LINES: AVOIDING SELF SABOTAGE
Again and again I see actors fail to achieve their potential because of a failure to properly prepare. But I do not blame them one bit – the fear of the big event – the audition, the casting session, the masterclass – it paralyses us.
And so we don’t properly prepare for it, we just put it off. It’s completely understandable, we fear failure, so we avoid any activity which reminds us of the pressure of the event to come. We avoid the preparation because it produces the same fear as the thing we fear. Or we’re just lazy.
We can be our own worst enemies. And when it comes to lines and line learning, we take that self-sabotage to a whole new level. We leave them to the last minute, we fail to truly learn them and then when the pressure of the moment arrives, the words fall from our minds like leaves in Autumn.
And then we make up other excuses, but in the end, we were just scared. It’s understandable, acknowledge your fear, say to yourself “I have a big audition, it makes me nervous because I want to do well, now I’m going to learn my f**king lines so I don’t screw up this opportunity”. And then do it.
Here’s some tips:
1) Learn the lines as soon as you get them.
2) The fear of failure will come up anyway, so learn them as soon as you get them.
3) Drill the lines. Forget that the words mean anything, learn the words, don’t use intonations to hook them in your memory. Keep them totally flat and meaningless – it will be harder, but they will remain flexible for longer.
4) Use multi-modal approaches to line learning to ensure that they are stored in different parts of your brain. Listen to them, make yourself a quiz, write them out, speak them and read them. Most people use the learning approach they’ve used since school, no matter how efficient or effective. Experiment with different approaches until you find the most effective and not the one you do out of habit.
5) You will get nervous and distracted, so once you’ve learned them, find a distracting activity to do while you recall them. Running, push ups, nerf gun fights all work well. Just because you can do them at home in the safety and no pressure environment of your living room, does not mean they won’t disappear under pressure. Pressure yourself.
6) Plan to be off the script at least three days before your audition. Memory takes a least one night to upload short term to long term storage. But if you can leave it longer and test it daily, it will be more secure when the time comes.
7) If you get someone to test you, make sure they are strict, so many people just want to save your feelings and don’t correct you. Learning a rough paraphrasing of the script is not good enough.
This type of self-sabotage is actually a form of self-protection. It’s actually a way of protecting us from the pain of disappointment and rejection. We avoid really preparing so that we can save ourselves pain if it doesn’t work out. After the event, we can reassure ourselves that we didn’t really want it anyway, because if we did, we would have prepared.
Don’t be this kind of self-saboteur.