Uta Hagen: Substitution/Transference

818 Words2 Pages

Carolina Frittoli
Candidate Number 714
March 28th 2014

Uta Hagen - Substitution / Transference
Substitution / Transference is the process of incorporating your own experience in life in theatre. Finding counterparts such as your experiences with people, place and interactive things in a performance. Personalization can be achieved with this technique and make a great combination of personal experience and imagination. Actors use this technique to deeply get into character rather than making a facade to be the character. Realism and naturalism was found in this technique by having the actors emotion truly come out as themselves. Uta Hagen herself believed in that being a character is bad acting however, becoming the character was a great one.
Uta Hagen born on June 12th 1919, was a German-born American actress and a drama teacher who passed away on January 14th 2004 at age 84. Uta Hagen found herself in the theatrical element when she first joined a production Wisconsin High School finding her interest in theatre. Hagen started to develop deeper interest in theatre and started studying acting at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After leaving New York spending just one semester at her University, she got her first professional role of Hamlet. From that point in her life, she started to get more and more involved in different play and started to make goals in where she wanted to work which made her a great achiever and a actress. Uta Hagen was on the hollywood blacklist where she found opportunities to get involved in acting in several different theatres. Hagen showed involvement in broadway, television, movies and continuously rise as an actress. Hagen has achieved the Tony Award several times and was nominated to the American The...

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...ts to be comfortable and able to show their true selves as Uta Hagen wanted them to be.
Uta Hagen made the technique substitution / transference worldwide, having different practitioners and teachers to be able to share with their own students. A great thing to think about during this technique as an actor / student is what are you transferencing? Even if the student was to learn this technique for the first time, this technique can be easily used by just being yourself within the character. The actor is asked to become between imagination and reality. Using their own experience and inner self to become a new person. Uta Hagen wanted the real talent in an actor to shine through by having a transparent coating between the actor and the character. Substitution / transference was a great technique that Uta Hagen developed and was a great actor and a theatrical teacher.

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