How Actors Memorize Their Lines
There Are Some Tricks…
Among all the questions about the artistic milieu, this is one that “normal” people ask us most, actors. After all, in other professions, hardly anyone has to memorize pages and pages of text. There must be a technique behind this, right?
Yes, there is. I use one that I find incredibly efficient. But I can say one thing: the big secret is to practice. When you get used to memorizing large amounts of text, it is easy to remember large amounts of text.
When we begin drama school, the amount of text they give us to memorize is small. That is purposeful, of course. The brain of a “non-actor” is not prepared to learn in significant volume. With each passing semester, more scenes appear, and more lines need to be memorized. In the third term of the school where I graduated is that we started taking voice lessons. And, with the voice class… The Death of Afonso the Sixt arrives! (Internal joke for those who are students of the Teatro-Escola Célia Helena).
“The Death of Afonso the Sixt, King of Leon and Castile…” is a TWO FULL PAGES monologue in which the herald — the one who makes the official announcements of the kingdom — tells all the developments of the monarch in question’s death, Afonso VI of Portugal.
