The actor must know that since he, himself, is the instrument, he must play on it to serve the character with the same effortless dexterity with which the violinist makes music on his. Just because he doesn’t look like a violin is no reason to assume his techniques should be thought of as less difficult.
UTA HAGENMarlon was so sensitive, you thought the poor guy just had a bad education.
More Uta Hagen Quotes
-
-
For some strange reason, we believe that anyone who lived before we were born was in some peculiar way a different kind of human being from any we have come in contact with in our own lifetime.
UTA HAGEN -
If you want a bourgeois existence, you shouldn’t be an actor. You’re in the wrong profession.
UTA HAGEN -
Marlon was so sensitive, you thought the poor guy just had a bad education.
UTA HAGEN -
Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one’s own experience and sensations, to make one’s self heard and seen.
UTA HAGEN -
I think, by and large, the level of acting is mediocre. When I go to the theatre, I get so angry. I don’t go.
UTA HAGEN -
It must be noted that it is often the colleague or direct disciple of a new thinker who gets stuck in literal interpretations of the work, tending to freeze the new ideas and language into an inflexible, static condition.
UTA HAGEN -
All tedious research is worth one inspired moment.
UTA HAGEN -
I’m a bad liar; I don’t know what to say backstage.
UTA HAGEN -
Since the time of the ancient Greeks a democracy has depended on its philosophers and creative artists. It can only flourish by continuous probing, prodding, and questioning of the social conditions under which man exists and tries to better himself.
UTA HAGEN -
We were not allowed to say, Screw, but we could say, Hump the hostess, because hump is in Shakespeare.
UTA HAGEN -
I love going to the movies; I love watching good movie actors. They must know something I don’t.
UTA HAGEN -
To rebel or revolt against the status quo is in the very nature of an artist.
UTA HAGEN -
Awards don’t really mean much.
UTA HAGEN -
Maybe the one I enjoyed playing most was A Month in the Country.
UTA HAGEN -
Once in a while, there’s stuff that makes me say, That’s what theatre’s about. It has to be a human event on the stage, and that doesn’t happen very often.
UTA HAGEN