Amy Lu's View

There are many things that I love and appreciate about being in a play.

Learning lines is not one of them. 

People often say how hard it is to learn and memorize as they get older. I don’t really have a sense of my memory getting worse (I may just be in denial) but I do think my focus and concentration have gone to hell.

I don’t know if it’s because of aging, or the interwebs and smartphones, or living through the Time of Covid, or just stress in general, or the cumulative effect of consuming too much alcohol or too many processed snacks, but I think I get distracted more easily than I used to. 

I had REALLY good intentions today of being very successful and productive with memorizing my lines for a play that I’m in that opens in just a smidge over a month (https://dreamlandarts.com/the-brothers-grimm-spectaculathon/). 

However, instead of actually learning my lines, I spent most of my time panicking about how I needed to learn my lines. 

My inner list of obsessive thoughts went something like this: 

• OMG I have so many lines to learn, I will never learn all these lines.
• I want more snacks.
• Is it too early to have a drink?
• OMG I have so many lines to learn, I will never learn all these lines.
• Why do I keep eating snacks?
• I have to go to the bathroom. 
• I’m too hot in the sunroom and I need to change my clothes.
• Is it time to feed StanLee?
• I must focus on learning these lines!
• Where’s my phone? Do I have any messages?
• I want to blog, but I must learn lines first! 
• But if I change my clothes, I’ll be cold when I’m in the other rooms of the house. 
• Are the neighbors having a backyard party? That seems more fun than memorizing lines.
• Where’s my phone? Do I have any emails?
• OMG I have so many lines to learn, I will never learn all these lines.
• What can I blog about?
• Why won’t StanLee stop barking?
• Why won’t the neighbor dogs stop barking?
• Can the neighbors hear me reciting lines? If so, what in world must they think I’m doing?
• Where’s my phone? What’s happened on Facebook?
• OMG I haven’t learned any lines and I’ve been “working” on them all day.
• I can NOT have any more snacks.
• I’m definitely having a drink.

Not surprisingly, all these thoughts did not result in an accomplished day of mastering my script. It does have some new snack splatters on it, though, which I guess is at least a sign of effort (Chad’s scripts always look pristine at the end of a show where mine are a mangled mess filled with weird and disgusting stains). 

So, I still have a long way to go before I conquer my script…but I do have some favorite lines that I’ve learned (although no promises that I know where they fit in the show). Yes, as a very transparent attempt at creating some interest in this show and getting some butts in the theater seats, here are some of my most intriguing lines:

• Why does my cologne smell like gravy?
• There are no crab people!
• I’m extreme!
• Everyone knows babies come from The Devil.
• These curves are tight and streamlined like a racing yacht owned by a rich Russian oligarch. 
• I was about eleven when I figured out I didn’t have a Fairy Godmother. 

They’re even more intriguing out of context, right? So now, of course, you want to come see our show and see how they fit in the production–or maybe I’ll just randomly say them. 

Especially if I don’t do more with my script than just getting food and beverage debris on it.