Have you tried reading the script backwards, Panama?
Mods, you’re welcome for me waiting all day to post that line.
Seconding (or thirding, or whatever, as the case may be) all advice given so far. But, I’ll offer one further suggestion.
When reading through your lines (after you’ve got the thing memorized, and can go from top to bottom), don’t limit your practice to starting at the beginning. Try to start 5 lines into the dialog. Maybe 10 lines. Maybe halfway in. Maybe just towards the end. The reasoning here is that if you always start from the beginning, and restart once you miss something, that you will have practiced the first lines much more often than the last lines.
Had another thought; don’t know if you’ll find this useful but it’s important to me, so…
When working on memorization, I make a point of solidifying the back-and-forth dialogue first, the parts where there are direct exchanges with the other characters, and I save the monologues for later. That way, I allow the other actors to get to a productive place more quickly, because I’m not buried in a script while they’re trying to act with me. By contrast, the only person affected by my not being off book for the monologues is myself. Well, and the director, but who cares about him. 
I know you are making a joke here, but one trick I had when I was doing Shakespeare (or anything else that has long speeches) is to memorise backwards.
So if your line was
If we shadows have offended
Think but this and all is mended
That you have but slumbered here
Whilst these visions did appear
You would start by reading out line 4, then lines 3 and 4, then lines 2 and 3 and 4 and so on.
This might not work if you’ve got a lot of snappy dialog (as Noel Coward does) but for major speeches it can really help you get the lines down pat (and a good rhythm).
An anecdote a drama teacher shared with my class:
Once there was a man who got a part in a Broadway play. He hadn’t been in a play before, but it was ok because he had only one line. He was to go out on stage, a gun would go off, and he would deliver his single line, “Hark, I hear a gunshot.” Opening night, the guy is really nervous backstage, pacing and muttering to himself, “Hark, I hear a gunshot, hark, I hear a gunshot.” His big moment comes; he goes out onstage, the firearm is discharged, and he shouts
What the fuck was that?!
I was going to say I do it the other way around — but I don’t, always.
I like to memorize dialogue with the other actors, so I’m actually memorizing the proper timing and performance. And I sometimes like to memorize monologues before rehearsal begins so other actors aren’t waiting for me.
Then again, I memorize dialogue on my feet with other actors because I can; it’s not for everyone. And sometimes you must learn your dialogue alone, for any variety of reasons — the scene is difficult, or you have multiple scenes that are maddeningly similar, or you don’t get enough time with that actor, or whatever.
The only memorization rule I live by is this: your recall is better on stage if you are in the same mental state as you were when you memorized it. You want your brain chemistry the same. If you always drink coffee to memorize, then drink coffee for the performance. If you panic when you get on stage, panic when you memorize (or, preferably, be calm on stage). That is why I memorize better on my feet, I think: I’m in the same mood as when I perform.
Congratulations, AMPAC. I’ve moved your thread to the In My Humble Opinion forum because it’s about experiences and not a factual question.
-Marley “you’ll set cock-a-hoop!” 23
Congratulations, AMPAC. I’ve moved your thread to the In My Humble Opinion forum because it’s about experiences and not a factual question.
-Marley “You’ll set cock-a-hoop! You’ll be the man!” 23
How about saying your lines precisely as written? I’m a big believer of that philosophy.
Oh, absolutely: paraphrasing your lines is hell on the other actors. There’s no substitute for being word-perfect.
Remember, every one of your lines is someone else’s cue.
And paraphrasing with seriously piss of your Stage Manager and screw with your Directors head. Especially in a Noel Coward play, make sure you are word perfect.
Well, yeah, but that’s because your memory is frighteningly, freakishly good. My suggestion would be for, y’know, normal humans.
True, but also, your lines can be your own cues. Often, I find that people who stumble through longer speeches are having trouble remembering what comes next because of a midstream paraphrase, which short-circuits their recollection. If they get the beginning of the speech right, the end comes naturally; but if they fudge the beginning, the end disappears. It’s a self-perpetuating thing.
I was in a college production of “Richelieu” and the other actor on stage with me once paraphrased one of his lines, which had the unfortunate effect of making my response totally nonsensical. I had to rewrite my line on the fly, including changing a bit of business that depended on the original line being delivered as written.
The Director and I had a few words to say to him after the performance.
I figured “reincarnate with a new brain” wasn’t a piece of advice that would adhere to the play’s scheduled opening night. 
Naw, I look at my lines as somebody else’s cues, because the poor bastard who isn’t somebody else is on his own.
I once had a guy who was word perfect on the lines, but just suddenly completely change his *interpretation *of them one night during a performance of The Mousetrap (Agatha Christie). What had been an intense verbal then physical fight which was supposed to leave me gibbering in the corner suddenly turned into light banter. Which made it awfully hard to be gibbering believably and effectively turned the suspect of the play into me, instead of him, as it was supposed to be! Destroyed the tension for the next two scenes.
Kill.
The moral: *rehearsal *is for experimenting (with your lines and your acting), performance is for being a good little robot and doing it like you did before!
We were doing pivotal scenes from Shakspeare, and I had to dduel with a guy who was so drunk, he spoke gibberish, honest, absolute gibberish. The pointson the swords were real.
I killed hom, as scripted, but I could’ve shit my pants. 
But his gibberish was Shaksperian. I swear t God!
God, I have a friend who lost a kidney because the actor he was working with was drunk. It was a scene where the prisoner (my friend) was being beaten by the prison guard (the drunk asshole). The guard was supposed to be drunk, so the actor, on opening night and without consulting anyone else, decided that it would help him be “in character” to also be drunk. Asshole. One of MANY reasons why I never recommend method acting as a viable acting tool outside of film and television.
On a more lighthearted note, I once directed a production of King Lear where the man we cast to play Lear had the WORST time remembering his lines. He had been acting for 60+ years, but his memory just wasn’t what it once was. On the plus side he always knew his cue lines, and was able to improvise in perfect iambic pentameter for the rest. It was amazing and frustrating all at the same time.
I can attest to that last, certainly*. The head of the Theatre department at my college, who also directed most of the plays, encouraged us to experiment during rehearsals, with the warning that he would tell us if we were going too far. Interestingly enough, it was in that same production that I referred to in my previous post that the other actor and I ended up improvising a bit that ended up staying in the final production. The dialog implied that his character is attempting to bribe mine, and during one rehearsal, without any advance notice, he produced a bag of coins and forced it into my hand; I had no choice but to take it, but while delivering my next line rejecting the bribe I threw the bag to the floor at his feet and stalked away. As he stooped to pick it up, we heard The Voice of God (as we sometimes referred to the Director) saying “Keep That In!”
I miss my acting days…
about rehearsals being for experimentation
eta:to clarify because of my slow typing
I agree with what has been said before about finding your own way of learning the lines and also about learning them while you are on your feet (and moving; I walk or bike to most of the places I have to go to and I try to practice while doing so, especially when going to rehearsal).
Be diligent and hard-working, but don’t stress out. Instead, just keep working your lines and calmly note where you need work. If you stress that tends to get in the way of memorization, both when you are learning the lines and when you are trying to say them in rehearsal on in performance, probably because your mind is focused on the worry and not the lines.
Run through your lines every day. This is particularly important for a big role like yours, but is good general advice. I think most people underestimate how much time they have to spend on learning and maintaining lines (though at the same time I think people often overestimate the difficulty of learning their lines). In my experience, some aspects on line learning only come through repetition, flow and smoothness for example, consistency too. Learning lines is a lot like learning a new physical skill (e.g. throwing a frisbee, dancing, driving a car). Like learning a new physical skill, you will be shaky at first, but through repetition and incremental honing you will eventually get it (and like a lot of physical skills you probably won’t be able to say exactly how you did it).
Get comfortable with the performance space and the other actors. If you aren’t, you may find that your mind isn’t on the lines or performing and those things will suffer. This is the sort of advice that can be hard to follow, and it probably won’t do you any good to stress about it. On the other hand, it’s a good idea to do things like just move around the performance space to take it in and, if possible, try to get to know the other actors (it is more important to get an overall impression of them in the moment than to learn the mundane details of their life).
These are a few pieces of advice I have based on my own experience learning lines, you may or may not find them useful. The last paragraph in particular feels to me like something that, while useful, is far from the nuts and bolts of line learning and may make you worry about something that will come naturally. In fact, that is a good piece of advice in itself: chances are some aspects of learning lines will come naturally to you. That being the case, accept that gift and put your energy into the things that don’t come naturally to you.
Not to take anything away from what others have said, but there seems to be a great focus on the mechanical methods or line learning. The risk is that the performing ends up as a mechanical exercise.
I suggest spending time focusing on the meaning of the lines. Poster **BellRungBook… ** offered a good illustration of the difference. The actor learned the line, but did not attach the meaning. When it came time for the performance, they forgot the line but expressed the meaning.
One way to acheive this is to remember that most lines are a response to what someone else said or did. Spend some time focusing on what the other people are saying and doing to learn how your line is a response, how your line is ‘what you want to say’. The other aspect of meaning is that your lines are intended to elicit a response from the other people. When you understand what it is that you want out of them, again your line becomes ‘what you want to say’.
When these understandings are in place the lines will often come naturally.
I know this seems to be getting into the Acting rather than line learning, but the two really should be integrated.