Introduction

In this portfolio I will be documenting my development throughout the Advanced Acting module and reflect on how my skills have progressed in preparation for the professional industry. I will be exploring how my training since the start of third year has helped me develop my acting technique, create more truthful performances, and become more flexible across different acting styles and mediums. I will also be discussing what I found challenging and what I had success in with these different approaches to performing and the ways these skills may benefit me in future practice and how each area has contributed to my overall growth as a performer. Throughout the year so far, we explored the techniques of Uta Hagen, Shakespeare text and performance, screen acting and how to approach monologues – both classical and contemporary. I will be showcasing what I discovered within these explorations with evidence and videos of exercises and performances of pieces I’ve either performed or created within class or during practice. 

Uta Hagen

Uta Hagen believed that in order to be a truthful actor you need to have not only a continuously engaged curiosity surrounding the human condition – both culturally and socially – but also a deep sense of self awareness. (Hagen, 1991) I initially had a lot of anticipation when I found out that we were going to be exploring Uta Hagen as a practitioner after having very briefly touched on some of her exercises in both first and second year. The idea that you cannot truly know your character and give an honest portrayal of their story before you know yourself and your own habits was fascinating to me in theory but admittedly difficult for me to fully grasp the idea of in practice. How can you use your own habits and reactions to portray someone that is simply a completely different person to you. But it makes perfect sense to have to understand your own habits and how you do things and react to different scenarios and climates in order to give a genuinely authentic portrayal of another person doing those things. Something that I found interesting whilst exploring Uta Hagan’s techniques was the use of the fourth side. We explored this through the phone call exercise. At first the visualisation of each of the three points was something that I found a bit challenging to come up with but then eventually with more practice it started to become easier. Having a point to look at not only in different areas beyond the audience, but also in the wings on either side of the stage to create a bigger world was something that I had never really explored in detail before. But after doing it myself and observing my peers it was evident how much it contributes to a realistic and believable performance from an audience perspective and how it takes your character and performance from being two dimensional into something with a bit more substance. It encourages you to keep your performance up and out for an audience to see which is far more exposing since it opens you up without closing them off. There was an exercise we explored that I was uncertain about how to approach it was the one where we had to do nothing. It initially gave me pause because as a person I’m not ever really in a situation where I’m having to wait with absolutely nothing to do. Usually, I’d have my phone or some music as a distraction to keep me occupied and be able to sit down or lean on something but to then be given an exercise where I wasn’t allowed to rely on that as a crutch was something that posed a bit of a challenge to me. I set my exercise waiting on a train platform, but the train was delayed, and I had no option but to wait for it. Pairing this exercise with the use of the fourth side taught me a lot about the importance of being able to do nothing in a performance and having that be the part of it that’s entertaining. In the end the exercise ended up becoming one of my favourites and I think it’s something that I’ll definitely use going forward when I get new characters to explore what they would do in a situation where they’re forced to wait around doing nothing. I think it’ll be useful in helping me figure out what kind of person they are. Whether they’re more restless and if they find having nothing to do uncomfortable or not. I personally think the exercises that I found most interesting and useful whilst exploring Hagen’s techniques were the endowment and bringing the outside in exercises. These were the two exercises that forced me to look at myself in my everyday life the most and really consider and observe my own behaviour, habits and reactions to then translate those things into a performance. The idea of having to bring an outside element – such as heat or cold – onto the stage in a truthful manner is something that I don’t think I’ve ever really explored until we put it into practice. I think it’s definitely a useful skill to practise as there will be instances in the future where I’m sure I’ll be playing a character that must react to the weather, and I’ll need to make sure that I’m not doing a caricature of it. There is a video example of me combining the different exercises we explored over the past few months and layering them over my character for third year shows. This was useful because it gave me a sense of how she might respond to this situation and environment whilst still discovering who she is as a person.  

Uta Hagen Videos

During this process something that I struggled with the concept of is Uta Hagen’s belief that you should never address individual people during a performance which we explored when doing the task where we had to talk to the audience. (Hagen, 2001) I don’t particularly agree with this idea. I think there are instances during a performance depending on the show and character you’re portraying where it’s appropriate for them to address members of the audience without them having to exist at the same time as the world your character is living in. For example, when I was playing Clopin in second year it made perfect sense for me to address individual members of the audience because of the storytelling aspect of the character and the fact that the story I was sharing with them was one that my character had retold over and over again throughout multiple points in time whilst also existing at the time the story was set. I can understand that this doesn’t apply to every show or character but the idea that you should never address the individual is something that at this moment in time I simply cannot subscribe to. One of the biggest challenges I came across whilst exploring Uta Hagen techniques was the discipline of creating and then rehearsing two-minute scenes to make it a repeatable performance. It was somewhat different compared to what we explored with Meisner in first and second year which I felt had more of a feel and react in the room approach rather than a repetition of practice approach. I’m looking forward to seeing how and if I’ll be able to merge the two techniques together in future practice. It was also just quite difficult to come up with and remember things that I had done or said in the past – this was especially prevalent in the phone call exercise. I just think I didn’t have as much self-awareness as I initially thought I did. I feel like throughout this past year I have become much more aware of myself and my habits and routines which has helped me better explore how a character may react to things. I agree with Uta Hagen, maybe it isn’t possible to truly give an honest performance if you don’t understand yourself first. I’ll definitely be taking a lot of her techniques forward with me in my future practise.  

Monologue’s

One of the other areas we’ve explored this year is monologues and how to approach the text and break it down in a way that makes it more digestible. We did this with Tyrell where he gave us an exercise called the stop and go, which entails moving or stopping on each thought change without hesitating. The change of thought being each time the sentence ended. We initially did this using Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be’ monologue. This was a really useful exercise when it came to understanding how the character was processing their thoughts and emotions. I actually found it more challenging using this exercise with my contemporary piece than I did with my classical. This was partially due to the fact that my contemporary monologue – Joey’s speech in Precious Little Talent by Ella Hickson – had far more drawn-out thoughts which made it harder to interpret what she was feeling from moment to moment. This exercise really opened my eyes to that fact a character’s thought can continue long after they’ve finished saying their line. Playing with this when doing Hamlet’s speech really helped emphasise the weight of him contemplating suicide. I think this task might be especially useful if I ever have a character in the future that is struggling with some kind of conflict or inner turmoil, and they have to process their thoughts. I’ve included a video of me exploring the exercise using Hamlet’s monologue.  

Stop & Go Video

Screen Acting

A new medium that we explored this year was screen acting. I was really looking forward to starting work on this realm of performing as it’s something that I’ve always been very interested in exploring and it’s an area that I very much want to go into at some point in the future. There was an exercise that I got to explore in the very first session with Keeley. We were given a duologue piece of text with no character context other than what was written on the page. It was a scene between a therapist and an unnamed woman and in order to help me connect to the character and find some kind of reality in her story we did a memory exercise. It was used to connect the character to what felt like a real memory so that when delivering my lines in the scene I’d be able to relate my feelings towards my scene partner to an actual memory my character had. Keeley would ask me questions in an attempt to prompt the various images of the memory to surface in my mind. She’d ask me questions like what I was wearing and what I was seeing in front of me. It’s one of the most interesting experiences I’ve ever had whilst exploring a character. It genuinely felt like I was reliving a memory that I had had. I wasn’t pre-empting any of my answers or trying to produce any on the spot, they genuinely just came to me. After doing this exercise and then going into the scene I felt a complete shift in my energy and body compared to the first time we ran the duologue. It felt like there was a genuine, tangible connection to this character where previously there was none. I’m not sure how I’d be able to navigate a character’s memory in the future without someone prompting the questions but it’s definitely a technique that I want to explore more of. Especially when connecting a character to their past in order to play their present. 

I think one of the biggest obstacles I ran into whilst working onscreen was how different vulnerability and scale become compared to working on stage. It feels significantly more vulnerable and exposing performing on camera because of the amount of people who are watching at such close proximity. With stage, you may have more eyes on you but there’s the barrier of the distance between the stage and the audience. Screen doesn’t necessarily feel like it provides that. It was also interesting having to navigate emotions in a much subtler and contained way, as the camera captures even the most minute of changes. This is where it was useful having the opportunity for multiple takes. This is something that you really don’t get when you’re performing on stage. What you do is what you get and there’s no exploring or adapting that once you’re outside of a rehearsal space. Being able to explore different avenues of the emotion and let it develop whilst having the option of multiple takes is invaluable when creating your performance. My first experience with this was when I was performing my monologue from Fleabag. The second take that I did captured an emotion that Keeley as the director wanted to explore further and so she called for another take straight away and this resulted in a genuine, raw connection to the text that I feel like I hadn’t found with the previous takes. You can see the difference between take two and take one in the videos. Whilst both have potential and show slightly different avenues of this character’s state of mind, the second one was the one that the director was happiest with because she let me run with the emotion that I started feeling at the end of take two. 

Fleabag Take 2 & 3

I think that having good direction can really make or break a performance for you as an actor. At times I found it really hard to connect to the character I was playing and being on camera and having each detail of my emotion picked up made me feel a lot more pressured to get it right whilst still maintaining a truthful and authentic performance. I brought in another monologue that I had done previously and had brought into screen a few weeks prior but didn’t really enjoy or connect with because I wanted to give myself the challenge of seeing if it was just a one off bad acting day or if it was just that this dialogue wasn’t meant to be translated from stage to screen. I did Sophie’s monologue by Joanna Murray-Smith and at first, I found it hard to connect with the words and emotions for a second time, but Mike kept workshopping it with me and giving me different points to hit and think about whilst doing it that completely changed the way I had done it before. Saying lines quietly to myself, being cold and then letting the emotion and insecurities take over and the end resulted in a reaction I’ve never had with the piece before. I laughed at the ridiculousness of what I was saying as my character. Seeing the recording played back and watching the nuances and subtleties pay off felt really rewarding.  

Honor Take 3

I think something that will continue to be a challenge for me until I’ve had the chance to practice is more are the technical demands that come with screen acting, such as hitting marks and maintaining continuity. This added another layer of pressure, forcing me to balance truthful emotional work with precise physical control. This process reinforced how screen acting requires deep internal honesty while remaining technically disciplined and contained. 

Shakespeare

One of the areas that I was looking forward to exploring more of this year was Shakespeare. We started by breaking down the stories that we knew into a more modern language, explaining them in a way that we could understand them before even approaching the text. We then moved on to going through the speech line by line and writing down any words we didn’t understand and then using the text surrounding them to infer their meaning before checking definitions. This was helpful because it helped me to actively engage with the text and the language rather than just relying on translations that often times I feel are way too over simplified. I realised that I have a much better understanding of Shakespearean text than I initially thought I did. The language at times feels quite inaccessible due to how it’s taught and it being claimed to be for certain types of people. (Raymond, 2019) However, discovering what original pronunciation was made it feel so much more accessible and relatable. (Crystal, 2019) Going on to do my speech completely in my own accent rather than putting an accent on helped it sit more in my body, and I related to the text more by doing so. We also explored the part that imagery plays in the text. It allowed the speech to become more concrete, as the literal pictures it creates helped me access the text in a way that I was then able to relate to feelings and images, giving me clear emotional and physical impulses to play. Getting the speech on its feet through blocking and experimenting in the space revealed discoveries that would not have emerged whilst sitting down, particularly regarding how thought and movement interact. There were ideas that I had for movement that I initially wrote down. I had a sense and a feel of how I thought things should move and feel in the speech I chose – Queen Maragret from King Henry VI Part 3 – that when I put into practice either worked really well or lead to new discoveries of how certain lines felt in the body. It helped with embodiment which is something that I’ve found I’ve struggled with in the past. I then layered on top of my speech what we did with Tyrell – breaking down the thoughts into sections. I did it both where the punctuation ended and where her thoughts changed. This was such a helpful task when creating my performance because it allowed me to think about how each change of thought affected my physical and emotional response. How can I then change tactics to get what I want from the character opposite from me when he’s not reacting in the way I want him to. You can see in the video how I used these explorations to inform my performance of the piece.  

Queen Margaret Text Analysis

Queen Margaret – Monologue

Conclusion

Overall, I think this module has significantly deepened my understanding of myself as a performer and has strengthened my ability to work truthfully across a range of styles and mediums. Exploring Uta Hagen’s techniques has increased my self-awareness and reinforced the importance of honest behaviour, discipline, and specificity in performance, while also challenging my preconceptions about vulnerability, stillness, and repetition. My work on monologues and text analysis has improved my ability to break down language, track thought, and make active, playable choices, particularly when navigating inner conflict. Screen acting introduced a new level of exposure and technical responsibility, pushing me to balance emotional honesty with precision and adaptability, and highlighting the value of strong direction and collaborative exploration. Shakespeare work allowed me to overcome previous preconceptions surrounding the text by approaching it practically, physically, and personally, leading to greater confidence, embodiment, and connection to the language. While there are areas I recognise will continue to require practice – particularly my technical screen skills and merging different methodologies – I feel that this training has made me a more flexible, curious, and resilient performer. Moving forward into the professional industry, I will carry these techniques with me as practical tools to approach new characters, texts, and working environments with confidence, openness, and a commitment to truthful storytelling. 

Bibliography

Galen, J. (2015b) ‘Uta Hagen Acting Class part 2’, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfeAcUyZk0I (Accessed: 16 December 2025). 

Galen, J. (2015) ‘Uta Hagen’s Acting Class part 1’, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SseJhOPV9nY (Accessed: 30 January 2020). 

Murray-Smith, J. (1999) Honour. Dramatists Play Service, Inc. 

Raymond, D. (2019) #SuchStuff season 3 episode 6: Who is Shakespeare for? | Blogs & features, Shakespeare’s Globe. Available at: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2019/04/12/such-stuff-s2-e6/. 

Shakespeare on Toast (2014) ‘Original Pronunciation – Hamlet | To Be, or not to be… | Ben Crystal’, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M. 

Shakespeare, W., Mowat, B.A. and Werstine, P. (2011) Henry VI Part 3. Simon and Schuster. 

Uta Hagen (1991) A Challenge for the Actor. Scribner’s ; Toronto. 

Waller-Bridge, P. (2019) Fleabag. Theatre Communications Group.