Representational/Presenational Acting

[nodaybut2day1205]

Posted: 5/2/07 at 7:56pm

I'm doing a paper on Repect for Acting by Uta Hagen, and in it she talks about the difference between representational and presentation acting....but I was doing some research online, and I'm finding a lot of things that say that the 2 kinds of acting are actually opposite of what she says. According to her, "The Representational actor deliberately chooses to imitate or illustrate the character's behavior. The Presentational actor attempts to reveal human behavior through a use of himself, through an understanding of himself and consequently and understanding of the character he is portraying. The Representational actor finds a form based on an objective result for the character, which he then carefully watches as he executes it. The Presentational actor trusts that a form will result from identification with the character and discovery of his character's actions, and works on stage for a moment-to-moment subjective experience."

Butttttt here is one example of something I found online (don't worry, wikipedia isn't the only thing i'm basing my question on, there are many others that say the same thing): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentational_acting

I'd trust a book over the internet any day of the week, but they are saying the complete opposite thing!

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 5/2/07 at 8:07pm

in an oversimplified nutshell, I would say that presentational acting is when an actor is making his choices and wants for the benefit of the audience and representational acting is when the actor is making his choices and wants for the benefit of the character he wants something from (which could be the audience).

from an audience pov, most comedy, farce, musical comedy, shakespeare, classics are presentational

contemporary dramas and film are representational

but I wouldn't want to generalize this as it's about style--you could easily encounter the opposite of the above depending on the school of thought by the theatre company or director.

but this is how I see it :)