Uta Hagen was one of the greatest acting teachers of all time. In her book Respect for Acting, she shares 10 techniques that have helped her students as well as herself over the years.

1. Stop and listen. This is to teach you to listen when you’re in a scene and someone is talking to you. You must always be listening and not waiting for your turn to speak.

2. Find out what the other person wants from you in the scene, in that moment, and then give it to them (or don’t give it to them). This teaches how to play off of other people.

3. Use simple actions that are practical and literal, not abstract or symbolic. Learn how to translate complex thoughts into simple physicalized goals – what do you want and how will you get it?

4. Understand the given circumstances of your character (the script) and the environment (the stage), including your relationship with everyone else involved in the play or film. What is their position in society? What is their economic situation? Are they happy or unhappy? Who are they married to, who are they sleeping with, etc.?

5. Imagine an opening night party after a successful performance

Uta Hagen was born in Germany on June 12, 1919 and died January 14, 2004. She was an actress and acting teacher who wrote several textbooks on the subject. She made her Broadway debut at 19 years old. She was later in the original production of The Country Girl and won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Her acting techniques are well respected among actors and acting students worldwide. Below is a list of her 10 most popular techniques:

1. The three B’s: Breath, Body, and Belief

2. Imagination is more important than knowledge

3. Be truthful under imaginary circumstances

4. Use the method that works for you

5. Know your character’s opinion about everything

6. Speak the truth beneath the lines

7. Listening is an action skill…it will not come to you if you wait for it!

8. Everything is personal

9. Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want

10. Technique can be taught; talent must be born (from her Ten Commandments)

I have read several books on acting and I have found that a lot of great techniques are written in them. The techniques I am going to write about are based on Uta Hagen’s book Respect for Acting. At the time of writing this article, I have only read the first 100 or so pages (out of 400), but it has already helped my acting.

1. Concentration is acting’s most important skill. You must be concentrated and focused at all times, even when you are not saying a single line in a scene. It helps to find something in the scene to focus on, like an object that has meaning to the character or a feeling you want to sustain for the whole scene. Do not worry about the audience, do not worry about what people think, just concentrate on your character and your job as an actor.

2. Sense Memory is also known as Affective Memory. It is remembering how you felt when something significant happened to you (or if it hasn’t happened to you yet, how you imagine it would feel). For example: let’s say your character lost his mother 2 years ago and he is crying onstage because he misses her deeply and can’t stop thinking about her death. Well, you might try thinking back to

1. The Magic If.

Imagine yourself in the circumstances of the play as if they were real, and behave accordingly. This also means, for example, that you must not only imagine your character’s mother and father in the play, but imagine your mother and father in their place. Uta Hagen says: “If you were playing Hamlet, you would have to be able to say, ‘To be or not to be’ as if it meant your life.”

2. Private Moments.

You need to create private moments when you are alone onstage, even though you know full well that an audience of thousands is watching you. This means that people in the next row will see every expression on your face, every nuance of gesture as clearly as if they were standing next to you.

3. The Invisible Fourth Wall.

Uta Hagen says: “I talk about an invisible fourth wall because I don’t believe in walls at all between people.” When she teaches actors this technique she encourages them to look directly at their imaginary scene partner (rather than looking out into the auditorium) and imagine a glass wall between them through which they can see each other clearly and communicate honestly with each other without any interference from the audience or anybody else outside the fictional

Ackerman and Du Bois, Method Acting

This is the best book on acting. It’s good not just for actors, but also for writers, directors, etc.; it gives great insight into what separates a good performance from a bad one.

The first sentence in the introduction sets the tone: “There is no such thing as good acting.” What she means is that there are no techniques that can guarantee a good performance.

But it’s not all bad news. There are things you can do to make yourself better at acting. Some of these things are actually fun. And if you do them enough, they start to form habits. Then they don’t seem like work at all. They just become part of your routine, and you don’t even have to think about them anymore.

Uta Hagen calls these habits her rules. She has ten of them:

1. Work on your instrument every day

2. Use your instincts

3. Think about what you’re going to do before you do it

4. Listen and react with spontaneity

5. Be specific

6. Be real at all times; nothing artificial

7. Don’t explain or intellectualize; show and express

8. Don’t be afraid to take

1. “I prepare the best I can and then I throw it away.”

2. “Say every line as if it were the first time you’ve ever said it.”

3. “Don’t try to cover up for your mistakes.”

4. “Don’t go for the laugh at all costs.”

5. “There is no such thing as a small role, only small actors.”

6. “If you want to be an actor, learn your craft and be passionate about what you’re doing.”

7. “Be specific in your actions.”

8. “You need to be able to do things in a certain order but also to do them simultaneously.”

9. “Theatre is ritual and ritual is theatre.”

10. “Acting is not an intellectual process, but an instinctive one that requires a great deal of preparation so you can make instant choices based on your instincts.”

1. Actors should not be afraid to ask questions.

2. Stop asking yourself “Why?” and start asking “What if?”

3. The actor should write down everything he or she knows about the role, then bring it to the director for discussion.

4. Actors should read a play at least three times before rehearsals begin, in order to become familiar with the material and understand the arc of the story.

5. On opening night, actors must know their lines backwards and forwards; but once they’ve mastered them, they should forget how they learned them, and just focus on letting the words come out naturally instead of reciting them.

6. It is a good idea for actors to practice their roles in front of a mirror, so that they can see how their expressions might look on stage.

7. Actors must be aware of their physical appearance (hair, costume) as well as their vocal delivery and gestures during a performance – otherwise they risk becoming distracting to the audience rather than helping them focus on the story being told onstage.

8. Before an actor can become a great artist, they must first be a great craftsman who has put in years of hard work learning details about their trade like technical aspects of lighting