Emery On Stage

Emery's first dramatic performance will be this coming Wednesday with Woodinville Montessori School's Christmas Caper. Emery has a near photographic memory, so if he'll read through his lines a few times he'll have it, and with some basic maintenance he can have it down cold. The thing is, IF he'll read through it and do the basic maintenance.

It's funny that when I was acting the most pesky question was, "how do you learn all those lines?" because it seemed like the least of the work and here you'd just sweated it out all over the stage and someone asked you about memorization. It'd be like watching a mechanical genius rebuild an automobile engine and then asking him or her, "How did you slide under the car?"

But, having said that, I realized when Emery joined the drama club and came home with his first script, memorization was going to be the biggest hurdle. All of a sudden I wanted to ask him, "How are you going to memorize all these lines?" Because there were a lot of them - big long speeches... And I had no concept of the rehearsal strategies or methodology. So, we've gone over and over the lines; trying to have him slow down to a pace where human ears can hear what he's saying and he doesn't sound like an announcer on a car commercial. We've tried to give him pointers without telling him how to do it or making him frustrated or, God Forbid, giving him a line reading. We've said things like, "you're going to be nervous at the performance so you really want to have this down cold." And, "you know, if you go up during the show you'll have to SAY something - you can't call for line."

I realize he doesn't really know what we're talking about. He's never done this so he can't imagine how naked and vulnerable it feels 2 minutes before the show starts, or how you question all the work you've done and think thinks like, 'what in the world have we been doing for the past 6 weeks - I don't remember anything! Have we even rehearsed?' So we just keep urging him on, and looking forward to seeing him up there. We know he'll understand it all very soon.