Actors, directors, and teachers now have the opportunity to study with the legendary actress and teacher Uta Hagen for the first time on DVD. Shot over the course of two years, the interaction between Ms. Hagen and the actors and audience puts the viewer right in the room. All ten of her celebrated Object Exercises are clarified and performed. Jack Lemmon, Whoopi Goldberg and Christine Lahti, among others - all former students - recall their classes with Ms. Hagen and her enduring influence on their work. As Ms. Hagen herself states, When I believe that there is a human being in action up there, in that moment, alive - right there - then I get spellbound. When you really achieve that understanding of human nature, the ability to place yourselves in the shoes of another human being and reveal that life onstage, is to me the ultimate experience.
2 DVDS, 200 MINUTES TOTAL! Uta Hagen has received the Tony and Drama Critics Awards for her roles in Odets The Country Girl and Albee s Who s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. She won an Obie Award for her role in Mrs. Klein and was awarded a Tony for Special Lifetime Achievement and the National Endowment for the Arts Medal of Honor. Because I love the theater, and believe it to be not only the actor s training but testing ground, it is with great pleasure that I recommend this set. - Meryl Streep Here is Ms. Hagen at her extraordinary best - witty, compassionate, inspired and inspiring. Will watching this make you a better actor, director or teacher? Yes, yes and yes! - David Hyde Pierce How fortunate that Hagen s teaching has been captured on film ... This is an important work. - Library Journal It is absolutely required viewing. - Richard Brown, Professor of Humanities, New York University