Terry taught sense memory, which was a popular acting technique. During what she called a “private moment” exercise in class, she asked students to get up and recall an emotional, personal experience from childhood. The exercise was designed to help actors feel they were in private while in a public space—to shed the self-consciousness that sometimes inhibits an actor’s performance. For the exercise, we had to be very detailed and specific in reconstructing our memories, answering all sorts of questions for Terry. She gave us ten minutes to “experience
