Glasgow Daily Times, Glasgow, KY

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September 2, 2010

Presentation was a tour de force

By JIMMY LOWE For the Daily Times

GLASGOW — Even though I was there at the Kentucky Repertory Theatre last Sunday afternoon, I still don’t quite know how the fellow did it. For more than an hour, actor Robert Brock gave a word for word recitation of the book of Revelation. His dramatic presentation of the biblical passages was an amazing tour de force.

The last book in the Bible is not one of the easiest to fully comprehend, and I would have thought it to be one of the most difficult to memorize. Not so, says the man who has given solo performances of both Mark and John in past theater productions.

“Revelation does not ramble,” he says. He claims the book was actually easy to memorize because of the images that it presents and the repetition of numbers and rhythms that it uses. Still, he admits it took much of three months to get it down pat. “During this time,” he says, “I saw relationships and intricate structure that I would never have seen by just reading it.”

If he adds another Biblical text to his memory, he hints that it will likely be the book of Genesis. “I don’t know, though, if I’ll ever get around to it,” he says about the Bible’s first entry.

Then he switches to telling me about “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” an epic poem that he’s considering memorizing for performance.

“So, is it crowded in the attic of your mind?” I ask him. “Are there monologue fragments scattered there from past performances? Do you have flashbacks of Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln, or some Shakespearean character?”

He shakes his head, and I can almost see bits of dialogue falling out. “No,” he says, “they fade in three or four weeks if I’m not doing them.”

 Now that his limited run of “Book of Revelation” has ended, those passages may be doomed to his mind’s oblivion. Yet, Brock says he will remember the work as a “very moving and emotional book” and one that “we can relate to.” He adds, “On one level, it’s not really that hard to understand. It’s about a faceoff with evil and the triumph of good.”

I imagine his ability to memorize as something almost super-human. He is reluctant to accept that assessment, and says he goes grocery shopping with a list. Without it, he might gather broccoli rather than spinach.

“How about it?” I ask. “Do you find these one-man presentations becoming easier to memorize as you age or are they becoming more difficult?”

“It’s getting easier. I feel like I’ve developed a muscle for it right now.”

Then it occurs to me that memorizing a book from the Bible might be a good exercise for myself. It would be good to strengthen those muscles in my mind. Certainly, becoming more intimately acquainted with the scripture is always worthwhile.

Rather than a book like Revelation, though, perhaps I should set Third John as a goal.

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