Memory…all alone in the moonlight…

I apologize for the Cats reference. This post has absolutely nothing to do with Andrew Lloyd Webber and everything to do with Anne Bogart. For my directing class this semester, I am sleeping with Anne Bogart’s A Director Prepares under my pillow every night in hopes of absorbing her fantastic wisdom.

“The act of memory is a physical act and lies at the heart of the art of the theatre. If the theatre were a verb, it would be ‘to remember’.”

Chapter 1: Memory. Between reading my textbook and our class discussions, I have a few questions. What do I remember – what and who and how did theatre come before me? What is my culture and whose shoulders do I stand on? My professor asked us whose shoulders, who first gave us theatre or what happened. In my memory, there is a little stage set up in my kindergarten classroom, Annie Get Your Gun, my Junior High music teacher and my professors now whose shoulders I stand on. You hear the often-repeated advice to write what you know – I don’t know about a lot about being a Southern Belle who finds herself living with her sister in New Orleans but I do remember growing up in a small town, learning to read tarot cards, losing a family member. So for my directing project #1, I decided to direct what I know and remember.

One of my professors actually is the memory inspiration behind my first project for Directing class now. I was at an utter loss on how I wanted to create a story without dialogue for my first project – until I took a leaf out of Anne Bogart’s book: what do I do the last time I created a story without dialogue?

One of the acting exercises my professor taught was sense memory and how to re-create physical contact. My class called it memory hugs and while I loved doing the exercise, I didn’t “get it” when I first did this two years ago. Memory seemed so internal, a mental determination that might be your objective but as far as making it physical? Now thanks to Anne Bogart, I think I’ve not only made it physical, but completed my first Directing project.

Using the idea of memory, I made five scenes that told an entire story about two characters and their relationship AND it helped me actually direct my actors. Whenever they had the look of utter confusion, I could say “Remember when/what…” and their sense of memory explained to them exactly I was trying to express. Memory is not just finding your mark and reciting your lines – it is the verb of theatre.

With this, my first work as a director – completed. Fingers crossed that the professor approves of my loop-holing some of the instructions…I thought I’d skip ahead to Chapter 4: Terror!