Text Sponge: Sucking up Dialogue
I’m currently in the middle of rehearsing for a play, the next in a long line of theatre productions I’ve been involved in over a long time.
While the payoff for all the hardwork and dedication is worth the trouble to enjoy performing on stage and being showered in praise from an audience, one irritating caveat to every play (especially those with heavy dialogue) is memorizing all of your character’s dialogue, and the more higher up your roles, the more dialogue you may end up working with.
Fortunately, if you’re in a similar situation, or if you need to learn large pieces of text be it for a speech or interview etc. I can offer some advice on how I go about it.
The first and most recent technique I learnt was one that triggers a part of the brain that forces itself to soak in the text like a sponge.
Whatever the text may be, re-write (preferably with pen and paper) the entire text but only writing the first initial of every word, and include punctuation like periods, commas and capitalization.
After having read the original out loud several times, read your truncated version with the initials and work off of those letters exclusively, referring to the original for reference if you need help. Do this at least three times and within ten minutes from start to finish, you’ll almost certainly memorize just about any text.
This helped me out amazingly for extensive monologues, but small lines in between the lines of others with a great deal of back and forth can be a different story, especially when you’re practicing at home.
If your fellow thespian is not available, asking a friend to fill in can always be helpful, lines are often easier to remember when you have cues to work off of, usually pertaining to the scene at hand.
However, if you’re like me, you don't want to burden another with working through so much reading and linework for long periods at a time. Therefore, at the very beginning of the rehearsal/practice period, I record myself saying the lines of every other character I’m working with in the scene. Then play back the audio and you will then say and practice your own lines, essentially doing the scene with yourself in a very schizophrenic fashion dare I say.
It’s also good to view your lines not so much as raw text, but as responses and rational reactions to other people speaking. Understanding the context of what your character is saying and what other characters are saying can really cement in your mind how the scene will flow and what you need to say next. This becomes way easier once you are rehearsing on stage with your fellow actors and the lines lose their meaning until only the emotion remains. With luck and experience, this comes very naturally.
But, above all else, none of this can be fully tapped into without practice, practice, practice. The time dedicated to this (depending on how much you need to learn) will be great but the sooner you put aside the time to nail it all down perfectly, the easier it will be when the curtain finally lifts on opening night.
I recommend you practice, not only until you can’t get it wrong, but until you are even familiar with your acting partner’s lines too, maybe even correct them!
Thank you for reading and have a beautiful day!
Daniel
