Actors must learn and remember their lines!
Many find the process of line learning scary and unpleasant. They try to force the little black marks on the page into their minds, sometimes until the words lose all meaning. Then comes the nagging fear of forgetting: having a sudden blankness in the middle of a scene or audition.
Since 2013 I have been teaching workshops called ‘Line Learning with Confidence’ at the London Actors Centre and I have learned so much from the actors there, which I want to share now with others who may find these techniques and information useful.
After 16 (more by the time you read this) 2-day workshops, the results for the participants have been positive. Actors of all ages and experience — some of whom had even stopped working or going to auditions because of their fear of ‘drying’ — find that they can remember lines and enjoy acting again. This is the most important thing: the quality of emotional connection with the imagined situation of the scene or speech and the scene partner… the truthful, lively, creative acting.
My favourite comment was, ‘I found that I knew the lines without learning them.’
With a 2 day workshop, we can test what happens to memory when we ‘sleep on it.’
A Brief Overview of Remembering
- Encoding
- Consolidation
- Storage
- Recall / retrieval
Memory involves all areas of the brain, so remembering is more like assembling a jigsaw than collecting a series of discrete ‘pictures’. The process uses the 5 senses: vision, hearing, taste, touch and smell.
Active techniques that involve the senses most effectively engage the memory. Focus on action and Attention Outward. My practical exercises on line learning are in my book: Essential Acting. pub Routledge. 2nd edition.
There is no reason to remember something that is not important or interesting to us. The short-term memory filters out the boring, routine stuff after such things have been dealt with. This filtering leaves storage space for what matters.
When we allow the imagined situation of the character at each changing moment of the scene to MATTER to us, then we have a reason to remember what others say, what we reply and what happens to us. Speaking, rather than silent reading, forms auditory links or neural pathways to memorization. Speaking also trains the muscle-memory of the vocal mechanism.
Visually, natural bright warm colours increase our level of attention, and so strengthen the initial encoding of a memory.
The more the ATTENTION IS DIRECTED OUTWARDS, the greater the likelihood of remembering. And of course, the better the acting and the more fun is had by all!
The Processes
Encoding
Distractions and divided attention during initial learning significantly impair subsequent powers of recall. Anxiety, helplessness, telling myself, ‘I’ll never be able to learn this,’ diversions like phones, background music, another cup of tea… just prolong the agony.
The answer is to pay attention to the task: what is the scene / speech about? Your personal interest in the story and emotional connection with character and situation — ‘letting it matter to you’ — builds firm reliable memory which is then consolidated.
Consolidation…
…by repetition, creates neural pathways and connections between synapses in the brain. It is vital to remember that nothing in life can be repeated. An event, an action, a thought can happen again, freshly. If it is alive it will be new each time like the breath you have as you read this. It is not an old breath done again, it is unique, new for this moment. I like the 5 words that describe realist living and acting: ‘This has never happened before.’ (If you enjoy that, add 5 more magic words: ‘and will never happen again.’)
Short-term memory moves to long-term…
Storage…
Storage needs time to sleep. Either deep slow-wave night-time sleep or short daytime naps will do. Then what we need is the ability to….
Recall (Retrieval)
In recall the brain ‘replays’ patterns of the initial neural activity / pathway, but this process mixes with an awareness of the present moment. This can be called ‘creative re-imagination’ or ‘reconstruction’. The original event is ‘lived again.’
Forgetting is a retrieval problem: it is like a ‘lost’ book in a library…the book is there but you can’t find it. In our family we say, ‘Must be somewhere, can’t be nowhere.’
With the Truth of our Daily Life (symbolised by our right arm, which most of us use for daily life tasks) we memorise the lines of the role. With the Truth of our Imagination (symbolisd by our Left arm, nearer the heart) we live in the present moment of the action of the scene, with no knowledge of what is to come in the next moment! Two arms/ two truths; we rejoice and use both, sometimes independently. And the times when they combine and work expressively together, unified, are the times when acting becomes art, physical-emotional action. This is what Stanislavsky calls the state of ‘I am.’
Questions / quizzes soon after learning significantly improve the retrieval of learned facts and the overall ability to solve related problems. So, to answer questions on your learned speech can strengthen your recall. We call this technique ‘creative prompting.’
Using Drawing
A very helpful technique for memorisation is to use drawing; in my book and blog I give examples of the Map of Me (a drawing of you in connection with the people and places that are important in your life). And, following that, the Map of the Character you are playing: allowing that imagined world to have the same importance to the imagined character as your own real world has for you.
You can then develop this by creating a ‘Storyboard Script’ where you draw pictures of the words, making a new personal script just for you. This allows you to delve deeply into the text in a way that would not be possible by just reading the lines; in a way it is transforming the printed words into a series of bright images, with meanings that connect with you alone and this means that you remember the exact words… no possibility of paraphrasing!
Then, as you say those words again to your scene-partners, each time a word is spoken that image becomes clearer, more specific and detailed — always new and fresh to the actor as it would be to the character, who ‘has never been here before.’
The Memorisation Process
The main memory area of the brain, the hippocampus, is situated at the back, close to the cerebellum, which controls motor function and balance. The hippocampus (so named because it is shaped like a seahorse) is essential to memory, especially the transfer of short-term to long-term. It is one of the few areas of the brain capable of growing new neurons… which is encouraging! Although these neurons can be impaired by stress-related hormones.
Which is why learning lines needs to be a calm, confident activity, not a frightening ‘exam’ situation. Link easy, natural breathing with the learning, ideally with friendly people, though I know this is not always possible. But at least get comfortable and rested. Allow yourself time to nap, just for a few minutes (a minimum of 6 is recommended). When you are tired, have time to ‘sleep on it’ overnight, when the storage memory system does its work. Enjoy using your acting talent, right through the learning process, from the very start.
Notice how our emotions are integrated with our memories in the brain. An emotion recalled can change breathing, change heart-rate, make skin change colour, make the whole body brace, tremble, sweat, and collapse even. If you agree that we have, as it were, TWO TRUTHS in our experience of life: the Truth of Daily Life and the Truth of Imagination, when we act we transfer our attention from Daily Life to Imagination. (We never lose the reality of our actual present awareness, so that we do survive after playing Romeo or Juliet!) So, when learning lines we allow those words to affect us, change us and matter to us and then we find that we ‘know the lines without learning them,’ as one actor said to me after a class.
Encoding, the first stage of memorisation, depends mainly on the left frontal lobe of the brain; retrieval on the right hemisphere, linked to ‘declarative memory,’ that is, to facts and information from previously experienced events. These need to consciously recalled, as when we are learning words, and contrasted with ‘episodic memory’ of our personal autobiographical sensory experiences of events which can be recalled without conscious effort. Direct experience also associates aspects of Time and Place with emotional power.
When we make our first acquaintance with the text, and so with the imagined situation, we transfer our attention. We find links with the Truth of our own Daily Life so that we can connect empathically with the character. The emotional feelings arrive effortlessly as we discover the physical facts of the story. (Stanislavsky’s final, most effective system, the Method of Physical Action combines the physical with the 5 senses / emotion and thought into the meaning of word ‘feeling’.)
In this way, we use both aspects of memory. First, we use the declarative for accuracy and understanding of our task as story-tellers. We exploring situations and responses that are strange to us. Second, we use the episodic memory which works without effort. We join the experiences of the invented character with our own life story.
The best way I have found of making this connection is through the understanding of Universal Needs, as used in the process of Non-Violent Communication (NVC) by Marshall Rosenberg.
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