough not only to recognize our needs and define our feelings, but to connect them to the behavior which you are performing as. Your own identity and self-knowledge are the main sources for any character you may play. The normal procedure of identifying with observed events which we went through as children should not ever stop for an actor as an adult. The whole idea of knowing your own identity is one that is helpful in acting, but is also helpful in general, as an individual. Before a person can perform as anything, a friend, a mother, etc. they must have a sense of their own identity to be able to perfom that job as well with excellence. Another concept that I found important was sense memory. In the art of sense memory it is vital that you try to localize one area of your senses that you most vividly remember and then recall the sensation. Thereafter we must make our body react to this memory as we did when we actually went through such an experience. Such as, if you are to be cold; localize an area where you remember such a feeling most vividly the back of your neck; recall the sensation and