Adding Depth: Sense & Emotion Memory

It is time to get struck. This is the Electric Secrets Variety Podcast.

Demystifying the theater profession, offering a foundation for creative life, and reinvestment in the creative process. This is Dedicated to the Craft. I'm your host, Scott Leon Smith. Let's flip the script.

Welcome in and welcome back, everybody. I'm excited for this episode. We can start layering in some more stuff with our open scenes.

We've talked about tactics and objectives using actionable verbs like “amplify” and “deflect,” combined with a desired outcome for your characters.

You're focusing these things on the character in the scene with you as an element to drive the scene and as a way to get yourself into the scene without having to get direction from anyone.

Now for this episode, we want to bring in another layer that I believe helps you get

into the scene even more. And that's sense memory and emotion memory. 

And I'm going to try to explain both in a way that is practical because it is easy to misunderstand, especially if you are new to the acting craft.

There's a story that I love that one of my mentors told me about…back in the day when the theater scene in Chicago was filled with exciting new storefront theaters. 

And you may have heard of the theater called the Steppenwolf, which is of course one of the biggest regional theaters in America. And you may have even heard of a couple of actors that were founding members of the Steppenwolf, Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.

My mentor was lucky enough to have seen these two actors play Lenny and George in the Steinbeck adaptation or the adaptation of Steinbeck's book of Of Mice And Men.

And he saw this in a storefront theater, a tiny theater that used to be a store that maybe seated 20 or 30 people at a small little stage. And they really had to do their work as actors in their craft to make things very visceral because they're in this very small environment.

And he said, when you watched Gary Sinise and John Malkovich step out into the light

as Lenny and George, you could feel like you were with them on this dusty road in California.

They had done so much sensory work that their bodies just exuded all the work that they did. And you didn't even have to suspend your disbelief. 

If you can imagine being those characters, if you're familiar with the story, characters that are looking for work because of the Great Depression, these characters probably having walked for miles or ridden in the back of trucks with poor shocks absorbing systems and their backs probably hurt and their feet are probably blistered and their throats and their lungs are probably full of dust.

That's really what sense memory is about is layering on these feelings that you either

remember or you can imagine.

If your character has to be tired in a scene, you might imagine a weight pressing down on you, pressing down on all your limbs, or you might imagine a pain in your feet or in your back like you've been walking for a long time.

How you use sense memory, it's really finding a simple thing that works for a specific feeling.

I always like to try to pull something from my own experience because that's usually more reliable, but I'm going to give you another example where I had to pull from something I'd never experienced. Now both of these things have to do with being cold.

So imagine I'm playing a character where the environment is freezing. What can I pull from my own experience that I can use to not play or emote like I'm cold, but actually imagine that I'm cold. That's the big thing.

What I will pull from my memory is a time when I had to stand at my bus stop when I was a kid and I had this coat. And for some reason, the fashion of the time, I think I was about in first or second grade. And this was a long time ago in the early 1980s. 

The fashion of the time was a slit in the back of the coat that was a slit through all of the lining in the coat. It was basically I had a piece of cloth between me and the elements and I would feel that little cold spot on my back.

And I remember that sensation being a kid and waiting for the bus and willing the bus

to get there because I felt so cold because of this stupid slit on the back of this coat

that was fashionable apparently and just caused me to be cold.

So if I'm ever playing a character where I'm in a cold environment, I try to recall that sensory detail, the memory of that sensation of this freezing little spot of cold on my back. I can almost feel it right now. I can feel my shoulders kind of moving towards each other in a way where I'm trying to guard against the cold.

So that's sense memory.

If you can pull it from your own experience, that's awesome. That's the easiest thing to do and that will be the most reliable thing when you're building sense memory onto your character's environment or your character's experience.

Now something very similar in grad school, one of our projects was to do a play and this

particular play was called K2 and it was about two friends that climb the K2 mountain. It's like the second highest mountain on earth next to Everest and they get stuck near the top.They get stuck and the whole play takes place on this sheer rock face of a mountain and they're both freezing to death.

So I had to do a little research into what happens to the human body, but it was a very interesting and detailed description of what your body goes through. And I tried to imagine that.

Imagine those sensations, not only as I'm going through the whole play, but at the end of the play when I'm calling out to my wife, I'm talking to my wife and I'm starting to lose my mind and lose my faculties.

And when you're going into that type of shock, your body warms you up as you're freezing to death. It's an irony of dying where you're freezing to death, but your body is warming up.

And on top of that, I've got a broken leg. So all through this play, I'm having to use sense memory. And I've never broken my leg before. I've broken my collarbone. I've broken a toe, but that's not like breaking your leg or breaking your leg in a hostile

environment.

So I'd never experienced those things. So I had to do a little bit of research, but usually you can find something to use. So two situations where I could recall something, I could either recall something from my experience to help me be cold in the scene, or I could imagine something from doing a little bit of research if I'd never experienced that, finding something that I can imagine happening to my body, a warming sensation as I'm as I'm freezing to death, that that type of stuff.

Okay, we need some practical way to apply sense memory to a script. Okay.

I can talk about sense memory all I want to with remembering stuff from my childhood

or imagining things. But if I have lines in front of me, if I have a character that I'm playing and I have a scene or a context, I have to have a practical strategy of applying sense memory to that

that will help add another layer of experience for me as an actor.

We'll take a look at the open scene. Sam and Riley are the characters and you can find the open scenes in the transcript of the episode that precedes this one.

That's a good episode to review because it's talking about tactics and objectives and all of that stuff.

So the context of Sam and Riley is that they're meeting on a bridge at dusk. Now think about those things right there, a bridge at dusk. So what we have to decide between whoever is doing this scene, the actors doing the scene, if I'm playing Sam, I have to work with Riley in deciding, okay, where is this bridge?

Is it, is it in the country?

Is it in the city?

Is it iron?

Is it wood?

Does it shake when you walk on it?

You have to decide and agree upon what this bridge is, what it's made out of where it

is and then you can start to work these sense details just like I was talking about with–if it's a suspension bridge, if it's moving while you're talking, you can imagine that feeling of something moving underneath your feet and you don't have to act it out.

This is really important. You don't have to act it out. You can just use it as you're playing your objectives and your tactics.

So not only do we have a bridge, we have a river. We have to decide what the details of that river are. Is it a stream? Now it says that the context says river, but sometimes river can mean different things to different people.

For some people, a stream is also a river. For some, if you live by the Mississippi, obviously you have a different idea of what a river is than if you maybe live where I live. We have the Sandusky River, which is maybe 20 feet wide, which is way, way smaller than the Mississippi.

Rivers mean different things to different people.

So you have to decide, okay, is this small? Is this a giant gigantic river? Maybe we're on an overpass or a gigantic mountain bridge and that environment is different than if you're in the middle of the forest or in the middle, maybe you're on a covered bridge in the country.

So you have to decide all these details and then imagine or recall from your past the

different senses that, or the different stimuli, actually, that you would experience.

Let's say if you were standing on a wooden bridge over a small river and let's just say

that the river is kind of trickling. It's not running really fast. So maybe that trickling noise is imagined as you're playing this scene and it informs the lines…If you let it, if you let it inform the lines, it could inform the way you play those lines and the way you play your objectives and your tactics.

Remember, it's just a technique. It's nothing that you have to do, but it can help fold you into the scene.

So let's imagine that Sam and Riley are on a wooden bridge. Let's say it's in the middle of the woods and that the river that they are standing over is flowing normally a nice, calm, trickling water sound is in the air.

Now imagine the other things you would hear in the forest, birds and leaves rustling with the wind.

Maybe we add the wind as a sensory detail.

We want to try not to add too many things because it might take away from us playing

the objectives, which is the most important thing, playing the tactics and the objectives.

So if you take a look, if you put that open scene in front of you, the lines run like

this:

Sam says the river runs like it remembers us, Riley.

And Riley says it remembers nothing. It just flows.

Sam says you used to see stories in its currents.

And Riley says, I grew up.

Stories don't pay the bills.

Now as those lines are happening, the audience and the director may not be able to pick up that you are using sense memory.

But if you are doing that work, something interesting is going to come out of those lines.

Now I'm not going to exemplify the script for you because you wouldn't be able to

hear a difference in the lines probably. But it's a commitment thing. It's a commitment of imagination to say, as I'm doing this scene, I'm playing my objectives and I'm playing my tactics.

But to fold myself into the environment and the context, I'm going to imagine these sensory details, the trickling sound of the river, maybe the wind rustling in the leaves, figuring out what time of year it is. 

Is it cold? If it's cold, hey, I can remember in my memory the time when I was a kid waiting for the bus in first grade and that stupid coat that I wore with the slit down the back and I can use it.

Okay. If we agree that it's cold, okay, that can inform how the scene goes. And all of these things that you use, these sensory details are just another way of bringing you into the environment of the play.

So it's not just remembering lines and reciting and delivering lines.

You're actually two characters living in a world and moving toward that goal that you'll never reach, but it's always about trying to reach that goal of living truthfully in imagined circumstances. So the playwright imagines the circumstance of these two characters meeting on a bridge at dusk.

Hey, we forgot about dusk.

The air smells differently at dusk than it does at dawn. Things look differently. Things have a shadowy feel to them. That's another sensory detail that we can add. But oh, I got distracted again. I got to go back.

The playwright imagined these circumstances. So it is up to us as actors to use our imaginations. Experience the scene. The way the characters would experience the scene.

They would be in the middle of that weather of that bridge over that river. They would be hearing those things, feeling the breeze. They would need to let that inform the scene.

So these techniques of sense memory are helping this fictional scene feel more real, more natural and more truthful.

Emotion memory, wow.

Emotion memory is even trickier than sense memory because you really have to be willing to commit to it. And in certain types of emotion memory, you really have to be okay with yourself and with your past.

So I'll use the example of, let's say your character needs to be joyful in a particular

scene. Well, hopefully we all have memories of when we felt incredible joy. 

Maybe it's a birthday party. Maybe it's when our team won something huge. Maybe it's when we found out that we made it into the college we wanted to go to.

And we can think of ourselves in that moment and how we acted and how we felt. And maybe we find those actions that we performed when that moment of joy struck us jumping, dancing, yelling, laughing, hugging, all of those great, actable things that help us get into the scene.

I think joy is a lot easier than other emotions, the opposite emotions, sadness, grief, loneliness, those types of things. If that's required for your character in a scene, you really, if you're going to use emotion memory, recalling something from your past to get you to that moment, make sure this is very important that you have dealt with it in a healthy way.

You don't want to use any moment from your past that was traumatic that you haven't dealt with anything that may trigger that experience. You want to be able to leave the rehearsal process in a good place. And that's really difficult, especially when you're rehearsing a scene that requires

a lot of deep, dark emotion.

Now you may know someone or you may be an actor yourself who can cry on cue. Good for you. I used to be able to do that way back in the day when I was a young actor and I had the soul of a poet and I could cry right on cue. 

Can't do it anymore. I really have to build myself up and do some emotional soul searching or do some physical things to help me build those tears up. There are different things you can do to help yourself. You don't have to abuse yourself, but different ways that you can use your facial muscles and the muscles of your body and what you're speaking, especially how if you're doing Shakespeare.

Lord Capulet.

When I play Lord Capulet and I find my daughter dead…Juliet, we don't know she's just sleeping, but we find her dead. Okay, I have to do that. I have to find my daughter dead. I've never experienced that. So I have to figure out a way to get myself to that emotional level.

But when I'm choosing something to help me get there, I have to choose something that is not going to cause me to go back and experience that trauma over and over again.

So emotion memory is a tricky thing to use as an actor for dark stuff. Joy is pretty easy.

And the easiest emotion of all, especially for young men, is rage. Rage and anger.

Just all you do is yell and, my God, you're right there. But sometimes that's a little much.

The thing with emotional memory and using emotion for anger scenes and rage is it can be a lot. And the director can say, okay, you need to hold back a little bit. We need to have some better dynamics in this scene. You can't be screaming and yelling the whole time.

And sometimes screaming and yelling just reads as screaming and yelling. You're not actually playing a scene. You're not playing a tactic or trying to reach an objective. You're just screaming because it feels good to scream.

And that is a pitfall that a lot of young actors fall into is I have this ability to really fly into a rage and anger and cry on cue and all of that stuff. And you do it and you feel so good about yourself. 

And then your director looks at you and says that was a wonderful tirade that you just had. But I don't understand any of the lines. I don't understand what's happening in the scene, what's happening to your character, what he wants or she wants. All of that stuff can just be muddied and obscured by this selfish need to get some rage out, right?

Theater and rehearsal can be very therapeutic. But remember, it's not all about you. It's about your cast mates and your director and working together and collaborating.

So think about those moments that you have where you're really pissed off about something that happened during the day and you're playing your character in rehearsal and you feel this need to just let loose with your rage and your frustration.

Think about that for just a second. Just think for just a second, maybe let it affect you, but try not to lose control of it because the old adage is you leave everything outside the theater inside the theater in rehearsal. 

It's about the story. It's about the characters. It's about telling the story in a truthful way and the truth that you feel at the moment that you're enraged or you're angry about something outside of the theater has no place in the rehearsal process.

Is it usable? Of course.

It's an easy thing to– rage is an easy thing to use. It's an easy thing for a lot of actors to tap into, but you need to keep a close rein on it to make sure that it's not just flying out of you for no reason. 

What do you think's going to happen now?

That's right. We're going right back to the bridge with Sam and Riley, the bridge at dusk over the river. How might we use emotion memory in this particular scene?

We have some context. They haven't seen each other in years and they have an unspoken history. Wow, lots of possibilities with that.

So if I am again playing Sam and I'm working with my scene partner who's playing Riley, we have to come up with a relationship. Who are we to each other?

Now, let's just for the sake of this podcast and for the sake of utilizing our time wisely,

we don't have to go through every single possibility. Let's just say maybe they're two friends that had a falling out. Maybe something happened between them in the past that caused them to not be friends anymore.

And you would need to decide and agree on specifically what that is. And for yourself playing the character, what specifically your character felt. And if you can bring something from your emotion memory…we all have those moments, especially from being teenagers, especially when you're a teenager, your circle of friends tends to change.

You meet new people and sometimes you yourself and your personality changes and the people you hung out with and the people you played with in elementary school aren't necessarily the people you hang out with in middle school or in high school or in college.

Things change and sometimes you lose friendships and sometimes you lose friendships in ways that are unfortunate or tragic and you become estranged from that person. And then comes the moment when you meet again.

Maybe it's months later, years later, weeks later, and you have to deal with each other. So scenes like this, scenes where characters have a history are a ripe place to explore emotion memory. But again, do it in a healthy way.

I had a moment when I was in middle school where my best friend just decided he didn't

want to be friends with me anymore. And you know what? He let the entire school know that we were not friends anymore. And he was a pretty popular dude and a lot of people turned on me.

So you can imagine at 12 years old, how that made me feel. That was a long time ago and you change and you become an adult and you forgive, you forgive these people for slighting you because you're a kid.

But that's not what emotion memory is about.

Emotion memory is recalling that visceral feeling of being betrayed, of being left to–

being thrown to the wolves basically. In terms, I mean, when you're a teenager, popularity is so important. And then this popular person decides that you are not their friend anymore and decides to let everybody else know about it.

You can imagine the place that that takes you to and the place that it took me to for

years when I was a kid. I had to watch this guy who I idolized, pal around with people and I wasn't his friend.

So again, I've dealt with it, but I can use it if I need to, if I feel like I'm playing Sam and the actor and the character of Riley is a friend like that.  Maybe I bring that situation, the memory of that situation and that event that so affected me, I bring the feelings of that event to the rehearsal of the scene just to see what happens.

It might not work. I mean, it was years ago, maybe the feelings I felt as a kid aren't, aren't boiling up anymore, right? Maybe I can't use that memory anymore. And that's okay.

I can find something else. I can find another memory. I can find a sense memory. I can, I can say maybe seeing this person again puts a knot in my chest.

Maybe I imagine that knot is there and I imagine that sensation of the knot and I play the scene that way. So it's all about finding what works for you and what works for the scene.

So, Sam and Riley have an unspoken history.

Figure out what that unspoken history is and what sorts of emotion memory you can bring to it from your past again in a healthy way that you've dealt with or what emotions you can imagine.

And remember when you're imagining emotions, it helps to have something physical like the feeling of the knot in the chest or the feeling of tears welling up your eyes get hot when tears well up in your eyes.

And you can imagine feelings and actions that can bring you to an emotional place as you rehearse the scene.

So I encourage you to take a look at the Sam and Riley scene and the other open scenes that I have available in preceding episodes of the podcast.

And just as an exercise, think about what types of sense memory and emotion memory you might bring to that scene if you were playing one of those characters and maybe make a list.

Oh, okay. This is the environment. These are the stimulus or the stimuli of the environment, the sensory things that we could use or I could use in this scene or I can remember something from my past that helps me get to the emotion that I'm supposed to be portraying in the scene, whether it's joy or anger or sadness or anything in between.

I can use my memory of an event or imagine what I think the character would physically experience in order to help me live what the character is possibly living at that moment.

I hope you'll join me next time on Dedicated to the Craft. I'm going to talk about a show that I recently directed.

It's called Bat Boy: the Musical.

Not a very cerebral or well-known piece of work, but a lot of fun nonetheless.

So I hope you'll join me for that.

Thanks for listening. Stay dedicated and I will see you next time.

This has been Dedicated to the Craft.

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Click Here To Download The "Sam & Riley" Open Scene

Context: Sam and Riley meet on a bridge at dusk. They haven’t seen each other in years, and they have an unspoken history.

Sam: The river runs like it remembers us, Riley. 

Riley:  It remembers nothing. It just flows. 

Sam: You used to see stories in its currents. 

Riley: I grew up. Stories don’t pay the bills. 

Sam: But they fed us once, didn’t they? 

Riley: We were kids. We didn’t know hunger. 

Sam: I still feel it. That ache for something more. 

Riley: You’re chasing ghosts, Sam. 

Sam: And you’re running from them. 

Riley: I’m standing here, aren’t I?

Click Here To Download All Open Scenes.

Open Scene #1: Anderson & March

Open Scene #2: Keller & Dietrich

Open Scene #3: Murphy & Fluellen

Open Scene #4: Dillon & Samuels