Memorization Killed The Rising Child Star
Memorization Killed The Rising Child Star (sung to the tune of “Video killed the radio star”)
Let me melt your mind like David Blaine does and tell you that any kid can memorize several pages of audition sides in less than 30 minutes, without trickery or hacks. This whole ‘memory fiasco’ can be handled like a boss. A boss with free time to spare.
I haven’t done the math but my instinct is telling me that once every four to five days someone asks in an actor’s forum, particularly in Facebook’s Child Actor 101, “How can I help my kid memorize lines?” The answers I have read are full of tricks, hacks and a lot of old school tough it out type of suggestions.
There is the audio recording of lines to listen to over and over, hoping the lines will stick in their heads like the annoying lyrics of (insert some nerve pinching school or movie song) does.
There is the have them read it off the wall like a Saturday Night Live Cue Card tip. I plead the fifth as to if I have ever personally done that or not for a self tape.
There is the add a line approach which builds the memory through repetition. Very old school 3rd grade poetry technique.
And there is always the tech hack in which you feed the kids the lines and edit it all together and hope nobody notices. We notice. We do. We hate it. It’s cheating. For the record.
When I saw my young actor clients in tears over the 16 added pages to their next day callbacks, I was like Karen angry. “You can’t do that to these kids. This is abuse. Let me speak to your manager.” The feat was seemingly impossible and was capable of not only inducing panic attacks in these kids, but also a total disintegration of the awesomeness that brought them to earn that callback. Character is now out the window. The brain is on the mission. Don’t mess up. This word before that. Ugh I paused too long. Work harder Brain - Dang it!
Skip forward to random google searches on brain power and cramming for exams techniques and videos of those freaky people that can remember a numerical sequence a mile long and I came up with nothing useful.
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Then I worked with a five year old. A glorious little sponge of a five year old that could not read yet. This kid had an agency meeting and they had supplied us with a short script to learn before the appointment. No time to fret. Time to learn. So I began by explaining the scene and the characters. Then I would say my line and then tell him what his character would say. We checked to see if that made sense and it usually did. Then I would keep that pattern. I say this which makes you say this. We read it through like that about three times. Then we dared to run it through with no hints. And by golly not only was the scene memorized but it was performance coached during the process. And this took no more than 15 minutes.
Actual five year old
Braiden Neven (photo by Tamra Tihanyi)
I had inadvertently implemented the theory of content memorization. I discovered the science behind it that night while searching for this crazy pants breakthrough that just took place. And there were others. Of course there were others. It is bloody brilliant. You see the five year old is not seeing the words or the word order of the lines of dialogue. He is hearing the scenario. He is listening to what the character is saying to him. He is being told what he should say in response. There is simultaneously some practice in ways to say that line differently or better but no commitment to a choice at all. And Voila!, in no time the scene was memorized. Not the lines, but the content. The story, the situation, the logical responses to what was said. Then knowing how the scene ends, let’s discover what makes sense to say to get us to the end. This in turn is creating an acting performance that is completely in the moment because it requires ears to hear, a brain to process, and a response that is given that reflects what the character is doing or wants.
Meryl
I heard Meryl Streep can read a film script five times and is completely memorized. Sounds extra-terrestrial doesn’t it. It’s not. She takes in the story and content deeply. She lives the scenes in her head, all the while figuring out the character. Then she goes to set and she learns what she is filming. She takes a gander at her quarter page sides for the day and it just clicks.
So I’ve tried variations of this voo-doo-hoo-doo content memorization technique over the years with kids. I once taught a large group class on how to do this. We took a multi-cam comedy script. A volunteer read it with me. Then I went through and asked the class what was the first line. Several people shouted it out. Then I went around and asked what happened next over and over again. Collectively they got it right after only hearing it read once. I then tested it and had kids volunteer to perform it without a script. Amazing things happened. They got most of the lines right while putting their own spin on the delivery. When they got something wrong, I would quickly correct them and CLICK it stuck. Like the brain goes, “Oh that’s right. Duhh!”
FREE GUIDE
When I have coached one-on-one with audition sides, I have read it through with the actor three times, maybe four times and then I rip it away. The classic deer in the headlights look usually follows. But lo and behold, the next read-through is surprisingly more memorized. And it gets better and better very swiftly. And that scary five page scene that an actor is certain will take them hours and days to memorize, only took 15-20 minutes to master.
Online Training for Child Actors
It is okay to use your brain in a scene. You can pause to think of what you are going to say, it is usually a good thing, especially when we can see the character working it out. It brings motivation to life. There is no stress on the word order or sentence structure. There is no psyching yourself out over the monstrous paragraph line. By understanding the story and knowing the character’s objective and by truly listening to the other character’s dialogue - it is not brain surgery to figure out what is next. And here is a little secret, unless Aaron Sorkin is in the room, it is usually forgivable to substitute a word here or there. You have to keep the content and intention at the heart.
Television and Film is a marvelous medium. It does not require actors to keep information in a long term parking spot in our memory lot. A self tape is here and gone. A scene on set is shot and over with. It is all short term usage. Where the stage production does need a stronger memory pathway. Plays can run for several weeks or months. That is where I would recommend the opposite of all this and focus on a more rhote style of learning that actually creates the curvy lines in the brain and induces muscle memory.
But for auditions and most on-camera scripts, think like a five year old. Get out of your self-induced hysteria over the words and into the scene itself. Learning the content cements the scene. And most importantly it eliminates the terrible by-product of other memory techniques that chains the actor to a line delivery. This magical process keeps the actor free to breathe fresh air to each line. They become Meryl Streep. (Mic Drop)
