What lengths would you go to pretend you remembered someone’s name? Would you lie? Would you hug a stranger? Last year, I was at a talk that Alex Neve was giving. He was delivering his first of five Massey Lectures. Pat, Alex’s wife, is Deb’s best friend. Deb and I got married a couple of…
Memory is funny. I think about memory a fair amount. One of the scariest diseases around is dementia. Dementia erases the person you were. Who are we, but the sum of our memories? One of the reasons I perform in plays is so that I can exercise my memory. Use it or lose it. Usually,…
The crazy thing about theatre is how ephemeral it all is. Like a flower blooming. If you miss it, you miss it. For weeks, The Player’s Guild has been my second home. And the beautiful set of Burn has been the living room that I spent a lot of time in. Here’s a picture of…
After a show opens, there’s usually a “line run”. Between the end of one week’s performances and the start of the following week’s performances. It’s when the actors say their lines to each other but usually there isn’t any action or movement. Often everyone is just sitting around. Or it’s a Zoom call. The tricky…
The number one question that I get asked about acting is: How do you remember all those lines? Memorization seems to be a fading skill for most people. Why commit things to memory when you can look them up online? Of course, when you’re performing in a play, you don’t have that luxury. You’ve got…
peter gruner 