I got a substantial part in a local play; I auditioned on a lark, without really knowing what the play was or who the characters are.
It’s Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit; I got the part of Charles.
There are a whole lot of lines…any advice on how best to learn them?
Thanks…AMAPAC
Congratulations!
Best way I’ve found is to read and reread the play as much as possible. It will help if others can read the other characters and prompt you. In essence, that means that you will pick them up best in rehearsals; generally there are several read throughs and you can still use the script up until the last week or so. By that time, it will all seem familiar to you.
I always found that writing out the dialog longhand helped, especially with long speeches. Other than that, read, re-read, re-read again.
Good luck.
Good advice above.
I alway found it useful to find the rhythm of the lines. Even if it’s not iambic pentameter, there will be some kind of intended inflection in dialog. Figure out what words are meant to be “up” or “down.”
When I say “read” I mean “read it out loud.” Something about hearing the dialog helped me learn it better.
If you can find someone to read with you, that’s better. Otherwise, lock yourself in your room, but read out loud.
Put all your lines on a tape recorder.
I memorized that way and it never let me down.
Learn how to project your voice. It’s easy. The director (or an experienced actor) can show you how in a matter of 30 seconds.
LEARN YOUR LINES. YOU CANNOT ACT WITH THE BOOK IN YOUR HAND. AND, SINCE YOU HAVE BEEN AWARDED THE LEAD, REPAY THE DIRECTOR’S RESPECT BY BEING THE VERY FIRST TO HAVE YOUR LINES DOWN PAT.
More, later, maybe. (Got a doctor’s appt.)
Many MP3 players have recording functions, which can be very useful for this.
Once you’ve gotten to the sort-of-memorized stage, try saying as much as you can to yourself, then check your script or recording when you get stuck.
For back-and-forth dialogue (as opposed to long speeches), try recording all the lines (not just yours), and when you play it back, try to say your lines. Or have another person say the other lines for you while you say yours. Or cover up the script with a sheet of paper or index card that you can slide down the page, revealing a line at a time, and try to remember what you’re supposed to say next after each line you reveal.
Annotate your script with your blocking, and memorize all your moves, business, etc., as assiduously as your lines. And don’t be surprised if one day…
you find your self making a cross and wondering wtf your next line is, but when you hit your spot, BINGO! You give the line on cue and in character. It’s wonderfully gratifying.
One small tip on a small point.
You’re doing a British play, and the Brits (Rex Harrison is a superb example) seem to use their vocal ranges much more effectively than we do.* It’s very pleasing to the ear. And when they ask a question - on stage and in real life - they don’t always come up in pitch on the last word. Just the reverse, in fact. Try both ways with a simple “Do you like it?”
*All the more reason to learn to use your diaphragm (muscle, that is).
Associate one line with your cue so that it becomes natural to flow into the line when you hear the triggering cue. Break the lines into like 5 word or so chunks and memorize them in that format.
Take all of the symbolic ideas and break those down. Learn the meaning of the scene. Dissect the motivations of all the characters in the scene so that even if you forget your lines you know what the character means to say and you can often say something synonymous and the audience will never know the difference.
There are many methods of learning, and chances are one or two of them work best for you. How did you best learn stuff in school? That’s probably the best way to learn lines, too.
Do you remember stuff you hear? Then you’re an auditory learner. Tape recorder. (Or MP3). See if your director will let you record a rehearsal and then listen to it over and over and over. Or record all the lines yourself.
Do you remember stuff you see? Then you’re a visual learner. Writing out your lines, reading them one line at a time with a card blocking the rest and simple repeated reading will work.
Do you remember stuff linked with movement? Then you’re a kinesthetic learner. You’ll learn your lines after blocking is done.
Do you remember stuff by doing it? Then you’re an experiential learner. You’ll just absorb them through rehearsal time.
Do you remember stuff by saying it out loud? (As opposed to hearing it.) Then you’re a verbal learner. Find someone who owes you a favor and have them read the other lines while you practice yours. If you don’t have anyone, then record the other lines on your MP3 player and practice by saying your line, playing the other line, saying your next line, and so on.
And, as **mswas **says, understanding what the scene is really about will help, too. I’m not a diehard Method person, but still, you have to know whether your character’s goal is to get the candy or throw it out the window. Once you know that, the lines make a lot more sense and simultaneously become less important.
Some of my ways of learning lines: As soon as you can have someone work with you. He or she on book, you off. It is slow but necessary. Also type out the scene, without your lines. That way when you read the scene, you have to supply the lines. Also, do an audio tape or burn a cd or whatever with your lines not present this way you can hear your cues and respond with your lines.
I have played Charles, and it is indeed a great many lines to learn, but most of them are in response to something so they are not impossible. I have also done Slueth and Deathtrap, now those are a killer amount of lines with an incredible number of speeches. Still Charles is very challenging, but doable. So hang in there.
Have a good time with it and start learning those lines as soon as possible.
It really is easiest with someone helping you. Have the other person read the other lines (or the ones immediately before and after yours, if there are long stretches of other characters talking), and go as far as you can. When you get to where you can’t remember any more, ask for a prompt or peek at the script, and go a few lines past that point, then go back to the beginning of the scene and start again (hopefully making it a little further this time). If you have any long speeches or soliloquies, learn those separately, but using more-or-less the same method: Go as far as you can without cheating, then go further, and then start from the top. For long speeches, though, you can usually do it yourself, since you don’t need anyone else doing the other lines.
Don’t try to learn your lines in the group rehearsals-- Those are for learning the interactions with the other actors. You want to have the lines themselves down before you get together with the others.
Listen to BarnOwl. It’s all good advice.
Between now and the first rehersal. READ THE PLAY EVERY DAY. Cover to cover no stopping. Read it twice a day if you can.
Focus on learning chuncks at a time. Don’t try and memorise the whole play straight through or even in order. Take it scene by scene, and within the scene break it down into smaller bits. Memorise them idividually and then start stringing them together. I like to work a page at a time, but everyone is different. Talk to the director and try and get an idea of the rehersal schedule so you can work on the lines for those scenes first.
4)Always practice out loud AND while moving. Moving isn’t as important as out loud, but any form of movement will help you. Run on a treadmill, dance around with the script in your hand, whatever. Movement helps.
Don’t work on your lines for more than 20 minutes in a block. After that give yourself at least 30 minutes to break before coming back to it. Work on your lines for at least 3 hours a day though. It will help keep things in your long term memory.
Whenever possible get someone to read the lines with you. But failing that read your own cue lines out loud and memorize them as well. YOUR CUES ARE AS IMPORTANT AS YOUR LINES. I would, as a director, say more important, but I think most actors will disagree.
Give yourself goals. Getting a rehersal schedule will help you set them, but you want to be ahead of that schedule. Do your best to have the lines for any scene memorised before the first day you work on that scene. Then rehearse with the book in your hand untill you are done blocking. Then go off book as soon as you can. Going off book is going to screw some other stuff up, so get it out of the way. So give yourself short term and long term goals to make the process more manageable.
Feel free to PM me if you have other questions. I do this sort of thing professionally.
For some. Everybody learns differently. I’ve been acting for many, many years and have learned my own preferred method. It may or may not work for other people. Some are visual, and internalize the words by staring at the page; some are auditory and need to hear them; some are kinesthetic and need to speak them. For the new actor, I would recommend trying a few different approaches and see what works.
Here’s my method:
I record my dialogue and the significant cues (i.e. the lines spoken by other characters preceding my own lines) on the computer. Then I separate my lines from the other dialogue using left and right stereo channels. Then I cut the audio file into 2-3 minute chunks.
Then I drop the audio onto CD. I do one CD that has all the short files back to back, i.e. the entire play. I also do a CD for each file separately. Then I start playing the CDs during my morning and afternoon commute, starting with the first CD containing the first small file.
That, therefore, is a repeating audio clip of just a couple of minutes; the repetition of a small sample is what helps me memorize. It would do me no good to listen to the whole play intact, because I need to hear a small piece over and over again. Once I’ve got a handle on that, I move on to the second CD, containing the second small clip. Then the third. Then I go back to the first and review. And so on. Eventually, I graduate to the CD containing the whole play.
It’s a little wasteful to blow a whole disc on 2-3 minutes of audio, but the repetition of the short clip is key. If I mess something up, I make a mental note and try to get it right, and I get a chance to try it again very quickly, instead of waiting through the whole play. Instead of the CD, it would be better if my car stereo had the ability to repeat a single track, or if I could hook in an iPod and repeat a file, but neither is available to me. So I make CDs.
I’m currently rehearsing for a show in which I’m playing the lead, and I have a fairly staggering line load, like I haven’t had in probably ten years. And yet I’m probably going to get off book before anybody except the woman with the three-line bit part. I can’t promise that this approach will work for everybody, but for me, it works like a charm.
Missed the edit window.
I wanted to mention why movement helps. Eventually you will have blocking of some sort. You want to start connecting what you are saying to what your body is doing. Moving while you are learning your lines will help your mind associate saying them with movement of some sort and it will help keep you from losing the lines when your incorporate blocking.
It’s really one of the better tricks I learned while I was in school. The same thing for speaking the lines out loud. It may or may not help you learn them faster, but it will help develope your ability to say them without having to think about it. So even if the talking out loud isn’t what helps your learn them initially it will help you keep them when you get onstage.
Plus if you do it in a public place it can be a lot of fun. Especially with a friend. Go to a mall and freak out the squares while learning your lines.
Yes, this is significant, and worth an extra comment or two.
First: Don’t be nervous about trying to get absolutely rock-solid word-perfect on your memorization while you’re working outside of rehearsal. You’re just setting yourself up for disappointment and anxiety when you get on your feet and realize you’re dropping lines; and there are better ways to memorize, because—
Second: The physical movement will become solidly wedded to the spoken words. Unless you’re playing the guy in Extremities who’s tied up and motionless in the fireplace for half an hour, you’ll be walking around and doing things while you talk, and your memory will get a boost from the physicality. You may find yourself having trouble remembering a particular line, but then you will probably find that when you’re onstage, and you see that your line is a response to another actor stepping toward you or away from you or whatever, the words come to you without effort.
So what I do is this: I get myself to about 90% on my own. Then I carry my script, but I hold it at my side and refer to it very occasionally during blocking (terminology definition: blocking is the establishment of movement, i.e. walking and sitting and opening doors and such). In a typical early rehearsal, you will laboriously block a scene or set of scenes, then you go back through it again to make sure everybody understands it, then you go through it again to see how well it “acts.” If I’m 90% memorized at the start of that rehearsal, I can almost invariably get to 100% memorized by the end of the rehearsal, because I’m pairing the lines with the movement.
Good luck. 
That wouldn’t be in Dallas/Fort Worth, would it? I don’t really expect so, but a local theater, StageWest, is putting that on this fall, and Zyada and I were thinking of going anyway. If it stars a real person (instead of some actor I’ve never heard of), than we’ll have to see it!
Wow! Thanks for all the detailed advice; I really appreciate it very much, and I’m sure it will make a great deal of difference.
Rjk: Not DFW; the production I’m in is in Alabama.
At the audition, I sort of just nodded my head to everything the director said and read what he gave me to read. There were a good number of people there and I didn’t really understand everything that was happening. Now that I’ve read the script several times and I understand what a large role the role (Charles in Blithe Spirit) is, I’m beginning to understand some of what the director said that I didn’t quite understand at the time.
I understand now that what he was telling me is that he’s taking a chance that an absolute beginner who reads well can commit to learning the lines. My goal, as BarnOwl suggested, is to be the first one “off book.”
Thanks again for all the great advice…AMAPAC.
Break a leg, you will be fine.
And again, seriously feel free to PM me if you have questions. I trained as a director at UCLA and work in the theatre professionally here in Los Angeles.
Bow to the expertise of Cervaise: everybody learns in different ways.
I tend to learn my lines “on my feet,” as they say: the first few rehearsals, standing there with the script in my hand, are usually enough. Naturally, people hate me.
But my brother Cervaise’s trick of recording your lines and putting them on CD, that’s a good method too.
Some actors cannot learn lines well enough alone, and must have others. Some actors repeat all their lines daily, script in hand, just to stay fresh.
You know your memory better than we do. You will find a method that works.