If you've acted a decent amount, you've no doubt been a part of a post-show talk back. This is when the actors come out on stage after the show and the audience can ask them questions for 15-30 minutes.
Without fail, one of the first questions that is asked is:
"How did you learn all of those lines?"
A few years ago I started pondering why that question always comes up and I sort of developed a theory. The process by which a human being pretends to be another human being is one that, at first, can seem rather distant or etherial. Most people don't spend hours and hours trying to pretend like they are someone else... particularly after the age of six. Most people HAVE had to memorize things on a fairly regular basis. The challenge of memorization is something that people have a solid grasp of. So when people see a show and are then confronted with the opportunity to discuss the craft of acting with the actors, they jump to what they know. They know what it is to memorize... so they ask how we learn all those lines.
The truth of the matter is that Acting has almost nothing to do with Memorizing. That would be like saying that learning a football playbook is what it is to be a football player. (Side note... I was just at a big sports dinner in Rochester tonight where Eli Manning was the keynote speaker, so the sports analogies may come fast and furious tonight.)
The truth is, Acting is what you start to do only AFTER you are memorized. If you don't know your lines or if you are reading your lines, you really aren't acting. Acting is about connecting to your fellow actors or to the audience. You aren't connecting if you are looking down at your script.
So the first step of my process with this role is to memorize all my lines and have them memorized well before rehearsals even start. Rehearsals are precious. Usually, there is very little time in a professional rehearsal process to get a show together. In this case, we will probably have around 90ish total hours of rehearsal before the show has an audience. 90 hours to have a 3 hour play ready for an audience... that is a challenge. So I don't want to waste a single moment of the time I have with my fellow actors, looking down at my script. There are far too many other things I will want to be working on. Memorizing is something I can do without my fellow actors so I might as well get it done now.
Plus, this is Shakespeare. These lines are hard. The quicker I know the words, the quicker I can start to figure out how to make those works work for me and in a way that the audience can understand.
Some people say to me "I learn lines better when I am in rehearsal with the other people who are in the scene." OF COURSE YOU DO! It is much easier to memorize in rehearsal. However, every moment you spend in rehearsal working on memorization is a moment you could have spent working on acting had you already been memorized!
Plus, when you are looking down at your script during rehearsal, not only does it mean you aren't connecting with other actors, it means that other actors can't connect with you. So not only are you hurting your own performance, you are hurting the performances of everyone who is trying to act with you. For the most part, if I have my script in my hand after the first day that I work on a scene in rehearsal, I feel embarrassed because I know I am hindering the growth of not just my performance in that scene, but the entire scene.
Alright, so I need to get memorized. What is the plan for memorizing this role?
First, I like to break things up in terms of acts and scenes so I have an idea what my line distribution is. Every Shakespeare play has been broken down into 5 acts. Each act is broken down into smaller scenes. In the play Othello, there are 15 scenes. Cassio has lines in 9 of the 15.
(Side note... one tricky thing about Shakespeare is that an individual line might be made up with a single sentence or a line might be a huge monologue. So, this is a bit of an inexact process but it does give me an idea of my line distribution.)
ACT - SCENE - NUMBER OF LINES FOR CASSIO
Act 1 - Scene 2 - 6 lines
Act 2 - Scene 1 - 14 lines
Act 2 - Scene 3 - 35 lines (this scene has stage combat)
Act 3 - Scene 1 - 8 lines
Act 3 - Scene 3 - 4 lines
Act 3 - Scene 4 - 9 lines
Act 4 - Scene 1 - 12 lines
Act 5 - Scene 1 - 12 lines (this scene has stage combat)
Act 5 - Scene 2 - 5 lines
Alright... so looking at that, I see that Act 2 is going to be the the hardest act to memorize.
I like to memorize one scene at a time and then one act at a time. For instance, I already memorized Act 1 - Scene 2. Now I know that I am off book (memorized) for all of Act 1. Any time any scene for Act 1 is called in rehearsal, I know that I am ready to go. I can also run that scene with Jenny(my wife.)
Plus, I can always quiz myself now...
"Ok... I've got 6 lines in Act 1 - Scene 2... what are they?" I do this a lot when I am running. And yes, I say them out loud. And yes, people look funny at me. But who cares...
A) I'm running.
B) I'm speaking Shakespeare.
Pretty sure whatever they are doing as they walk down the sidewalk is not at cool as that combo.
Because Act 2 is going to take the most work, I think my gameplan is going to be to skip Act 2 for a while and memorize all of the other scenes. I would guess that within a week or two, I should be able to work Acts 1, 3, 4 and 5 with Jenny or while I'm running, etc. Then I can go back and focus on Act 2.
Two notes here...
1) This is just memorizing. I am not working on acting yet. Were I doing acting work, I wouldn't jump around chronologically. I'd go line-by-line, scene-by-scene. And now is a good time to say that it is important to separate memorizing from acting as much as possible. Young actors often start to lock in acting choices as they are memorizing. Instead of memorizing words, they memorize words and (usually bad) acting choices that they are making completely on their own. This is bad because we want to choose our acting choices based on what we are doing to our scene partners and what they, in turn, are doing back to us. You can't do this on your own. Learn your lines on your own but don't start locking in acting choices until you start rehearsing with your fellow theatre artists.
2) Note that I marked if a scene has stage combat in it. You simply HAVE to be off book for a scene that has stage combat in it when rehearsals start. It is ridiculous to see actors try to hold a script in one hand and a sword in the other and learn a fight when they don't know the lines to the fight. And if you are fighting rapier and dagger, or cloak and dagger, or sword and shield, situations where both hands are occupied with weapons, you don't have the liberty of holding your script at all. Were I to only have one week before rehearsal started, and I knew that I couldn't be off book for the whole show by the time rehearsals began, the two stage combat scenes would be my top priority in terms of memorization.
So, I know what the line distribution is. Act 1 is taken care of. A minimum of an hour a day of line work. I should have Act 3 fairly solid by Friday.
Key points from today:
-Acting is what we do AFTER we are memorized.
-Be careful not to memorize acting choices while you are memorizing words.
-Always be off book for scenes that involve stage combat before rehearsals begin
-DON'T WASTE PRECIOUS REHEARSAL TIME WITH YOUR NOSE IN YOUR SCRIPT!
I hope all is well with all of you!
Hatch
i wonder if people remark on the lines because that's the most obvious thing about theater, memorizing lines. we don't think about the choices we make in life when we're just being ourselves, so why would it be different with someone else? the words seem like a more obvious entrance point into a world most people don't know anything about.
ReplyDeleteYeah I think that's a great point. I also wonder if part of it is that, in less professional theatrical situations, learning your lines IS considered a substantial part of the acting process (unfortunately). I suspect most of us were in those elementary school shows where the teachers just crossed their fingers hoping that we would know our lines. A successful performance was measured by if we were able to walk out on stage in front of people and say the right words. So, if I, the audience member, have experienced in some fashion that success as an actor is measured by my ability to simply say the right words in front of people, the memorization, as you say Chrissy, becomes the obvious entrance point into discussing the world of acting with actors.
DeleteIt is interesting though. I don't suspect that singers are consistently first asked "how do you learn all of the lines to your songs?" Or that football players are consistently first asked "how do you learn all of your plays?"
With acting, the distinction between memorization and craft seems to be much more minimal or unclear in most people's eyes than it does with other disciplines that involve heavy memorization.