Ways to Memorise

As a Voice Teacher, I work in many drama schools, and most of the "homework" I assign to my students is memorising lines. However, I have yet to find a drama school that offers a module on Memorisation: the skill is mostly given for granted.

I am a performer who HATES memorising lines. It's boring. Sometimes it can take 5 minutes, some other times hours and hours and hours. Sometimes that stupid line just won't stick. Maybe that's why I began looking into improvised theatre...

Every once in a while, though, I have to memorise things, so I had to look into mnemonic tactics and practices that could work for me.

For dialogues, I always prefer working with my scene partner. Learning and memorisation are context specific: you might be able to repeat your lines in the solitude of your room with the reassuring glare of the white pages of your script in the corner of your eye. Being in the rehearsal room with the other actor responding to us and the director watching is a completely different experience, and can make recalling lines very difficult.

Learning your lines with someone else resembles more closely the context of the performance. It also allows you to root your memorisation in the connection with your partner, your intentions and actions towards their character, in the rhythm, the pauses… it is also significantly more fun and harder to procrastinate. Unfortunately, we don't always have the time and resourses to rehearse together as often as we would like. But we also have been through a global pandemic, and we have learnt that things are possible through technology. Not ideal, but possible. So, voice or video call each other!

Below, a list of approaches: I will update this list as I discover more.

OBVIOUSLY, make sure you engage with these activities in a safe space and using your body and voice in a safe and healthy way.

• Repeat repeat repeat, the old school approach.

  • In big chunks! You can read the text from top to bottom over and over to familiarise yourself with the overall structure of the scene, with the whole journey from the first image, the first thought, to the very last one. Useful if youy don't have to do a word-for-word performance.
    

  • In small chunks! Maybe a sentence at a time, maybe a verse at a time, maybe even one word at a time. You can:

    • start from the beginning and go all the way down to the bottom.

      • "To", "To be", "To be or", "To be or not", "To be or not to", "To be or not to be", "To be or not to be: that", and so on.

      • This is a popular approach, and it can be very helpful. It also means that you will always repeat the first half of any monologue/scene more times than the second.
        

    • start from the bottom of the scene and go back up to the beginning.

      • “Question”, “The question”, “is the question”, “That is the question”, “Be: that is the question”, “To be: that is the question”, “Not to be: that is the question”, and so on.

      • This is a very good approach to counteract the issues of the previous one, and strengthen the memory of the bottom half of the monologue/scene. It can also be very useful to build up your breathwork, especially if you tendo to drop the volume on the last word of sentences.

  
  

• Writing or typing the lines down, or drawing them in a code of doodles. Great for visual learners.

  • Make sure you alternate writing silently, with writing as you say the words and with just saying the words. You are memorising these words to say them out loud! Connect the visual input of the written word/doodles, with the kynestetic and auditory sensations of using your voice.

• Voice recording yourself as you say the lines. Great for people with good auditory processing.

  • you can record them and just listen to them over and over, especially in contexts in which you cannot say them out loud (e.g. commuting)

  • you can record them and put long enough pauses between them so you can listen and repeat. Computer programs like GarageBand or Audacity can be very useful for this one.

  • If your scene partner does the same thing, you can get their voice recording: in this way, you can listen to their lines and respond with yours.

• Creating a choreography based on your acting preparation (e.g. actioning, Laban…). Great for kinesthetic learners.

  • go over your text and define all the actioning / Laban efforts / anything you use to act that could be translated in movement. I will continue this by speaking about actions, but you can adapt it to your own process.

  • slowly build a choreography based on the actions you have chosen, so that you are doing the action with your entire body. Be as faithful and specific to the given circumstances of the text as you can.

  • Go through the first 5 or 6 actions, then with the actions and the lines they correspond to, then through the lines without the movements. Build this however works for you!

Challenging your memory

When your memorisation is fairly, it’s always useful to play around and challenge it, by changing the context in which you are remembering the words.

• Say your lines in gibberish. This is particularly useful to connect to the intention, subtext and/or actioning behind each line.

• Pretend to be on a phone call with your scene partner and go over your lines, pretending that the other person is replying. Very nice exercise to challenge your memory and play with your imagination.