Learning the Lines

I never used to find it a problem to learn lines when I was younger.

I have memories of rehearsal afternoons on particularly difficult scenes in those high points of my career where I had a lot of dialogue, and then retiring to my digs for a quick read through of the lines we had done that afternoon before preparing supper and repairing to the pub. A quick read through  post pub before I went to bed, and the lines seemed to somehow get into my head.

 As I've got older, it hasn't stayed that easy. Now I have to work hard to get the lines in. Having recently finished a stint in a soap, I am in awe of the actors who have managed to learn four or five scenes the night before. I can learn lines quickly, but I really do have to work at it. I used to have a music stand which I would set up in the lounge and onto which I would place my script. I would then stand and recite lines from it only looking down when I needed a prompt. It worked rather well, but of course carrying a music stand around is not the best option for  line learning in other locations. Indeed the music stand got mysteriously misplaced for nearly two years, and only turned up during a search for wrapping paper one Christmas.

Now I'm more likely to rely on an app on my phone or on my iPad. Line learner is my favourite. It allows me to record my own lines, and those of the other people in the scene, and play them back with the requisite pauses for me to fill in my own dialogue. It's useful that it allows me to hear the other actors lines too.  Sometimes there can be a feeling that other people's dialogue is only really so much filling.

MY LINE

White noise White noise White noise

MY LINE

White noise White noise White noise and so on.

 Of course the real key to learning lines is working out what makes you say the line in the first place. What is the word or thought in the previous line that makes you say what you do. If you get that in place, then the lines normally come without a problem. That is of course if there is a thought that makes you say your line. At the moment I'm trying to learn a very difficult sequence of lines which involves a lot of numbers for something I'm filming next week, and the only way to do it is by rote. Repeat and repeat and repeat. Just like the parrot fashion learning of times tables that we used to do at school. It's a way of learning lines that has stood me in good stead in the past. I once learnt an eighteen minute presentation about digital media transfer for reciting at an exhibition in Amsterdam. I knew nothing about the subject, even less than I do now, but I learnt all 24 pages parrot fashion over a period of two weeks. In 1989 I learnt a one-man show. Fifty five minutes of brilliant writing by the playwright Paul Doust, but then again I was helped by brilliant plot, and an emotional through line. Not something you normally find in an exhibition presentation for building your own intranet site.

There's an app called Rehearsal into which you can import scripts, and in which you can highlight your own lines and black out those of other peoples digitally. It's only doing what you can easily do on pen and paper, but the fact that it's there on my iPad means I'm more likely to use it.

  However the script that stays by my bed at night  is always the good old-fashioned paper copy. Fluorescently highlighted or not, it's lying on the floor by the side of the bed and it will be the last thing I pick up before I go to sleep. I've always found that's the best time to put things into my head. And then as I turn out the lights and put my head on the pillow, I try to go through the lines I've just learnt. It works better than Temazepam or Zopiclone, Nytol or Mogadon. I can sometimes barely reached the second line, and I'm asleep.

Now where was I?

"Well, good morning Mr Selfridge. I wondered if ........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.