Pandemic - a podcast by Barbara A. Brewer

 

Acting feels futile during a pandemic even though
some brave attempts have been aired on Youtube--Zoom performances patched together
into an odd mix. Editors are the true creators of actingperformances in films and television shows, but not for
stage performances, yet that is all we have now. 

Still I wanted to work. An actor acquaintance once told me that Uta Hagan wasn’t
very good in the roles she played. I had not seen her performances so couldneither agree or disagree. But reading her book, her exercises seemed quite good. Reading them, they sounded good as were her
reasons for creating them, solo exercises filled the gap between roles working on acting between roles,devising exercises that mitigated
acting problems. 

 

 I borrowed a DVD of Uta
Hagan’s acting class from the public library. It is a DVD of some of her exercises along with somescenes her students performed. It isn’t the first time I viewed the tape. I saw it a few years ago and thought it was good. But this time I sat with an actor friend who has a much more
critical eye than I. With him, I realized the scenes were terribleand the exercises little more than an attempt to get laughs from the audience.

 

The exercises, four that I can remember,were the following: waiting, creating the
fourth wall, talking to yourself, and creating a period piece through costume.Waiting was straight forward. The individual waited on what seemed like a
subway platform. He might have even had luggage of some type. AfterwardUta congratulated him and went up onto the studio stage, explaining to her
students that nobody just stands someplace,that we all do things. We look in the direction of the train.
We look at the other people, the advertising, the clocks, the computerizedsigns that tell when the next train is coming. That exercise was simple enough.

 

The next exercise was an actor finding something she lost. But
here the problem was that although the actor looked at all of the objects shebrought from home, she knew where the lost object was. As my acting colleague
said, somebody else should have hidden the object in a place she was likely tohave misplaced her object, but a spot unknown to her so that she really searched for the item.

 

Other exercises were creating a fourth wall and talking to oneself, which Hagan claimed we all do. As actors performed their exercises, the
audience laughed while Hagan explained that we laugh because the exercise hasoccurred to us in life. But the actors played for laughs. They chose exercises that they could make funny and not necessarily
particularly honest work. Honest work probably wouldn’t entertain an audiencebut are good practice for concentration and attention to detail.

 

In my opinion, the only authentic exercise was one in which the actor dressed
in an 1880’s costume in front of the audience. Shedressed as if the clothing-- bustle, laced up corset and shoes—were
something she wore everyday.

 

The scenes performed were worse.  Hagan only allowed
five minutes of performance because as she said, if a scenegoes on longer than five minutes, the actor is directing him or herself instead of interacting. But the actors in these scenes were
not interacting. They either stood in their places and yelled lines at each other or afterher intervention, got caught up in business so again they weren't
interacting.

 

In the future, I will be more scrutinizing when I read
acting method books.

 

 Theatre in San
Francisco mainly has been spectacle, much like Uta Hagan’s DVD, broad playing that is aboutlaughs or it is technical effects and innovation. But neither
will persuade a younger audience to embrace theatre, and now with the Internetas the main attraction, stage actors have a large bill to fill. 

 

Further episodes of San Francisco Theatre Scene (TM)

Further podcasts by Barbara A. Brewer

Website of Barbara A. Brewer