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Position:Home>Theater & Acting> What's A Good Way To Memorize Lines?Question: What's A Good Way To Memorize Lines!? I'm taking an acting one class in school!. I had no problem memorizing lines on a scene I had to do before but the scene my scene partner and I had to do was shorter and easy to memorize!. But now I have a new partner and the scene we chose to do as our final is a little longer with more lines!. I have until December just curious if you have any pointers!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Some people are visual and others are audio learners!. You need to try and find out which method is best for you!. For audio learners then the previous answer where you listen to the lines is the best way to learn them!. If you are an audio learner then you would have to read it 10 times to retain as much as if you heard it one time!. If however you are a visual learner then you would not retain as much that you heard as what you read!. So reading it 10 times would be the best way!. If you don't know which type of learner you are, and most of us don't, then the best idea is to read the lines aloud; another words practice, practice, practice!. It depends on what the text is, if it is a play by Shakespeare then forget trying to read and learn it!. You have to hear Shakespeare to understand it!. The pattern, the word use, and the general style is too complex to retain with just one sense engaged!. I have tried to read Shakespeare a few times, but I understood so much more when I saw it performed!. This is a case where the archaic style makes it much harder to learn!. But, it may be an advantage if it is a Shakespearean play that you can rent and watch or listen to on audio tape (check your library)!. If the text is the same then that will help a lot!. Look on the Internet for books on tape and you will find a lot of books that have audio versions!. If the play you are doing is an old standard that has been around for a while then there is probably a performance of it somewhere!. If you were memorizing Hamlet then I would suggest getting the Mel Gibson movie, I understood that version much better than any printed version and he did stay fairly true to the original text!. Sleep learning is not that reliable, but it can help; that would be to listen to the lines right before you go to sleep and to have the tape keep playing so your unconscious would learn it as well!. It has been proven that you learn and retain more in the morning and after a good nights rest than in the evening or during a cram session!. So you would do best to read and rehearse the lines in the morning, maybe while waiting to go to school!. I was reading one of those Hollywood Star profiles in the Parade Magazine a few weeks ago and a movie star said that she hated learning lines at home!. She would like to go to some place like Starbucks that is busy and learn the lines there!. If she was able to learn the lines under those conditions then it would be like performing them under the stress of a movie set!. She also said that she seemed to learn them better that way!. So you need to experiment and sometimes what makes sense may not always be the right thing!. In that case I would have tried to learn my lines at home where it is quiet, but as I type this I am also watching TV, I rarely have a quiet home!. The single best way to learn those lines is to practice with the person who you will have to give them to!. This is what makes rehearsals so valuable and if you are Juliet then you need to find Romeo and go through some scenes with him over and over!. You will be speaking them to him so you need to be comfortable doing that!. Will Smith was the star of the Fresh Prince of Belair and he memorized the entire script!. He would say the actors lines to himself and then say his lines!. In an interview with 60 Minutes he had them run a piece of tape from an early episode and when you looked at him you could see his mouth move as the other actor said his lines!. Will said that he just learned the entire script and it took him a while to stop mouthing those lines for the other actors!. Clearly he became a better actor with experience, but that is how he started!. So that is another clue for you to practice, practice, practice!. The only other trick I can think of is to sing!. We remember the lyrics of a song better than the lines of a text or a speech!. If you put the script to music somehow then the pattern of that song would help you remember the lines better!. This is one requirement of Shakespeare, the play isn't sung, but it is spoken with a specific pattern that is like a song and that pattern is what you need to hear to understand it better!. So if you can come up with some song that you like and can remember the tune then putting your lines to that song will help you remember those lines!. Hardly anyone knows that a score of years is 20 years, yet millions of Americans know the line “Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth this new nation…!.” Abraham Lincoln’s speech was short, simple and to the point and the other speaker at the event congratulated Lincoln on it; “You sir, said in one word what I said in seven!.” The Gettysburg Address has a pattern to it, as most great speeches do!. Listen to Martin Luther King, B!. Obama, and a Southern Black Baptist Preacher and you will hear that same cadence in their voice!. It goes up and down like the waves of an ocean and some analysis’s say that one reason why ObWww@QuestionHome@Com This trick comes from my daughter: get an inexpensive microphone for your computer!. Read the words with no inflection into a file and then upload it to your mp3 or ipod!. Play them over and over again whereever you are until you can recite them rote!. Once you know the lines, begin to put the emotion into them!. My daughter does this and it works like a charm for her because she is an audio learner!. If you are a visual learner I guess you should read them over and over!.Www@QuestionHome@Com |