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This blog serves to give acting ideas and advice to actors of all ages, especially young ones. This blogs author is J.T. Turner, actor, director, teacher and member of AEA, SAG and AFTRA. I hope you find the posts useful, and please pass along the blog address to anyone you think might benefit from it!

Sunday, February 28, 2010

I am feeling listless.......

 A popular topic here in Advice to the Player is Memory. It is such a critical skill for an actor, dancer, singer, speaker. Today we will chat about dealing with a list, this info could naturally be used in other ways as well.

Many times as a performer you will encounter a list. A character will have a list of 2-3 ways they feel about someone, or a role requires you to rattle of the 10 places your character has lived, or a song has 4 verses about different men the singer has been involved with.

Here is a bit of advice about the dreaded list. I have some experience with this, as I preform A Christmas Carol every year. No one is like Dickens for lists, "cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy withall...." " froze his old features,  turned his eyes red, his thin lips blue, stiffened his gait..", "
Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. "
 get the idea.

As with any memorization, a good key is that most of us memorize best if we can visualize something. And the madder, crazier the imagery, the easier it is to remember.Recently I worked with a private student on a monolog that included a list of guests at a wedding party, a long silly list. It included people like: the minister, ministers wife, the photographer, the photographer's daughter, an oceanographer, 2 blue whales, the hostess and an old lady. Now your brain can hold about 7 items in short term memory, so this is not an impossible list, it is just a bit daunting if its part of a 3 minute speech. So to help put and keep it in the memory, I told the student to clearly visualize the list. I had her picture a reception line at a wedding, and clearly see herself walking up to each person. First a minister in full robes and collar. Picture the minister shaking your hand, and introducing you to a woman standing next to him, also dressed as a minister. Next is a photographer with dozens of camera's hanging around their neck, taking photos of you, and next is a little girl, 5-6 years old, also  with tons of cameras and taking your picture.This sets in your mind the photographer and daughter.

Standing next to the little girl is a scuba diver complete with wetsuit, tanks and mask, and then 2 blue whales standing on their fins looking tall and regal. Next is a hostess, so I see a Hostess Twinkee in a expensive dress you might see at a wedding, and finally an old lady, stooped over, holding onto a walker. See each clearly, imagine yourself going down the line. Suddenly an impossible list becomes so much easier.HOSTESS TWINKIE

Another easy trick we can use is letters. Sometime we get stuck on a certain phrase. For example, in a seminar I teach, I wanted students to remember the words, "things hardly ever go as planned". To make sure it stayed in their minds, I used the phrase THE GAP. Silly, but  it used the letters from the words I wanted them to remember.

So when next confronted with a list, try to make the items large, silly and memorable. Practice on items you need from a certain store, or a list of things you need to do in a day. You will find it words better than just repetition, though of course repetition helps!



J.T. Turner
The Actor's Sensei


Private and group lessons available

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