Working Out Your Acting Muscles: MEMORY

Memory
takes hard work and reviewing. I do havea few tricks below. It is like a muscle (which for me is very flabby now) and a gift too. The more you memorize the easier it gets. Our memories are a store house of acting information. So developing our memory capacities and capabilities are of utmost importance.

1. 24 hours: This is your life - Call out the hours in a day and starting from 6am by the hour and as the hour is called students will enact a typical activity or action found in a-day in their lives.
2. Emotional Entry - Participants stand outside the door and enter displaying the emotions given by Teacher. The rest try and guess.
3. Group Touch 2 Teams - Select familiar object or substance. Once team agrees they go onstage and play simultaneously in the space. Focusing energy on the object or substance.
   FEEL TEXTURE
   FEEL TEMPERATURE
   FEEL WEIGHT
   FEEL SHAPE
4. TASTE AND SMELL - sensory
   2 Teams- Select and agree on something simple to eat. One groups at a time go on stage to taste, smell and eat the food selected.
   CHEW THE FOOD
   FEEL IT TEXTURE IN YOUR MOUTH
   TASTE THE FOOD
   LET IT GO DOWN YOUR THROAT
   EVALUATION: Audience what are they eating? Players is that right?

MEMORIZATION TIPS:

1. Divide the scene into what's called "beats," like the scenes are music, each little section of the script has intentions that characters want. Chunks of scenes. Then memorize the chunks one at a time.
2. The last thing you do at night before the lights go out read or go over them, and then first thing when he wakes up - That's the navigator's tip. It really works.
3. Once the director "blocks" the scenes with the actors, it may be easier to remember the lines associated with "business" to do on stage (actions, walking, etc). That always helps me since I'm a kinesthetic learner.
4. I've also taped myself saying the cue lines (or all the other lines - because it's good as an actor to memorize what's going on in your head while others are talking even if you aren't speaking.) on the tape leave time to respond live to the tape with your real lines. That's the best way!
5. Rehearse with the tape while doing something else like folding laundry or cleaning out a drawer...something that helps him know he's got the lines down "cold."

Got any other exercises to build this muscle? Post it in the comments!