Actors' Memory Secrets

Actors & The Laws of Memory I sat at this Broadway Theater and saw an impossible one-man show. Impossiblenbecause the actor recited his lines for 90 minutes without making one (1) memory mistake. Can you imagine you-or-me reciting Shakespeare from memory withoutnreading off a prompting screen? We have come to accept as commonplacenactors who were high school dropouts or C students in college, possessingneidectic imagery – photographic memory. Except they don’t have photographic memory at all, nor did they did beat themselves up to memorize their lines by rote practice. Q. What do actors know about memory that can help their audience nimprove learning in school and career? What can an ordinary actor (not a superstar) teach you and me about cognition and memory retention and retrieval? n The Secret Actors focus on getting the meaning of their words (script-lines), not memorizingnthe specific words. How does a student memorize the Gettysburg Address? He/she rereads it about 100 times, speaks the text out loud repetitively, and agonizesnover it for a week. The next day they lose half their recall and start again. An actor focuses on his/her moment-to-moment feelings and physical reactionsn(face and body) to what the text means. An actor looks for the ‘intentions and objectives behind the lines, not the words themselves. Who Says So Helga and Tony Noice, professors at Elmhurst College and Indiana State University,nand published by the jou al for the Association for Psychological Science, 1.25.06 They teach that acting is not pretending, it is being real on stage. When a great acto threatens the women in the scene with a gun, he is feeling the real emotions of trying to intimidate the other actor. His face, hands, heartbeat react to real feelings not make-believe. The actor’s job is the affect the other actor, the audience and him/herself. An actor must be maste of the mental-movies of imagination going on in their brain. If he/she produces the mental-imagery, the emotion follows. Acting is living the lines, not pretending. Another Acting Secret Study your lines as if you were going to teach the information and knowledge in them to your kid or best friend. Not the words, but what is behind the words, thenideas and the purpose of the ideas. Can you explain the meaning of your lines,nso another human can clearly and easily understand the ideas? Research Students who study text with the goal of teaching it to a kid or business associate,nusing mental imagery (imagination) to convey meaning to another, produce up to 40% higher memory retention. Teaching is good for the instructor as well as thenstudent. If you have such a deep understanding of your dialogue you can instruct another,nyou do not have to memorize because you have internalized the meaning of the text. Beats in a Script Actors take their dialogue and divide (chunk) it into a number of logically linked “beats’ (intentions or objectives) in relation (reaction) to the other actor in the scene. The actor feels the intentions of the other person. Acting is really reacting to another actor on stage or one you are mentally visualizing. The words (lines) come automatically from the actor’s mental experience of reacting to the other person’s intention. You read his/her facenand body language and your lines flow like honey. When the actor is ‘actively experiencing’ the scene, the audience finds him/hernreal and convincing. The actor is as real as life, not acting, and we are living thenscene on stage with them. Senior Citizen Cognitive Decline Teaching Seniors the tricks of actors appears to improve learning and memory. It reduces cognitive decline and improves cognitive (thinking) reserve, and their quality of life. A four-week program showed improved word-recall and problem-solving abilities. Scientific research using a control upheld significant improvement. Their improvement lasted four-months when a renewal class was required. Emotion Memory is significantly related to Mental-Imagery and Association of new ideasnwith old knowledge in long-term storage. Link your memory with emotion, action and perception (understanding, meaning). Lines learned while engaged in walking across the stage during you scene, are recalled up to 80% greater, than learning lines by rote (repetition). Physical (body language) movements make leaning easier. Later, in deliveringnyour lines, the actor does not have to walk across the stage, the lines are on auto-pilot. Skimming-Scanning-Screening Instead of rereading your dialogue one-hundred-and-one times in a row,nthere is a simply strategy of cognitive-mapping. Reading your text three (3) times, first very fast (skimming) for main ideas and meaning, second, scanning slowly for specific details, and third, very slowly (snailing) as an final review of the key ideas and language. There is a system to Skim-Scan-Screen that makes test-taking a breeze, and helpsndouble long-term memory. Ask us how. Endwords We suggest it is a valuable skill for students and executives to read-and-remembe three (3) books, articles and reports in the time others can hardly finish one. The 20-Minute Hour can improve your career path. Ask us how.nncopyright © 2008 H. Bernard Wechsle www.speedlea ing.orgnhbw@speedlea ing.orgn-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------nnnn