Uta Hagen’s Nine Questions: How to Use Them on a Role

Your scene study teacher hands out a sheet with nine questions on it and says, “Answer these for your character before Thursday.” You write “Who am I? Cecily.” Then you stare at the second line for ten minutes, because “What time is it?” seems like a trick question.

It isn’t a trick. Many guides to Uta Hagen’s nine questions stop at the list. The hard part is answering them in a way that changes what you do on stage.

Here is the short version. Answer each question in the first person, from the text first and your imagination second, for this scene rather than the whole play. Make every answer specific enough to act on. Below, all nine are answered for one real scene, so you can see what a usable answer looks like.

The nine questions, as they’re usually taught

Hagen was a Tony-winning stage actor and a teacher at HB Studio in New York, the school Herbert Berghof founded in 1945. The version most classes hand out, laid out in Theatrefolk’s guide to the nine questions, runs like this:

1. Who am I?
2. What time is it?
3. Where am I?
4. What surrounds me?
5. What are the given circumstances?
6. What are my relationships?
7. What do I want?
8. What is in my way?
9. What do I do to get what I want?

The wording drifts from teacher to teacher. Some say “What are my circumstances?” or “What’s my obstacle?”, and some lists swap in “Why now?” as a question of its own. Don’t worry about which wording is official. A useful way to read the order: the first six build the world, and the last three make it playable.

Nine questions or six steps?

Hagen wrote two books on acting. Respect for Acting came out in 1973, written with Haskel Frankel. A Challenge for the Actor followed in 1991. Most teaching summaries, including StarNow’s overview of her technique, trace the nine questions to the first book and say she refined them into six steps in the second.

The six steps are real and still in use. The exercises part of A Challenge for the Actor has a section called “The Six Steps,” and HB Studio’s Scene Study 1 class uses them as a guide to finding a real inner connection to a character and choosing actions. As summaries usually word them, they are:

1. Who am I?
2. What are the circumstances?
3. What are my relationships?
4. What do I want?
5. What is my obstacle?
6. What do I do to get what I want?

Put the two lists side by side and the difference is mostly packaging. Time, place, and surroundings, which get their own questions in the nine, are folded into “circumstances” in the six. If your class uses one list, use that one. Working alone, use the nine: they force the small physical answers the six let you skip.

How to answer them so the answers are useful

True answers can still be useless. “Who am I? A young woman. Where am I? A garden.” Nothing there changes how you move or speak. Four rules help.

• Answer in the first person, present tense. “I am Jack’s ward,” not “Cecily is Jack’s ward.”
• Start with what the text says, then choose. Mark which answers are facts from the script and which are your choices. Our guide to given circumstances explains how to keep facts, clues, and choices apart.
• Answer for this scene. The time, the want, and the obstacle change from scene to scene.
• Be specific enough to do. “Afternoon” is a fact. “Teatime, ten minutes after the happiest moment of my life” is something you can play.

Hagen’s approach leans on specificity: the small, observed detail of daily life rather than ideas about a character. The questions are how you carry that detail into an imaginary world.

All nine, answered for Cecily in the tea scene

Here’s a scene that rewards every question: the tea party in Act II of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Cecily Cardew has just met Gwendolen Fairfax. Both believe they are engaged to a man called Ernest Worthing. They have just found out, and the butler has come out to lay tea.

MERRIMAN. Shall I lay tea here as usual, Miss?

CECILY. Yes, as usual.

GWENDOLEN. Are there many interesting walks in the vicinity, Miss Cardew?

CECILY. Oh! yes! a great many. From the top of one of the hills quite close one can see five counties.

GWENDOLEN. Five counties! I don’t think I should like that; I hate crowds.

CECILY. I suppose that is why you live in town?

[…]

GWENDOLEN. Personally I cannot understand how anybody manages to exist in the country, if anybody who is anybody does. The country always bores me to death.

CECILY. Ah! This is what the newspapers call agricultural depression, is it not? I believe the aristocracy are suffering very much from it just at present. It is almost an epidemic amongst them, I have been told. May I offer you some tea, Miss Fairfax?

GWENDOLEN. Thank you. Detestable girl! But I require tea!

CECILY. Sugar?

GWENDOLEN. No, thank you. Sugar is not fashionable any more.

CECILY. Cake or bread and butter?

GWENDOLEN. Bread and butter, please. Cake is rarely seen at the best houses nowadays.

CECILY. Hand that to Miss Fairfax.

GWENDOLEN. You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and […] you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.

CECILY. To save my poor, innocent, trusting boy from the machinations of any other girl there are no lengths to which I would not go.

Source: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act II (public domain; Standard Ebooks edition). Stage directions are left out; “Detestable girl!” is an aside. You can read the whole play on our Earnest script page.

Now take Cecily through the list. Facts come from the text; choices are labeled.

1. Who am I?

I’m Cecily Cardew, “only just eighteen,” as my guardian Jack puts it in Act I. I’ve no parents, I live in the country, and I keep a diary of my own romantic life, much of which I have invented. Choice: I’m used to being the only young woman in this house, and the most interesting person in it.

2. What time is it?

Teatime on a summer afternoon; the act is set in July. More useful: it’s about ten minutes since “Ernest” proposed to me. I say so myself (“exactly ten minutes ago”). Choice: the happiest moment of my life is still warm, and it’s being taken away over the teacups.

3. Where am I?

The garden of the Manor House at Woolton, in Hertfordshire. Jack gives the address in Act I. It’s my home. Gwendolen is a guest here, which means I’m the hostess, and she has to accept whatever I serve her.

4. What surrounds me?

The stage directions describe an old-fashioned garden full of roses, and a large yew tree. Earlier in the act I tell Ernest I accepted him “under this dear old tree here.” Closer in: a tea table, sugar tongs, a cake, bread and butter, and two servants, Merriman and a footman, laying it all out. Choice: the servants are the most important thing in the garden, because they’re watching.

5. What are the given circumstances?

Facts: I’ve been engaged to Ernest, in my diary, since February 14th. He proposed in person today. Gwendolen says he proposed to her yesterday afternoon at 5:30, and she has her diary to prove it. Neither of us knows yet that two different men have been calling themselves Ernest. The moment before: we have just dropped “Cecily” and “Gwendolen” for “Miss Cardew” and “Miss Fairfax.”

That last fact is where your moment before lives. Cecily doesn’t start this exchange calm. It begins seconds after a row that only the arrival of the tea has stopped.

6. What are my relationships?

To Gwendolen: a stranger who told me a few minutes ago that we were going to be great friends, a London lady from a grander world, and now my rival. To Ernest: my fiancé, my “poor, innocent, trusting boy.” To Merriman and the footman: they serve my guardian’s house, and I can’t make a scene in front of them until they’ve gone. Choice: to the garden, which is mine. Relationships can include objects and events, not just people.

7. What do I want?

I want Gwendolen to give Ernest up and leave. The scene tells you this is the right want, because a few lines after the cake Cecily says it almost aloud: she suggests she is “trespassing on your valuable time” and that Gwendolen surely has other calls to make. Our guide to finding your objective covers how to test a want like this one.

8. What is in my way?

Three things. Gwendolen, who has a prior claim and a diary to back it. My own position: I’m the hostess, so I can’t throw a guest out. And the servants: while they’re here, everything has to sound like ordinary politeness. They go out after “Hand that to Miss Fairfax,” and only then does either of us drop the manners. The obstacle is why the scene is funny. Two women want to fight and are only allowed to serve tea.

9. What do I do to get what I want?

I use hospitality as a weapon. I boast about my countryside, and when she sneers at it, I needle her with a remark about “agricultural depression” among the aristocracy. Then I turn the tea itself into an attack. The stage directions have Cecily put four lumps of sugar in the cup after Gwendolen refuses sugar, and cut her a very large slice of cake after she asks for bread and butter.

Merriman and the footman go out after “Hand that to Miss Fairfax.” Only then does Gwendolen call it out, and only then do I stop pretending and say exactly what I’m doing, and why: there are no lengths to which I wouldn’t go.

Now do Gwendolen

Run the same nine for Gwendolen. She’s the guest in hostile territory, bound by the same politeness, and she fights back with fashion and town manners. When both actors have done the work, the scene stops being two people trading witty lines and becomes two people fighting with sugar tongs.

Turn the answers into rehearsal

Three ways to get the answers into rehearsal:

• Make the objects real first. Cecily’s tactics are physical: tongs, sugar, a knife, a plate. Rehearse the tea business with real props until your hands know it. Hagen’s object exercises are built for exactly this kind of work.
• Play the servants. Merriman has one line here, but decide where he is at every moment. The stage directions send him and the footman out after “Hand that to Miss Fairfax”; notice how your voice changes once they’ve gone.
• Mark the turn. Find the line where the want stops being hidden. Here it’s Cecily’s last speech in the excerpt, after the servants have left. Everything before it is attack dressed as manners; that line drops the disguise.

Mistakes that waste the questions

Answering for the play instead of the scene. “What do I want? To be loved.” That may be true of Cecily across the whole play, but it gives you nothing to do with a sugar bowl.

Writing adjectives instead of facts. “I am charming and naive” tells you how to play the result. “I keep a diary of an engagement I invented” tells you who you are, and the charm can take care of itself.

Skipping the boring questions. Actors race to “What do I want?” because it feels like acting. But Cecily’s want only becomes playable once you know it’s teatime, it’s her house, and the servants are watching.

Know the words so you can play the circumstances

There’s one practical obstacle the nine questions don’t cover: the lines themselves. Wilde’s dialogue is precise, and a paraphrase kills the joke. If half your attention is searching for the next word, none of it is left for the servants, the tongs, or the woman across the table.

Offbook helps with that part. Upload the scene, pick Cecily, and realistic voices read Gwendolen and Merriman, then wait for your line before playing the next cue. Hide your lines as they settle, and hide the whole script for a final test before rehearsal. Once the words come on their own, your attention is free for the tea and the woman across the table.

If you want a quick start without uploading anything, our free line memorizer turns your lines into first-letter cues. Try it on Gwendolen’s long complaint about the cake.

Questions actors ask

Do I have to answer all nine for every scene?

For a scene you’re performing or presenting in class, yes, at least briefly. Some answers, like who you are, carry over from scene to scene. Others, like what time it is and what you want, almost always change. A few lines per question is plenty.

What if the script doesn’t answer a question?

Then you choose, and you mark it as a choice. Pick something that fits every fact the script does give you and that gives you something to play. If a later rehearsal or a director’s note contradicts your choice, change it.

Can I use the nine questions for an audition?

Yes, and quickly. With sides, answer the questions in a few words each, giving most of your time to the time, place, relationship, want, and obstacle. Our guide to breaking down audition sides boils the work down to six quick questions for sides.