Many people think that acting is all about putting oneself in a different character and entirely discarding ourselves. This is the nation which is challenged by two great actors of their time, Constantin Stanislavski and Uta Hagen. These are two great personalities whose ideas and principles revolutionized the field of acting in their time and have had a significant influence in the area of acting even today. Stanislavski, in his book The Actor Prepares takes the role of a director and shows through a fictional story of a student who begins learning acting his principles which are termed as the Method . Through this book, he narrates what it takes to act, and how well one can connect with his or her inner instinct to produce the best character in the play. On the other hand, Uta Hagen also through her book A Challenge for the Actor demonstrate what she thinks is the perfect way of assuming a character and acting on it in the best possible manner. The two giants in the field of acting, through their theories, ideas and methods show a lot of similarities and some slights differences. In fact, if one is not very keen on Uta Hagen's principles, it is very easy to confuse them with that of Stanislavski. In this article, the two principles are put in comparison with an intention to note some similarities and differences that exist between the two giants’ principles and also to make a conclusion on whether or not; Uta Hagen’s principles are the development of the Stanislavsky’s system.
There are apparent similarities between Stanislavsky's system as demonstrated in the book The Actor Prepares and those of the Uta Hagen as demonstrated in the book A Challenge for the Actor The first glaring similarity is the use of sense to make the character act the best way possible. What is apparent in the Book an actor prepares by Stanislavsky is that some people tend to consider that when an actor bring in some emotional memory and uses his sense to invoke the past memories and sense while on the stage may lead to confusion and even unclear direction. This is the notion which is challenged by this book. This book advocates for the actor to even go further and trigger some past traumatic experience in their life so that they can use them to stage a truthful performance. Stanislavsky claims that "Time is a splendid filter for our remembered feelings – besides it is a great artist. It not only purifies, but it also transmutes even painfully realistic memories into poetry” (Konstantin Stanislavsky, 1989 . p173). What it means in this sense is that the actor is given the full freedom to extract a sense of a memory and how that memory or the original thing or emotional being remembered altered their experience physically, emotionally and mentally at that time, a try to bring the same experience on the stage. For example, the actor when trying to assume the traits in cold weather, then they should try to think on a day they got out of the house and realize there a lot of cold outsides, how was their reaction? Did they shiver, did they clamp their arms to the body, and many others. They then should try and bring the same behavior in the acting, and this would make it very perfect.
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This is what is also echoed by Uta Hagen in her book A Challenge for the Actor The main principles which she underlines in this book are the use of the psychological memory that is the sense memory and the emotional memory to help in acting out as the best character. According to her, the emotional memory is the recall of the past emotional events to create a replica of the emotion and adopt the kind of physical response to that emotion in on the stage, for instance, sobbing as noted by Mulligan, (2014).. On the other hand, there is what she calls invoking the sense of memory. In this case, the actor while on the stage can try to recall the physical sensations to make the audience and also the character themselves to think they are in the real cold, hot, pain and others, etc. situations. In this case, it is very clear that the two principles are much related. In fact, this is the reason why many others believe that Uta Hagen's philosophy was a development of Constantin Stanislavski.
The only difference which is noted is that Uta seems to overemphasis on the identity and substitution of the character than Constantin Stanislavski. She claims that we have an inner image of whom we think we are, this can be the fact that we think we are very smart, childish and also very stupid. This is what the actor needs to identify and also use it to play a different role based on what the state requires of us. She also emphasizes the situations where the actor needs to have different actor personality that substitutes each other at differ stage. On the other side, though identity is also part of the Constantin Stanislavsky's system; much emphasis is not put on it.
In conclusion, it is apparent from the two books that Uta and Constantin Stanislavski had a lot of similarities on their principles which revolutions the field of acting by then and is still having effects on the stage to date. Based on the fact that Constantin Stanislavsky’s system was the first, it may be true to state that Uta’s principle is just a modification of the Constantin Stanislavsky’s system.
Reference
Konstantin Stanislavsky. (1989). An actor prepares . Taylor & Francis.
Mulligan, B. (2014). Uta Hagen's Challenge . California State University, Long Beach.
