What Is Technique? And… What Does It Have to Do with Memorizing Lines?

It was a Saturday morning. Isabelle, a 14-year-old actor, came to class late. (Her family drove her from Tijuana, Mexico to Los Angeles to take my class, so she had a good excuse.) The other young actors were taking turns auditioning in front of the camera when she walked in. I handed her the script and gave her maybe ten minutes while I finished with the others. Her turn came to get in front of the camera, and even though she had the script in hand, she did the entire scene—two solid pages of dialogue—off book. She didn’t even look at the paper. I was blown away, so I asked her, “How did you memorize that entire script so quickly?” She said, “I just did The 9 Questions.”