英语单词大师：Stagecraft

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: acting¹ like an actor to improve your memory.

RS: Our guest is Tony Noice, an actor, director, teacher and cognitive² researcher - someone who studies how we think. He and his psychologist wife Helga have spent years trying to understand how actors remember their lines. They've found that these same skills can also help others.

AA: They've trained older people to improve their recall with theater skills. So, just how do actors memorize their script?

TONY NOICE: First thing you do is read it and read it again, and read it again, and read it again, because the most important thing to lay the basis for memory is to really understand the meaning, the deep meaning. Then when you do that, you then go back to the beginning and now that you have a knowledge of the essential core meaning -- what we call the spine³ of the entire piece -- you then start looking at your lines and break them down into what we call intentions or objectives⁴.

That is, you determine why you are saying everything that you are saying. And by determining that, that already has a lot to do with memory because the lines are not coming out of the blue. It's not material to be memorized. As I often say, actors don't memorize material, they make material memorable⁵.

RS: So you break the script down into intentions, you really analyze⁶ the script.

TONY NOICE: You analyze the script, saying, 'What am I really trying to get from the other person or do to the other person? What behavior can I see in the other person that will make me know I've achieved my goal at this moment?'

RS: It's still a mystery to me how you remember all those lines.

TONY NOICE: Well, that has a lot to do with it, but then there's something about what we call 'active experiencing' which is not a theater term; it's one my wife and I coined to describe this to psychologists. But the act of experiencing, of really meaning what you are saying and meaning it in terms of the other actors -- really looking them in the eyes and trying to affect the change in their eyes by influencing them with whatever you are trying to do at that moment -- seems to not only improve memory for the specific lines, but it also improves memory in general. Because when we do four weeks of it, this sort of training for people in their 60s through 90s, we find that their ability to memorize anything improves.

AA: And so what it sounds like to me you're saying is that acting is really pretending.

TONY NOICE: No. In fact, I would say just the opposite. We always stop the people the second there's any indication that they are pretending. We stop them and say, 'No, don't pretend to do it, just do it. Do it for real.' And if you're trying to threaten the other person, really threaten the other actor -- right now. Don't try to look and sound like you're doing it, don't pretend, do it for real.

RS: That could be kind of scary. [laughter]

TONY NOICE: Oh yes!

AA: If you have a knife in your hand or something.

TONY NOICE: In fact, we often tell beginning acting students that we know you'll have trouble with this because acting is, among other things, an act of bravery. It really is hard to go out there and really try to affect another person.

RS: I want to bring our audience into this. Now what suggestions or what, perhaps, what exercises -- what exercises would you suggest that you use that our students of English as a foreign language might find useful?

TONY NOICE: Oh, I think just the very basic application of always saying, 'What is the purpose of this sentence?' Obviously it applies directly to drama or comedy. But in addition to that it applies to almost anything, because we've done these studies with boring prose⁷ material, computer instructions and so forth⁸, and we still find it benefits memory if, instead of trying to just remember the computer instructions, you picture yourself giving this information to a person, a good friend who vitally needs it. And you really try to get through to this person in your imagination.

And so I would say using your imagination to not just remember the information but really live the material, try to make it as active as you possibly can by, in your own mind, communicating whatever you're trying to remember to another person.

RS: Tony Noice teaches theater at Elmhurst College in Illinois, where his wife Helga is a psychology⁹ professor. They describe their research in this month's issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.

AA: And that's Wordmaster for this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected]. And you can read and listen to all our segments¹⁰ at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

2 cognitive   

adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的

参考例句：

• As children grow older,their cognitive processes become sharper.孩子们越长越大，他们的认知过程变得更为敏锐。
• The cognitive psychologist is like the tinker who wants to know how a clock works.认知心理学者倒很像一个需要通晓钟表如何运转的钟表修理匠。

3 spine   

n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊

参考例句：

• He broke his spine in a fall from a horse.他从马上跌下摔断了脊梁骨。
• His spine developed a slight curve.他的脊柱有点弯曲。

4 objectives   

n.目标( objective的名词复数 )；[光学]（望远镜、显微镜、照相机及其他光学仪器上的）物镜；[语法学]1)。 宾语 2)。 宾格；[军事]出击目标

参考例句：

• Our objectives need to be precisely delineated. 我们的目标需详细解释清楚。
• Money will be crucial to the accomplishment of our objectives. 要实现我们的目标，钱是至关重要的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 memorable   

adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的

参考例句：

• This was indeed the most memorable day of my life.这的确是我一生中最值得怀念的日子。
• The veteran soldier has fought many memorable battles.这个老兵参加过许多难忘的战斗。

6 analyze   

vt.分析，解析 (=analyse)

参考例句：

• We should analyze the cause and effect of this event.我们应该分析这场事变的因果。
• The teacher tried to analyze the cause of our failure.老师设法分析我们失败的原因。

7 prose   

adj.散文的；n.散文

参考例句：

• His writings include poetry and prose.他的作品包括诗和散文。
• He has a taste for purple prose.他喜欢风格华丽的散文。

8 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

9 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

10 segments   

部分( segment的名词复数 )； 瓣； [计算机]（字符等的）分段； [动物学]节片

参考例句：

• He is eating oranges in segments. 他正在一瓣瓣地吃橘子。
• Gene cloning provides a means of purifying and propagating specific DNA segments. 基因克隆化提供了一种纯化和扩增特定DNA片段的方法。