TEN TIPS FOR ACTORS ON HOW TO LEARN YOUR LINES
Learning your lines is one of the basic foundations of being an actor on any level. If you don’t know your lines, there’s no excuse, you simply haven’t held up your end of the deal. They should fire you because frankly, you can’t do your job.
ONE: Don’t learn them in structured phrases, you’ll find it impossible to change the phrasing. Learn them by rote, like your times tables, devoid of meaning but with the flexibility to change in the moment. This will make learning them more difficult, but more satisfying when you can change your utterance in any way you choose. Once locked in, ‘line readings’ remain precisely the same time and time again.Regardless of what the other actors do, which is as truthless as possible.
TWO: Work through your script and use a highlighter pen (I like pink or orange, yellow can fade quickly) and this will focus you on what you have to learn.
THREE: The first step is the old cover and peek, cover and peek. Say your line, then cover with a cue card (or some other type of card) and see if you can repeat. Once you remember the line, move onto the next line, then go back and do all of the lines. So 1st line, then 2nd line, then 1st and 2nd line together, 3rd line, 1st, 2nd and 3rd line together. Etc.
FOUR: Buy a Dictaphone or download the software for your iPhone or iPod (many phones have built in voice recorders). This will help you in lots of ways. You can use it to record all of your lines and listen to them, but read them cold and plain, like a robot. This will prevent you from engraving the speech patterns into your memory. You can also use a dictaphone to record the other character/actor’s lines and this will help you to learn your cue lines. You can pause it in between whilst you practice your lines.
FIVE: Break everything down. You can learn a piece of script in paragraphs, lines, or even phrases separated by commas.
SIX: If you’re struggling to learn any line, do you fully understand it? Ensure that you really do understand it and then focus on the most important words of the sentence or paragraph. Connect the important words.
SEVEN: Learn the sense. Spend time on difficult chunks of text looking at how the writer develops the sense through the words.
EIGHT: One method that people use is to write or type out their lines. This is great for literally ‘writing the lines into your head’. So, if you have a monologue, try writing the lines out, a few times and you’ll find they’ve entered your head. BUT make sure that you don’t develop an internal rhythm for the words while you do it, which would fix their delivery in a fixed pattern.
NINE: Try writing out just the first letter of each word in difficult sentences, use them as triggers. T W O J T F L O E W I D S U T A T. You could also use the first word of each sentence to develop further triggers for the structure of your words.
TEN: Sing the lines to yourself on the way to rehearsal. Singing distracts you from rhythms you may have developed. Change the song as often as possible to keep it fresh.
Once you know your lines, try distracting yourself with exercising such as press or push-ups and squat thrusts to physically challenge yourself and your concentration.
Now, the next time someone denigrates your profession with the single worst question they could possibly ask an actor “how do you learn all those lines?”, you can tell them.
All the best!
-Mark-