GEORGE TOWN, July 1 — How does one remember a whole chunk of text and facts perfectly without having to memorise it?

According to former Broadway actor Bruce Kuhn, it is not memorising skills that you need but a special technique to remember a whole lot of information without breaking a sweat.

“I don’t have an incredible memory, I have a normal memory... it was all technique,” he said at an interview when he was in Penang recently to perform at the Church of the Immaculate Conception here.

Kuhn described the wrong use of memory by most people like "using a hammer for a screwdriver."

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“If you are using the wrong tool, it doesn’t work very well,” he said.

He said the human memory was made for images, locations, events and stories so these are the tools that should be used.

“If you look at the World Memory Championship participants, one of the champions said he didn’t have a good memory and that it was all techniques,” he said.

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The trick that the memorisers used was to turn facts into stories, he said.

An example was when one of the champions was given a list of 200 unrelated items to memorise but he missed out one item, a milk bottle.

“He said oh, I missed the milk bottle because I placed it against the white wall...he already told you how he did it, he created a path and placed the items in order, the pink sports car, the purple elephant and so on but he missed the milk bottle because it was against a white wall,” he said.

Kuhn said trying to pound facts into the brain will not work as well as when you turn it into stories as if you experienced it.

This was how he managed to remember books in the Bible and performed one-man shows, without props or costumes, on The Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles.

The actor told compelling stories from the Bible as if he had been an eyewitness of the gospel events in the first century as told in the holy book and kept the audience captivated with his commanding presence.

When asked about his Broadway experience, Kuhn said he reached the pinnacle of his Broadway career when he played Javert in in Les Misérables about 25 years ago.

“It was a lead role... in fact, to play a lead on Broadway in one of the best musicals written was a major high point in an actor’s career, I can say I’ve done this, everything I’ve wanted as an actor, this is it,” he said.

Then he started questioning if that was it and if there was more to it.

Kuhn came to the realisation that he wanted to be involved in shows that change lives.

“Musicals are great, I love musicals... but when you play third beggar from the left eight times a week, after six months, it’s not as much fun as it used to be but it pays well,” he said.

He said musicals get old but when it comes to the gospels, the material is much better.

“This material is fascinating and it keeps opening up... there is something new every time which I can’t say about the theatre, much less the musicals which are fluffy stuff,” he said.

He loved putting himself out there and keeping the audience captivated with the truth of the stories he told.

“Whether it is Shakespeare or the Bible or a show on Tolstoy, I just love dealing with truth and reality by human beings,” he said.

In each of Kuhn’s shows on the gospels, he would perform alone, in normal attire and without any props or sets.

Yet, he managed to keep the audience captivated throughout the one-and-a-half hour show.

When asked how he managed that, he said he employed every trick he learnt in acting school about movement, character and keeping the audience engaged.

Yet, he said it was different from performing based on scripts in theatres.

“It is much easier to make things that happened a reality, there is no acting, I don’t have to act except to use a funny accent or two to keep the audience interested,” he said.

Kuhn performed The Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles and conducted a workshop on memorising and storytelling at the Church of the Immaculate Conception here recently.

Parish priest Reverend Father Jude Miranda said Kuhn’s reputation as an actor, on and off Broadway, precedes him.

“Over the weekend that he spent with us in the parish through his monologue theatre performances and workshop, I have been awed by his ability to bring the Bible to life.

“Without any sets or props, his one-man show successfully showcased the storytelling talent of taking us back in time to experience the life of Jesus Christ with such a flawless delivery,” he said.

Kuhn is also a co-founder of Word By Heart — a three-month school that teaches people the art of storytelling.

Other than Les Misérables, he has performed in The Three Musketeers and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He also starred in the national tour of Harry Chapin’s one-man Off-Broadway hit, The Cotton Patch Gospel, and performed in the national tour of Chess directed by Trevor Nunn.

He has also taught storytelling at Regent College and Oxford University.