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Techniques to Improve Memorization

By Christina Hamlett 

Former actress and director Christina Hamlett is an award-winning author whose credits to date include 52 books, 278 stage plays and squillions of articles on the performing arts.  www.authorhamlett.com. 

The first time I landed the lead role in a full-length play, I was determined to impress the director by memorizing all of my lines before rehearsals ever started.  Having always had a photographic memory may have served me well taking tests, but it did me no favors onstage.  Specifically, I had inadvertently created twice as much work for myself in now having to associate the blocking and physical movement with spoken dialogue.  Hard lesson learned!

By the time I started directing plays — often with newcomers who had never acted before — I realized I had to come up with tips and tricks which would not only make memorization easier for them but also ensure they wouldn’t freeze-up during a performance.

Here are eight techniques which proved to be the most useful and effective to improve their memorization skills.

Emphasize context through paraphrasing

If an actor has only memorized words without ascribing any meaning to them, there’s a greater likelihood of becoming a deer in the headlights if there’s any missed cue or distraction.  Beyond the words themselves, they have to understand what they are saying and why they are saying it.

To ensure actors are learning their lines at this level, following the first read-through (as well as a warm-up game before rehearsals), have actors perform extracted scenes sans scripts...  in their own words.  The deeper their understanding of the plot’s through-line and connectivity, the more immersed they can become in their characters’ mindsets and motivations, helping them with memorization when they go back to working with their scripts.

Observation exercise

Our reliance on technology has sadly diminished our capacity to observe our surroundings, much less remember what we’ve seen.  Prior to rehearsal, send everyone outside for five minutes with instruction to fixate on a person, a car, a tree, or whatever, then come back and describe it in as much detail as they can remember.

Our brains have much more capacity for taking mental snapshots than they’re given credit!  The more actors can hone their observational skills, the better attuned they’ll be to associate details of the set, props, costumes, and how their fellow actors look and move with certain lines.  These details can become cues or mnemonics to jog their memories for recalling lines.

Work from a recording

During the second read-through of a script, encourage actors to record their scenes.  These can then be played back while in the cars, exercising, or walking around the neighborhood.  Even if they aren’t paying strict attention, the repetition can still seep in over and over.

Listening Exercise

Just like we need to focus on our observation skills to really notice something, the same can be true of listening.  Unless it’s something important we need to remember, we oftentimes only half-listen to conversations, all the while planning what we’re going to say next.

A useful warm-up listening exercise is for an actor to tell a story without interruption to a partner.  When finished, the listener repeats the story back with as much accuracy and details as possible.  Then they switch roles.

By refining listening skills, actors can listen to a recording of their lines to learn them better.  (They also became better actors by becoming better listeners onstage.)

Write it out

For visual or kinesthetic learners (rather than aural learners), one of the easiest ways to memorize dialogue is to write down lines every day, then compare it to the script.  For added reinforcement, write down fellow actors’ lines, too!  A number of my players routinely did this before bedtime, allowing their brains time to process everything while they slept.

Speed runs

Lots of my actors wanted to squeak in as much practice as possible between rehearsals, so they would do speed line rehearsals on the phone, firing lines back and forth for a scene as quickly as they could.

This also works as a pre-rehearsal game to get everyone warmed up.  The rule is that if you falter and miss your line, you have to start over from the top!  For more fun, some of my fellow directors incorporate a metronome — as consistently as it’s ticking, you have to keep talking even if the tempo changes from Adagio to Vivace!

Chunking

The reason phone numbers are easy for us to remember is because they’re broken into bite-size pieces:  123-456-7890.  When actors approach a new script, they shouldn’t’ feel daunted believing they have to learn the entire thing at once.  Break it into sections.  As soon as an actor masters one group, have them move on to the next.

It’s also helpful to associate dialogue with its respective chunks of blocking.  (Example:  “When I am on this side of the stage engaged in such-and-such action, this is what I’m thinking about.”)

Say it with song!

Lastly, there are probably lots of song lyrics you can recall off the top of your head without ever having made a purposeful quest to memorize them.  An exercise which will not only give your cast the giggles but also reduce their stress is to have them put their lines to any tune they like.  Studies have shown that music evokes emotions and memories and subsequently enhances the brain’s cognitive functions to retain and recall content.