Again, it depends what kind of performer you are. I try not to memorize the meaning and intent of each line, because up until the final week of the show, it’s still fluid. The director may re-interpret the scene. Something new might be added. You might discover your original interpretation of intent was wrong. And though we hate to imagine it, someone else might forget a crucial line. If the scene is burned into your brain only one way, it might be hard to adjust later.
You should know the intent of the scene. I’m not saying you shouldn’t. Always know why you’re on stage! I’m just saying, some people have an easier time separating the memorization of Lines with the memorization of How And Why To Say The Lines.
I agree completely. While it is important –crucial even-- to know the intent of the lines, memorizing the intent along with the lines is extremely counterproductive. I don’t believe Icarus was suggesting this, rather that one should not neglect the meaning of the lines. However, I do think that it’s actually important to separate the two. Learning lines is in many ways a mechanical process.
I think it’s important to think about the meaning of the lines and the intentions in the scene, but while the words on the page are pretty concrete, intentions and meaning are less so and take more time to get a handle on. I find that I can’t come to any sort of unforced conclusions about intentions or meaning until after I have got the lines mostly in my head. This is not to say that you shouldn’t be thinking about these things before that, but I would be careful to keep the two things separate (at the very least in the initial phase).
I agree with Fish and sjc. While you should have a sense of the grammatical meaning of the lines, you should leave aside the emotional meaning. I memorize my lines quite mechanically; when I record my CDs as described above, I read the lines with a very flat affect, and with only enough emphasis as is necessary to make the sentence understandable as human speech. The bottom line is, I want to have the words in my head without shackling myself to any sort of interpretation; that frees me to experiment with, or better yet discover, nuances of delivery and interaction on stage.
Well, when you’re onstage in early rehearsals, do you deliver some of your lines flatly, and others with meaning? No offense, Cervaise, but if I were doing a scene with you, this would really screw me up.
Okay, okay. I didn’t mean to offend. I didn’t know when you’d make up your mind about delivery, that’s all.
When I think about it, this idea might be fun if done in a read through. All of us sitting in a semicircle, reading our lines aloud, You saying some of yours like Stephen Hawking’s computer voice, some emotionally. I think we’d all be laughing our asses off, wondering which interpretation was coming next.
Of course not. The fact that I have the choiceless words in my head is what allows me to make a choice when I’m facing a fellow actor.