As I get back into acting after a year long hiatus from doing legit shows, I was reminded today of a sobering fact: learning lines on your own sucks! Seriously. It's better than doing anything else that doesn't involve theatre; even better than the ticket office at a theatre, but still... The good thing about having that year where I did the boring, repetitive jobs is that I learned a valuable lesson: pace yourself or you will get burned out.
Pacing myself in college never worked out. I would be doing a class for an hour a day, memorizing and doing homework for three hours a day, and usually doing a show for an average of three hours a day. That's seven hours of theatre a day and, while doing the physical act of theatre is something I could do for twelve hours straight, the mental toll of all of that work would make me not want to do the things that I could put off; like memorizing. The problem with that system is that cramming for a rehearsal or a show or an audition never works.
Here's what I've learned about memorization; I can only memorize during the first hour or so of memorization; and usually not the length of the "Henry V" prologue, but more of the length of the "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow..." speech in "Macbeth". I also have to learn naturalistically, meaning that I can't just learn the words; I have to learn the ideas and the thought process behind them. This "hour a day" method means that I am excited to memorize the next day and not looking forward to having a day off memorization.
But I didn't just write this just to share some mildly useful knowledge, I also have news from New York!
Rosemary Libert and Karl Klupar (yes, they live in NY), the two owners of the Historic Skagway Inn, have decided on a date for our first production meeting! How am I getting to NY? Some of the other cast members and I will be joining them via the magic of Skype. We'll be going over the entire show, and I will tell you all about it here once the meeting is over. Just kidding! You'll have to buy a ticket to learn all about the show. Princess Cruises has some awesome deals going on right now starting from $699.
Pacing myself in college never worked out. I would be doing a class for an hour a day, memorizing and doing homework for three hours a day, and usually doing a show for an average of three hours a day. That's seven hours of theatre a day and, while doing the physical act of theatre is something I could do for twelve hours straight, the mental toll of all of that work would make me not want to do the things that I could put off; like memorizing. The problem with that system is that cramming for a rehearsal or a show or an audition never works.
Here's what I've learned about memorization; I can only memorize during the first hour or so of memorization; and usually not the length of the "Henry V" prologue, but more of the length of the "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow..." speech in "Macbeth". I also have to learn naturalistically, meaning that I can't just learn the words; I have to learn the ideas and the thought process behind them. This "hour a day" method means that I am excited to memorize the next day and not looking forward to having a day off memorization.
But I didn't just write this just to share some mildly useful knowledge, I also have news from New York!
Rosemary Libert and Karl Klupar (yes, they live in NY), the two owners of the Historic Skagway Inn, have decided on a date for our first production meeting! How am I getting to NY? Some of the other cast members and I will be joining them via the magic of Skype. We'll be going over the entire show, and I will tell you all about it here once the meeting is over. Just kidding! You'll have to buy a ticket to learn all about the show. Princess Cruises has some awesome deals going on right now starting from $699.
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