Remember

As I get further along into acting, I find myself confronted more and more with the necessity of memorizing. For live performances and for the screen, I have found it necessary to memorize not just lines, but actions and positions. It is challenging, although I find that it is within my ability. Even in improv comedy, it has sometimes been necessary. In one form of improv, called the Armando, one must pluck details from a story and create scenes from them. It can be rather hard to remember those details.

In scripted acting, I have had my fair share of lines to learn. Doing my one man show, there was twenty minutes of uninterrupted material, but I was lucky enough to be memorizing my own material, and so I had a considerable margin for error. If I were to have forgotten lines and improvised new ones in order to cover my mistake, who would have been to say that I had failed to deliver my lines as intended? Perhaps I had done a last-minute re-write.

I now face the words of another writer. I must fulfill their intentions, and that means that I must remember and deliver every word that they wrote. They may grant latitude if things play out another way and it works out, but the margin for error is considerably slimmer. It is not quite at the level of Shakespeare, the integrity of whose words is inviolable, but it's tougher. I'm confident enough so long as I apply myself.

What methods do I employ? Well, I read the words again and again, until I have at least some of them. I use those ones as a foothold, reaching out further and further for more until I have them all. When each one is in my grasp, I can begin to imbue them with some kind of performance quality. I'm no fantastic actor (and count myself terribly lucky that I don't look like anybody), but at least I have in me as much ability as I've above described.