The short answer is… NO.
When I started my comedy career, I memorised everything. I rote learned.
I learnt joke by joke, for a 50-minute comedy show. Even though it worked at the time, looking back it was absolutely the wrong approach!
Memorising feels like a safe option, but truthfully, it’s a trap. Because if you forget one part, then you can easily forget all of your content.
Instead, I like to teach my Public Speaking students to take a paragraph or key idea, reduce it down to a keyword, and then remember that keyword.
And, you can take notes on stage with you if you want. Everyone is scared to take notes, but it’s better to remember your flow than forget it altogether! If you have a list of keywords for each paragraph, then you won’t forget your narrative.
If you try to remember everything, you’re relying on your memory bank. There are a lot of pressures when we hit the stage, and if something destabilises you, and you forget one tiny element, it can easily throw the rest of your speech out.
So don’t memorise. Reduce your key ideas or paragraphs down to keywords and make a list!
– Jordana Borensztajn