#memorizing lines

How do I memorize the lines and cues for my play

Hiya anon! (No need to apologise, you're always welcome here.)

I'm gonna start out with the obvious first: practice makes perfect. Use whatever spare time you have speaking the lines out loud, whether that's to a friend, or a mirror, or a camera. Practice speaking the lines as often as you can, and try and picture the meaning behind the sentences too. Some people find that remembering pictures associated with each sentence can help them remember what each line is about.

Writing it out. Writing the lines out helps get the lines into your subconscious memory. Copy them out until they become familiar.

Move about when you're speaking your lines. I have no idea how or why this works, but moving around apparently helps. Take a lil walk and run through your lines.

Go through your lines before bed. I only vaguely know the science behind it, but going through lines before you go to sleep helps save them in your memory and makes them easier to recall.

On the subject of sleep, make sure you're getting enough of it. All of the effort won't be worth it if you're too tired to remember your lines.

Stay hydrated please, and take regular breaks.

Dont forget that if you do forget the lines, that's ok, it's not the end of the world. It happens to everyone, and the only person who might judge you harshly on it is yourself.

If anyone has any tips, please add them or send then in! I hope everything goes smoothly, you've got this anon! We're rooting for ya. Xxx

Love~ Clover

The opening date is looming. And I stand there on stage, words pouring out of my mouth, and I have no fucking idea where they're coming from or how I know them.

I mean, I've put in a hell of a lot of time to memorize these lines. I've been at every rehearsal, recorded my lines and cues months early and listen to them while silently speaking along with them at least once a day if not more (thank glob for a job where I can do that), wrote out everything I say in my own handwriting on index cards along with my cues... but it still feels like I get out on stage and just blindly reach into this white void in my head and Words Come Out.

I feel like I should FEEL them there, like they're a stack of newly typed notes with additional handwritten scribbles all over them for intonation, emotion and blocking. But I dont! It's like there's nothing there until I actually say them! The closest I get is when I'm running lines alone, just thinking them through, and I can see a kind of mini-me moving about on stage as if I'm watching a movie in my head. The lines are obviously linked to blocking and motion in my brain. But again, it's like watching a movie. Almost... passive.

But those moments when the right word slips away from me ("Damnit, I'm supposed to say that someone confirmed him, it's not governors, it's not Patricians, what's what's damn word?!?!" Dear reader, it was Senator. Sigh) the white void is merciless. Similar words flounder around its edges and get in the way, and the Right Word lurks inside, just out of reach. And then I butcher Shakespeare's prose because I gotta say SOMETHING, and it's as close as I can get without throwing off the poor actor who has to use my scrambled brain's interpretation of a line as their cue.

I may turn the middle of my speech into a pretzel, but damnit I will do everything in my power to get that last line out right to cue the next guy.

Today we met outside of class again and had another meeting with our teacher. She told us that we need to start memorizing our lines. I have mine down since the lines are more motions then talking. More movement was added on to our script with little visuals on where we should stand when we surround the table that we are at. I am still working on the movement for the end since im not clear on a few of them.