Don’t Forget to Memorize
This was in Response to a question about memorization.
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I’ve been involved in theater for years, so this is something I have a decent amount of experience with. For memorizing material, something that I fucking hate but is hugely necessary: Decide on the order and then break it down. If I’m doing a set of 20 jokes, I first decide on the order (putting together jokes that have similar topics, keeping apart jokes with similar structures), he break it down into 5 4-joke chunks. I work over each chunk repeatedly, so work over one chunk, then after finishing go back and do that again, and then again, and again until it’s reasonable. You don’t have to get it perfect the first day, you just have to get it reasonable because again, this is where sleep comes in. When we sleep we affix things from short term to long term memory, so as long as you do it each day a bit, you’ll end up better the next morning. One thing which definitely helps is to look over, do a bit of memorization before bed. Again this is just so that it’s fresh in your mind when you sleep and then when you wake up try it again and see how it feels. Don’t just do it before bed because that’s an easy way to get lazy, but just review what you’ve done before bed. Again, this is like playing an instrument. If you play an instrument you’ll find that if you work on something and then go to sleep, over a couple days your fingers will memorize the piece better than your conscious mind can alone.
Hope this helps. Memorization is by far the most tedious part of the process, but it’s necessary to make things smooth and natural (which makes it sound like deodorant or frosting). Again this is a thing like the scales.
Lastly: Try to memorize your jokes without the intended inflection. Even if you know how you’re going to say it, only memorize the words as flat, monotone words. This will help you keep it fresh and help you discover new things on stage. On the one hand it’s important for jokes to have an aural patter/pattern that works for the bit, but if you memorize it too much it will make the joke sound canned and prevent you from experimenting with it.
