I am a human being! Not a tape recorder!

March 5, 2008 4:53 PM

Please help me memorize a huge amount of dialog for a play!

I have performed on stage before, in large and small roles, but not in a role this large, I am very excited about the part, but struggling to memorize the large amount of dialog, this is compounded by the fact that the character has very strange, and often incomplete sentence patterns.

There is still a month to production, but even though I study every day for a 2 -3 hours, I am way behind the curve in committing my part to memory.

So I figure it must be partially related to my technique. What are some techniques the hive mind has used to memorize things verbatim?

Any and all help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

posted by Fuzzy Dog to grab bag (13 comments total)

I have always been very, very good at memorizing large blocks of text or dialog, but I don't think my method is typical. At least, I'm not aware of anyone else doing it.

With the script / book open on a table or my lap, I take a piece of paper and cover everything except the first few sentences or phrases. I repeat the words until I can say them with my eyes closed. I intentionally distract myself with something else altogether such as observing the room around me or thinking about my day. Then, I see if I have retained what I just read. If not, I go through the process again.

After I can do this small part comfortably, I move the paper down to reveal another block and repeat the same process. When this is successful, I repeat the process again, for the two blocks combined. In this manner, I keep adding chunks of text. When a logical breaking-off point occurs such as a new scene, act or chapter, I start all over with next section.

If this is a dialog, I slowly slide down the paper, revealing the other character's words and read them (eventually simply recognizing them). This will be a prompt for my line.

It might sound tedious, but I have been able to memorize the entire lines for lead characters in only a day or so. Well, in contemporary plays anyway. It is important to keep reinforcing this, or you will quickly forget what you've memorized. So even if you're not actively rehearsing a particular act, you still need to review occasionally.

Good luck!
posted by nedpwolf at 5:32 PM on March 5, 2008

nedpwolf's method sounds similar to what i do (but without the paper). It's probably pretty standard practice, but I would definitely add this: run lines with a friend who doesn't mind tedious, boring work. It really helps me a lot to hear the rhythm of the text being spoken (both for the cues, and for my own memorization) over and over again, even very quickly. And if your friend has the text in front of them, they can tell you when you screw up.
posted by hapticactionnetwork at 5:42 PM on March 5, 2008

I recently had a supporting role with a considerable amount of dialogue after not having acted in anything at all for about 15 years. Scared the hell out of me. I was sure I had made a mistake agreeing to the part; I was sure I'd never be able to remember all my lines. But miraculously, I did. We did have a lot of rehearsals, for which I'm profoundly grateful.

In addition to nedpwolf and hapticactionnetwork's excellent advice, I would recommend the following:

*Find "hook" words within lines--I found if I could remember one particular word that stood out to me in a line, I could remember the rest.
*Find a pattern to your character's speech if you can--verbal tics or quirks, phrases the character uses a lot.
*And yeah, once you have your lines memorized, review, review, review. I had a ritual of saying all my lines while in the shower and getting ready in the morning, every day, whether I had rehearsal or not.

Oddly, one of the most helpful things was when I forced myself to stop bringing my script on stage with me, long before the director imposed the ban. (We could call for lines if we needed to.) Even though I felt dumb calling for lines so much at first, I improved much more quickly when I couldn't rely on my script as a crutch.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:57 PM on March 5, 2008

Ned's method is the tried and true. You'll need a lot of it. But I have always developed "anchors" for a script in my mind, very individual mnemonics that help in one way or another. In-jokes that develop during rehearsals of a certain scene, telling mistakes by myself or others, the way certain lines remind me of bad songs -- discover your own. Mnemonic aids seem to get stuck in a deeper part of the brain, and when you've gotten lost, your distance between one and another can help you.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:59 PM on March 5, 2008

Oh, man.
I feel your pain.
(Memorizing 96 pages of dialog for "Copenhagen" last Summer just about fried me; page after page of scientific argument and nostalgic noodling. Yikes...)
Excellent advice above, and I'd add that it helps me to review what I've memorized just before I go to bed and to re-review it as soon as I wake up. Somehow the lines seem to stick to my brain better if I let them "percolate" overnight.
Plus I find it helps to see the dialog as chunks of ideas rather than individual words-- that may help those incomplete actions you alluded to above.
Good luck!
Which play?
What part?
posted by Dizzy at 6:01 PM on March 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm a director, but I act occasionally. Only occasionally, because I'm terrible at learning lines. Over the past couple of years, I played the lead in "Uncle Vanya." He probably speaks about a third of the lines in the play; I've also played a major Shakespearean role and the professor in Mamet's "Oleanna," which is a full-length, two-person play. I wanted to kill myself each time. By the way, I'm a stickler for perfection. If one of my actors says "too" instead of "also," I'll call him on it. And I hold myself to the same standard.

Here's my technique: I read the first five words of the part. Let's say I'm playing Hamlet and trying to memorize the famous speech. I read "to be or not to." It's possible for many people to hold about seven words in temporary memory. I can only hold about five. Which is why I start with just the first five words.

I speak them one hundred times. Yes, one hundred times. "To be or not to, to be or not to, to be or not to..." I can't count, speak and keep track of how many times I've spoken all at once. So I hold one hundred pennies in my hand. Each time I sat "to be or not to," I transfer one penny to the other hand or put it down on a table. When I'm out of pennies, I know I've said the line 100 times.

After I'm done, I take the last word of what I've been saying and add the next four to it. "to be that is the." I say that 100 times. "to be that is the, to be that is the, to be that is the..." It's vital that I overlap by one word, because this thinks the bits of phrases together. "the question. Whether to suffer, the question. Whether to suffer, the question. Whether to suffer..." "suffer the slings and arrows, suffer the slings and arrows, suffer the slings and arrows..."

I slowly work through the whole part like this. It's agonizing.

It's totally worth it. In the end, I know my lines better than people who are "good at learning lines." I am totally confident on stage, because I know I the right line will always come to me.

I also use recordings. I record my part, speaking at a semi-slow rate. I play the recording over and over again. I play it on an ipod, which I can set to auto-repeat. I record a series of tracks. Each track has maybe one sentence. When my iPod is on auto-repeat, it plays back that track over and over. It only goes onto the next track when I press the forward button.

I start by just listening. Then I speak with the recording. I know I'm getting it when I'm continually ahead of the recording.

I do the same overlap method with the recording. The second sentence begins with the last word from the first sentence, and so on.

Even after I memorize my lines, I find I have problem areas. If my line is, "I have drunk and seen the spider" (from "Winter's Tale"), maybe I notice that I'm saying, "I have drunk and ..." and then I can't remember the next word. So I burn in into my head by checking the script and then saying "drunk and seen the, drunk and seen the, drunk and seen the..." over and over, 100 times (with my pennies). After doing this, I find that when I say "drunk and," "seen the" just naturally pops into my brain.

Don't overload your brain. Try to memorize a reasonable amount each day. Then sleep and repeat what you memorized the next morning (I do it in the shower). Most memorization gets cemented into permanent memory while you sleep. If you don't sleep well, it just sits in temporary memory and then gets erased. By the way, I play my iPod recording while I'm lying in bed, before drifting off into sleep.

Also, if you memorize three pages on Monday, expect to only recall two on Tuesday. That's just the way it goes.

Good luck!
posted by grumblebee at 6:03 PM on March 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is how I have memorized lines: I taped myself reading them from the script, including the lines for other characters, and played the tape back over and over and over again until I could repeat it as it played [often while driving around]. I reasoned that if I could do this with favorite comedy records, I could do it with anything, provided I listened to it enough times.

You have to be able to stand the sound of your own voice, of course.
posted by st looney up the cream bun and jam at 6:15 PM on March 5, 2008

Get someone to help you! I've never had much trouble with this (though I haven't acted in years), but my father has always been terrible at remembering lines, and I know what works for him. Having someone else deliver the other actors' lines puts you in a mindset far more similar to the one in which you'll actually have to remember your lines. It's nice if your helper throws a little emotion into the lines, but it really doesn't matter if they can act. Find multiple people if your significant other/best friend/whatever gets sick of helping you out. Kids are great if you can find them. I loved helping my dad learn his lines when I was a kid.

Don't concentrate solely on memorizing the words. Get started on acting. Put yourself in the mindset of the character and try to "think up" the words you have to say as though you were coming up with them off the top of your head. In a good script, everything you say has a reason and comes from somewhere either internal (if so, make sure it happens internally) or externally (if so, make your friend reads it out to you, even if it's just a stage direction). Use those causes to build links between each separate thought in the dialogue. You've probably already done this for those lines you remember easily. When you consistently forget a line, make a conscious effort to figure out how your character gets to those words from wherever he was in the previous moment. This even works for lengthy monologues, although they are much, much harder to remember because all that interaction is internal and you don't get a chance to externalize any of it.

Of course, every now and then, you'll have to react to something external to your character that doesn't actually happen on stage (e.g. your character hears something that nobody else hears). In those rare circumstances, you may have to resort to brute force repetitious memorization or to some sort of arbitrary mnemonic.

St. Looney may be onto something there. If you can't get someone to help you read your lines, you might try recording the other actor's lines with the requisite pauses for you to find your lines (maybe a little extra if you're going to keep forgetting). Keeping a remote control in your hand would probably help, though then you couldn't do it while driving.
posted by ErWenn at 6:54 PM on March 5, 2008

The only way I can memorize lines, (and I wish this wasn't so) is to go over them over and over with someone else. Script in hand I read the scene over and over again with someone else playing all the roles. After a while, I try it without looking at the script. The ammount of time it takes to get to this point varies.

I can't do it alone, I have to do it with someone else.
posted by thebrokenmuse at 7:02 PM on March 5, 2008

I don't know if you're coming back, but here's what I did. Back in undergrad, I was a directing major and I got a sizeable part in a British mystery and freaked out. I asked every actor how they did it. Every one of them had a different answer and I tried to find what might work for me. I tried the tape recorder, writing down all my lines, associating the lines with business... Everything.

This worked for me: I learned the beats. I circled the chunk of text that was about me trying to get information out of another character. I said to myself, "Okay, I'm trying to find out where she was on the night of Oct 31." Then I'd circle the next beat, "Okay, here I'm calling her on the conflicting information she just gave me." Then I'd circle the next beat, "Okay, now I'm letting her know that I've got my eyes on her."

After that, the dialogue fell into place. Of course, I was re-reading the play every day too, like if you watched Raiders of the Lost Ark every day, you'd memorize that too.

After the play was over, I got freaked out. My brain started memorizing everything. I'd remember unimportant stuff. Verbatim.

Ask everyone how they do it, and then find what works for you. But don't mistake any of these tips as shortcuts. There are no shortcuts.
posted by CarlRossi at 11:07 PM on March 5, 2008

The way I remember song lyrics is to copy them from a source - write them on paper, don't type - then try to write them again without looking at the source. Only check if you get lost. Rinse and repeat until as perfect as necessary.
posted by No Mutant Enemy at 12:50 AM on March 6, 2008

Many thanks to all those who posted ideas and techniques. I know there is no short cut, but there are definitely ideas that have helped. The play is Heroes by Johnathan Brady. I play Ray, the guy who convinces his buddy that they should become superheros and catch the serial killer du jour. Ray monologues a lot...HA!

Thanks for all your input!
posted by Fuzzy Dog at 12:57 AM on March 6, 2008

I find that I try to go through the text three times on book and then put it down and try to play the scene, returning to the text afterwards to look for errors and work on accuracy.

I find that if I can identify the reasons why the character is saying the things he is saying and play the general gist of the scene, it is much easier for me to remember the lines.

I also like to get rid of the script as soon as I can in rehearsal so I can play more physically.

If its cool with the director to start calling line early and often, go for it. That can also be a huge motivator towards getting you off book.

Good luck!
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:39 AM on March 6, 2008