Nural Mohammed! Independent Study!

Respect for Acting

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Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen Reflection Chapter One: This first chapter addresses many of the issues that amateur actors face as they try and find their acting style and what acting should mean to them. Uta Hagen defines and amateur actor as someone who peruses their work for love. Most amateur actors believe that acting is instinctive and intrinsic to who you are as a being and that it cannot be taught. Hagen argues that actors must train before jumping into a role and that acting must be taught. She likened this to a dancer who must learn all of the basics of dancing before jumping straight into a very tasking and demanding performance. Hagen says that in the same way that the dancer must train an amateur actor must train and become a professional before jumping into plays and roles like Hamlet. Since dancing is very physical I would have never thought twice about a dancer needing to be trained before they can move up the ladder but I hadnt really looked at acting the same way. This was something that I had never considered before yet when thinking about it more I realize is very true. You must know the basics of acting before being able to throw yourself into something that demands great talent. What I dont necessarily agree with, however, is Hagens definition of a professional. Hagen states that in order to be a professional actor you must lose some of your love for acting and gain methods instead. I dont think that losing your love and passion for the art is something that needs to be done in order to gain methods and tools to be a better actor. I agree that nave love and nave ways of looking and thinking about acting must be lost but to have to replace love with the methods is something that I would consider to be detrimental to the actor. Without passion and love for what you are doing there would be no meaning behind acting and that would be visible to not only yourself but anyone else around you. You must be dedicated to your role and to the art of acting in order to be able to succeed in it. Hagen then goes on to discuss different forms of method acting and different tools that actors need / use in order to have a more professional performance. But she cautions that you do not want to get too technical- which is what happened with her when she was making the transition between being an amateur actor to becoming a professional one. She credits Harold Clurman a director for getting her out of that rut. Hagen says that Clurman taught her to bring out her true reactions. He gave no direction on how her body movement or reactions should be so that she had no preconceived forms. Instead all of her reactions and movements were raw and true to herself. This is what is called presentational acting. Hagen explained how presentational acting works by giving examples of Eleonora Duse and then she explained representational acting which is when you are not using your emotions and yourself in a role but rather viewing the role from the outside looking in; she used Sarah Bernhardt as an example of this. I think that in my acting I tend to use presentational more than representational acting. When I am using the representational method I feel like all of my movements are measured and fake. It is much easier for me to use the presentational method which may be why I tend to favor it. One of the drawbacks of using the presentational method, however, is

that if not done correctly you can be too much in your body and not enough in the body of your character which results in unlikely or unrealistic movements or reactions. They may be how you would react to a certain situation but they wouldnt be how your character would react to this situation and actors must be careful of the line between the two. Chapter Two: This chapter focuses mainly on how an actor must perceive themselves in order to get the best performance out of themselves as possible. In order to do so the actor must stop worrying about outsiders and how they want others to view them. Many actors think that becoming famous or the best actor in the world is what makes you a successful actor and that holds them back. Hagen instead urges actors to set your own goals and set them for your approval. As Stanislavsky once said love the art in yourself; not yourself in the art. I wholeheartedly agree with this and I think that it is something that definitely held me back when I first began acting. In high school I never tried out for places for fear of what others would think of me. We had open auditions that the entire school could watch and I did not want to do badly on stage in front of them. Rather than focusing on myself and trying to get the best results out of myself that I could I continued acting in my home behind the safety of my bedroom door. The first step to being able to be comfortable with yourself and act using a presentational method is to know who you are and learn how to put that to use in the characters that you will portray on stage. I think that is my biggest challenge when it comes to the presentational method. I want to be myself and use my emotions so that I can become one with the character yet at the same time this character has gone through things that I havent or is part of a socio-economic status that I am not in- so their speaking and habits will be different than mine. Hagen cautions using clich generalities in these cases though which I thought was really interesting. She discusses how people get used to seeing Kings and Queens act a certain way in plays or movies so when other people must play these parts they dont know how to put themselves into the role and instead will use this clich way of playing a King or Queen when onstage. The clich way does not make them stand out nor does it give them depth as an actor. I had never really consciously thought about that. Though it seems obvious in retrospect you dont realize that when playing those roles you have to find a balance between adding a certain unique quality to the role yet staying in the character; meaning if you are playing a King or Queen you would have to stand regally yet that doesnt mean that you voice or mannerisms have to be the same as everyone else who has played said King or Queen before you. It sounds easy on the surface but as you dig deeper you realize that it is much more complex and requires a lot more out of the actor than you would originally expect. I think this is what differentiates between an amateur actor and a professional one.

Chapter Three:! ! What struck me the most in chapter three is when Hagen discusses how to make substitutions when you are acting. I always thought that in order to make a substitution when acting you would replace what you are doing with a past experience. For example if you are having an embarrassing moment rather than using the embarrassing moment that has been written into the script you would substitute it with an embarrassing moment that you had experienced and pretend that this is what is happening in the scene.

What Hagen says, however, is that this is just the rst step. You must see how you had been feeling in that given moment when you felt embarrassed and then use that same emotion when you are in the scene. So rather than removing yourself from the scene you are using past experiences to better understand your characters experience. As Hagen says in the book Your substitutions are complete only once they have become synonymous to your part in the play. I have never really used substitutions beforemainly because I found it difcult to imagine that I was reliving a scene that I had experienced once before but using Hagens technique I think that it makes it much more realistic and keeps the actor in the scene rather than taking them out of it.! ! Hagen also says that there is no need to make substitutions for something that you already believe. For example if it is supposed to be raining outside and you can make yourself believe that it really is raining while you are on stage then there is no need to make a substitution. They are only necessary or needed when you are unable to connect to the character in order to feel what they should be feeling at that moment in the scene.!

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Chapter four talked a lot about emotional memory / recall and sense memory / recall. Hagen says that the difference between the two is that emotional recall means to recall a psychological or emotional response. Whereas sense recall is physiological, for example heat, cold, or hunger. I thought that was interesting because I had never thought of differentiating between the two before. I also dont often think or use sense recall as much as I do emotional recall, which I hadnt realized until reading this chapter. One of the things that struck me the most was when Hagen talked about not leaving the stage when using either sense or emotional recall. She didnt mean physically she meant mentally. One is not supposed to allow themselves to envision that they are in anyplace other than where their character has to be at that given point in the play. It ties in with a lot of what is mentioned above in chapter three, which is that while you want to find something that you have experienced in order to be able to better relate to your character you should use that to fit into what your character is going through in that given moment rather than just replace them with one another. Hagen also talked a lot about not losing control which is extremely important. I had thought that letting the emotions wash over you and take you over would be a good thing but I reading through this chapter I began to realize that you need to be able to have control over your body otherwise you are no longer acting and that is a dangerous territory to enter. Chapter Five: Chapter Five discussed sensory memory / recall. I was most interested in Hagens description of how to achieve it. She discusses how one should actually find and pinpoint an area of their body that is feeling that particular sensation and then have it take over the whole body. She also had specific examples of how to do this and upon testing and trying them out I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of them worked! It seems that with sensory recall it is easier to come up with a particular formula than it would be with emotional recall since with emotional recall everyone has had different experiences in life and different

reactions to said experiences. Hagen also stresses the importance of sensory recall which I thought was important to read about because I have always considered it to be not as significant as emotional recall, but after reading this chapter I now understand just how important it is. Chapter Six: This chapter focuses on enhancing your five senses while onstage. One of the things that I found most poignant was when Hagen was discussing how an actor must really hear something as though it is the first time that they have heard it and they must really and truly react to these words. Rather than thinking about your blocking or your lines really listen to what the other actor is saying during the scene. This also went hand in hand with what Hagen had to say about sight which is that while you are talking to another actor you must act and react the way that you would in real life. Rather than staring at the actor whom you are talking to for the whole time you should look around at different things or find objects to fix your gaze upon in the same way that people do when they are talking to others in real life. Making eye contact can be crucial depending on what the context of the line being said but so is not making eye contact so that it feels and looks natural when one actor is looking at or listening to another one.

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Chapter Seven: The focus of chapter seven is thinking which, ironically enough, is not something that I would have thought would have needed to be worked on in acting. One of the things that Hagen said that I had never considered before was that when actors are pretending to think of something or have a thought come to them while they are on stage it is most often portrayed as very fake and removes the character from the scene. In real life when we think it happens very quickly and it moves at the speed of light. You can think about a million things on the inside while doing something else on the outside. Our brains work in a way that allows us to do this and so for an actor to portray thinking by just sitting down and making different facial expressions is very superficial and would not be believed by audience members nor would the actor believe it themselves and most often than not it will remove them from the role. I thought that this was really interesting and I will definitely try and employ it myself when acting in the future. Chapter Eight: This chapter was particularly interesting to me because it is something that I struggle with a lot when it comes to acting, and that is what to do with my body during scenes. There are times that movements come so naturally that you dont even have to think about them and then there are other times that you feel so exposed on stage and all you are consumed with is what you should be doing with your hands or your feet. In these moments I tend to freeze up and become very tense and awkward and this can be very obviously seen by the audience and by the other actors on stage. In order to take yourself out of that situation Hagen suggests that you instead have every blocking that you must do or movement be done with a purpose and be done with a reason in mind. If one just gets up because they have been told

that at this point in the play they must get up then that will take them out of character whereas if they understand and create reasoning behind why they must be getting up and why they must be moving towards a certain object then it will appear much more natural and the actor will not have to focus as much on what they should be doing with themselves. I think this is much easier said than done but I cant wait to try it out the next time that I am in this situation and I can only hope that it will soon become second hand nature rather than something that I struggle with onstage. Chapter Nine: Chapter nine is only two pages long and discusses the importance of improvisation in theatre. It is not an extensive coverage on the subject but seems to be leading into a greater discussion further on in the book. Chapter Ten: This chapter really helped me to understand some of the questions that I had about when to have an audience suspend their disbelief and when things had to be portrayed in a more real sense. I never understood why not everything used on stage was real until reading this chapter. Hagen explains how having a real fight scene in which two actors really beat each other up would not only be harmful literally to the actors in the scene but would also take the audience out of the play and not allow them to concentrate on it because they would be too busy concentrating on whether the actors are okay or not. I have never realized that by making something real onstage you could be removing the suspension of disbelief for an audience. This was really new to me and put suspension of disbelief for an audience in a context that made me better able to understand why certain things must be made more realistic while others are acted out. Obviously I understand that hurting an actor on stage is not something that should be done nor is it something that I would expect to be done but in the context of more minute things like pretending to use something that would normally need to be plugged in, in order to really be used. Hagen uses the example of ironing and how an actress once used a real iron on stage which made the audience focus on the fact that real steam was coming from the iron rather than focus on what was happening in the scene.

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PART TWO

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Chapter Eleven: Chapter eleven breaks down how to give yourself a motive and a purpose in every scene you have. It seems painstaking at times but Hagen shows you how to take a scene and break it down into categories such as time, place, surroundings, given circumstances, past, present, future, main objective, relationships, immediate objectives, obstacles, and actions. It makes me realize how much of a long way I have to go as an actress. I dont usually break down my scenes so much or think so in depth about the character that I am playing; partly because I am not sure how to. This set of, what Hagen calls, Object Exercises makes that much easier, however, and will definitely be prove to be useful in the future.

Chapter Twelve: Chapter twelve discuses probably one of the most crucial moments for an actor their entrance. Hagen again breaks this down into parts. There are three questions you must answer with every entrance that she says are important: what did I just do? What am I doing right now? Whats the first thing I want? You must then go through these actions before entering onstage. Hagen says that going too small and blending in with the other actors on stage so that you entrance is barely noticed is wrong as well as going big and making a huge entrance. I think that this is where I might have a slight disagreeance with her as I do think that there are probably situations in which a character might need to make a big and strong entrance. It reminded me of the exercise that we have practiced in Acting class where we push ourselves off of the wall three times before making our big entrance. Again, entrances are something that I havent considered much in the past which again reminds me how long of a ways I have to go as an actress. There is so much more to acting than just saying your lines and getting offstage without mistakes and this book has helped to define what else it is out there that I must change before I can really call myself an actress.

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Chapter Thirteen: This chapter covers anticipation which I think is extremely important to perfect. When I was assisting in Anne of Green Gables I noticed what a difference it would make when an actor not only knew what was coming but would prepare themselves or react to that given situation before it had even happened. When you are rehearsing or doing a scene over and over it becomes difficult to not fall into a routine and just walk through the motions. You have to act as if it is the first time every time you do it. For example, there have been times that I have been in scenes with other actors where they do something that is unplanned, like bang their first on the table. I am not ready for this and have on occasion jumped as a natural reaction to what happened. Recreating it the second time - however, becomes much harder for me. This happens in other cases as well where I will read a monologue or perform a scene in a play and emotions or nerves will overcome me and I will find myself really getting into the role. Once I have succeeded at doing a good job the first time, however, I have difficulty getting back to the place that I was in when I was doing that scene and instead find myself trying to figure out how to recreate it which results in me doing very poorly compared to the first time when I had nothing else to go on. Hagen addresses this by saying that the actor should perform the exercise of going through what is supposed to be happening in the scene in their own home and then bringing that to the stage. While I understand in part her reasoning behind this I also found that I was confused as to how doing this at home and then bringing it onstage and preparing things on stage in a way that they remind me of my home would help. There are many instances where you cannot change the stage to match the one in your home and regardless of whether you felt those emotions at home or not that does not provide an answer as to how to not fall into a routine when doing it again and again. I think I will try Hagens exercise before I knock it- but I do have a few unanswered questions in this chapter that I will hopefully gain insight and knowledge on once trying her exercise.! ! Chapter Fourteen:

Chapter fourteen addresses the fourth wall and brings forth many cringe worthy moments when I have broken many fourth wall rules. While I think I am at a place now where I am able to have the fourth wall be broken without associating with the audience, it wasnt until reading this that I realized that I have not done that with plays that I have been in, in the past. Most recently the plays that I have been in that use the fourth wall were ones in which I was able to look at an object in front of me without breaking character or seeing the audience but remembering past plays that I have done i realize that this is not the case. One of the biggest problems that I had as an amateur actor was that I always wanted to check in with the audience and make sure that they were enjoying the show so whenever I had an opportunity to use the fourth wall I did - but rather than looking away I would look into the audience members eyes or look directly at them to see their reactions to what was happening. I now, of course, realize that this is not something that sone should do and I actually find it quite easy to break the fourth wall without stepping out of character but it is definetely not fun looking back on my earlier performances where I can distinctly recall doing everything that Hagen says not to do!

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Chapter Fifteen: In this chapter Hagen discusses using objects that arent really there and making yourself believe that they are there so that you are not pantomiming. I had never realized just how many little details go into doing something like this. For example Hagen describes drinking something hot and how most people will often blow on it before bring ing it to their lips and slowly taking a small slurp to make sure that it is not too hot... etc. I took a bottle of cold water and experimented with the way that Hagen described we should and found that by the end I was really believing that I was drinking hot water. I think that the biggest reason why I found it so easy to believe this is because of all of the intricate little details that Hagen remembers and outlines about drinking something that is hot. While blowing on something that is hot is an action that I recall I didnt think about all of the other small things that one does in order to finally get that first sip of tea or coffee. By remembering and breaking it down so much so that you are doing exactly what youd be doing if you were drinking something hot I found that it was much easier to really feel as though you were drinking something hot because you were going through all of the motions of it. It now makes more sense to me why during Anne of Green Gables the actors would take their time when they didnt have an actual object to use and had to pretend. They remembered all of the little details necessary for tying rope around one anothers legs or even untying the rope around one anothers legs. It must have made what they were doing much more real to them than if they had just pretended to tie the rope. Pantomiming is something that I have always had difficulty with so I am excited to try this out the next time that I have a scene where I must pantomime something.

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Chapter Sixteen: Chapter sixteen discusses monologues and how to perform them in a way that does not come out as bad acting. Hagen says that because most people who talk to themselves will

go it in an exaggerated way or gesture / react more frequently than they would if they were with someone then it becomes tricky to talk to yourself on stage and do it naturally yet at the same time not over-do it so that it is not mistaken for bad acting. I have only dealt with one monologue in my life before but I can see where the concern comes from. I think that in cases when I do talk to myself I am definetely must more vocal and my movements and expressions are much more grandiose than they would be if I were talking to someone else so trying to reenact that without having the audience thinking that it is bad acting is tricky but I think it is manageable as well. Hagen says that so long as the actor maintains their belief that they really are talking to themselves then it will come across that way to the audience and the audience will not think that it is bad acting unless the actor indicates that it is through their own beliefs.

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Chapter Seventeen: Chapter seventeen focuses on bringing reality into doing physical things. For example if your character is to stand somewhere and wait for someone to arrive they would not just stand there without moving and wait for their friend. In real life when one is waiting or doing nothing they are actually doing countless of little things. For example you might start playing with a piece of string on your shirt, then you might remember something that you read earlier in the day and start thinking about that, perhaps you are at a bus stop and there is a flyer posted on a sign you might go and read what the flyer says, and the list goes on. I have realized that in many cases like this and cases which were presented in earlier chapters the way that Hagen gets the actor to appear realistic to themselves and their audience is to really break down and pick apart your daly habits. The actor must think about what they normally do when they are waiting and incorporate that into the character that they are playing. I have never thought about breaking down a character or said characters actions to such a degree as Hagen breaks them down. Breaking things down and really examining them especially from the perspective of your own life and how you would react being in that situation is something that continues to pop up throughout the book and seems to be a really useful took and way of breaking down the barrier between what is real and what is not.

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Chapter Eighteen: This chapter ties together a lot of different things that are mentioned in pervious chapters such as sense memory and how to pantomime without pantomiming. The difference here is that this is a case where several of these things are expected of you at once. It seems almost undaunting when you think of how many scenes require of a character to be feeling or acting out more than one emotion. No one ever feels simply just rage or simply just sad. Most often it is a combination of the two along with perhaps incredulity or exhaustion. In order to incorporate all of this at once the actor must perform exercises that allow this to occur. For example, Hagen describes an exercise in which an actor is late somewhere - you must act this out but try different time increments. You are five minutes late or ten minutes late or perhaps you will be late if you dont make it within the next five or ten minutes. Each of these increments of time change the way in which the actor acts or reacts to that given

situation. It takes a lot of self observation and observation of others to be able to perfect this but I would think that it would feel much more natural to an actor to be feeling these mixed emotions or juggling these different tasks or objects rather than to just focus on one thing since that rarely ever happens in real life.

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Chapter Nineteen: Chapter nineteen discusses one of the things that I have the most problems with when it comes to plays: being able to relate and take on the role of a character who is not alive within your time period without using a clichd version. The hardest part for me is not relating to said character but using words or actions that are not those that one would use any longer during this time period. When I am playing a character who talks similarly to the way that I do or to the way that others around me to I am more comfortable playing this role and feel more like I am the character rather than the actor. But when it comes to a character whose life, on the surface, seems so removed from mine then I become acutely aware of how much this feels like I am playing dress up or pretending to be someone that I am not. Hagen says that the best way to cure this is to do as much research as possible on the time period / place that the actor was from / born in. By learning more about the culture and the environment that said actor grew up in you are better able / more able to relate to this character and put yourself into their shoes rather than viewing it as a foreign time period or place that you are unable to see yourself be a part of.

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Chapter Twenty: The last chapter in part two addresses how to take a character and turn them from a carbon copy of what that stereotypical character would be like into a real, living, breathing, human being. Hagen says to take two different characters (they could be from the same time period or same play or they could have nothing to do with one another) and have them both do the same thing. For example have them both go to the supermarket- both of them get bumped into by someone was there, they both grab some eggs, they both go to get milk and find that the store has sold out, then they both go to the check out line where they fish out their purse and pay for their groceries, etc. How each character reacts to each situation however is different. This is a great way of being able to identify what little quirks or personality traits your character has that sets them apart from all others. By identifying how one character would react to not finding milk in the super market (angry, annoyed, disgruntled) to another characters reaction (indifferent, uncaring) you begin to be able to create a character that is no longer just a carbon copy or stereotype that has been played hundreds of times but rather as character that is as unique and different as different people are in real life.

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PART THREE Chapter Twenty-One:

This chapter discusses flexibility among actors to be able to build and design a character but then also know the character and the play so well and intricately that they are able to take whatever the director tells them and change the way that they play the role in a way that makes it fit with their perception of the character that they are playing. The role between director and actor is one that has always interested me - most particularly when it comes to artistic differences between the director and the actor. According to Hagen - the director is always right and an actor has not done his or her job if they are unable to find a way to form or mold their character to fit what the director wants. Hagen also says that in order to be able to know your character well one must do all of the research that is mentioned in previous chapters as well as read the play that you are going to be performing in more than once. The first time that an actor reads a play he/she is playing the role of an audience member because they are seeing all of this for the first time. The actor must then read it more than once so that they remove themselves from the audience and place themselves into the play as the actor and character that they were given. They will be unable to do that if they only read the play all the way through one time. Although painstaking it definetely comes in handy and the actor will also be able to pick up on many different things that they never noticed before each time that they go through the play.

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Chapter Twenty-Two: In this chapter Hagen made a really good point that stood out to me. She said that when an actor is examining a role that they are playing they most often ask the question who is she / who is he? about the character that they are to be playing. What the actors dont realize, however, is that by saying if they answer she is a maid of a rich family set in 1897 in Denmark then they are alleviating themselves of the stress and work that one must do in order to learn and research more about themselves because they are just stating a fact about the character. Whereas if the actor were to ask who am I then they would come up with an answer about being from a rich family set in 1987 in Denmark and they would then realize that they know nothing about this time period or setting and they would then begin the process of doing research in order to learn more about themselves. Although it is just psychological it makes a great deal of difference to think about your character as being you rather than as a character.

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Chapter Twenty-Three: Chapter twenty-three is again about really breaking down your role and character so that you are able to better understand your character. Hagen says that the actor must break down every little detail including what the rest of the house would look like if it were built and what every corner of every room would look like. The actor must then envision themselves and their daily routines on a regular night during the time period and location that they are set, then they must imagine what itd be like on a cold night or a hot day. The way that the character must be broken down seems very detailed and very time consuming. It is a tasking process but Hagen promises that it will pay off in the end. In cases where you are playing a role that does not give you enough time to do this - for example if I were to be

playing a character in a scene for homework that was due the next week it would be impossible for me to do all that Hagen is asking of us without compromising my homework and tasks for other classes or extra-curricular activities.. In that case I would imagine that more broad or general research could be done in place.

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Chapter Twenty-Four: Chapter twenty-four is about playing different ages regardless of your own age. This is something that I saw exemplified so well by Jennifer in Anne of Green Gables. It was strange how when I talked to her out of character I could tell that she was clearly an adult and I dont mean intellectually or due to her maturity - I mean physically she carried herself like an adult. When playing Anne however, her entire body changed and she became someone completely different onstage. I could no longer see the woman that had stood before me earlier but instead I saw a girl. Hagen says that if one breaks down their character and truly researches them then they can play any age regardless of their own. I might not have believed it before but after seeing Jennifer in Anne of Green Gables I most certainly do now.

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Chapter Twenty-Five: Chapter twenty-five is on a topic that we have gone over many a time in Acting classes. It is about objectives. Every little thing that a character does must be tied in with a motive or a reason. An actor cannot perform an act without having a particular reason for why their character would be performing or doing said act. Even something as little as walking from one side of the room to the other has to have a reasoning behind it or a purpose. Hagen reiterates this and the importance of it justifying another reason why breaking down your character is important.

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Chapter Twenty-Six: Chapter twenty-six ties will with chapter twenty-five because it discusses obstacles. Hagen says that for everything that a character does there is an obstacle. No matter how big or small or insignificant there is an obstacle. This goes well with the fact that there is always a motive because this means that for every motive or objective that an actor has there is also an obstacle in their way.

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Chapter Twenty-Seven: Chapter twenty-seven is about reacting. It is the phrase that all actors have heard countless of times: acting is reacting. Hagen only brushes over this but it is something that is definetely interesting to read about because it is hard - especially as an amateur actor to know how to react in a given situation or how your character would react in a given situation. Having read this book almost all the way through, however, I feel that Ive gotten a lot

of insight on how much work an actor has to put into getting to know their character. Once you know your character then you are prepared and ready to begin working with other actors and characters and you are better able to understand how your character would react in a given situation making it come a lot more naturally than it would if you were guessing.

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Chapters Twenty-Eight through Thirty-One: Chapters 28 - 31 discuss things that follow all of the exercises that are mentioned above like rehearsals and auditions, along with the closing remarks of the book. I think that overall this was an extremely insightful and interesting book to read. It answered so many questions that I had and even ones that I didnt even realize that I had or struggled with until I read this book. I think that I am reading it at a perfect point in my acting timeline because had I read it when I first began acting I dont think that I would have understood or gotten as much out of it because I would not have even begun to realize just how much goes into becoming an actor. It is definetely a book that I think would be really good for people in Acting II or advanced Acting classes to read because it offers a lot of insight and guidance on things that students are probably feeling insecure about. At least in terms of my personal experience it definetely helped me to sort out a lot of things that I hadnt realized were necessary in order to become a good actor. I am excited to try out these exercises in the future and I do believe that my acting is going to get better as a result of it. There were a lot of things that struck me while reading this book that I wouldnt even be able to get to them all but in particular learning how to use emotional and sense memory / recall is something that I think I really needed. Hagen offers ways of looking at it that I had never thought about or been introduced to before and just by trying the exercises that she suggested in my bedroom for a few minutes I could already begin to see a difference in how I felt in the role of my character. It is much more understandable to me now how much of a ways I still have to go as an actor and how much others have to do to be able to prepare for their roles. I will admit in the past I thought that it was pretentious and maybe a little over the top when I heard of actors examining, researching, and studying their roles so much but Hagen has helped me to see the importance of it and I am really excited to put it to the test with future roles!