Tightlaced Theatre

How do you learn your lines? If you’re an Affectable Actor the answer is likely to be “thoroughly”, because the technique demands that actors are off-book at the start of rehearsals. You can’t connect with other people with your head in a script. You can’t get your attention on them when your focus is inside your own head, looking for your words. The sooner you know your lines, the sooner you can get on with the exciting stuff.

Once your lines are deeply embedded in your head, you’re free to be affected by whatever happens. When I see an actor being thrown by something going wrong on stage, or by an unexpected reaction from the audience, I see an actor who isn’t sufficiently confident in their lines.

I spend quite a bit of time in the training sessions getting the actors to play all sorts of silly games. They fence with their fingers, chase each other around the room, pelt one another with lightweight balls – I make up the rules as I go along and change them every so often. There are three reasons for this:

1. Games mean your attention is directed outward. You know how difficult it is to remember something when you’re really trying, but a few hours later when you’re doing something else entirely it’ll come back to you? It’s the same principle. The harder you try to remember something, the harder it is. You get in your own way. Focus on something else and keep yourself too busy to stress about lines.
2. Games are unpredictable. Affectable Actors are expected to learn their lines ‘flat’ – without a fixed pattern. If you’re busy trying to fend of a volley of balls or keep someone from touching the target on your back, the rhythms and cadences of your voice will reflect the action of the game. They’ll change every time you play the game, so you won’t get into patterns that result in you saying the lines the same way every time – you’ll get used to responding truthfully instead.
3. Games keep you working with your body. British theatre has always had a strong line in skillful artifice and talking heads, because our tradition is informed by the Moscow Art Theatre and their tradition involved long months of sitting around tables discussing plays, building up characters by making decisions that are based on intellect rather than intuition. It’s a method that works for some people, but I prefer to work more intuitively and more physically – at least at first. Textual analysis and given circumstances come later in Affectable Acting, after the lines are thoroughly worked into the body.

But if this is the process that we use for testing and solidifying lines in the rehearsal room, how do you get to the stage where you know the lines well enough to test them this way? It feels like a bit of a cop-out to say that you have to find the method that’s right for  you, but… you do. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that there’s a definitive way of doing this. However, I can suggest a few things that will help:

1. Identify how you learn. The popular image is of an actor reading and re-reading until the lines are in. That’s a good starting point, but there are other things you can do. Read aloud while walking around the room, then move on to running lines aloud while you dance, run, skip, hoover, cook, play with the cat, work out… Record your lines and play them in the background while you do other tasks. If you can touch type, type out your lines while you watch TV or have a conversation. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous your method seems – if it works for you it’s perfectly valid.
2. DON’T recite your lines with your eyes shut. It’s an affectation. It might feel like it helps you to remember, but it means your attention is directed inwards and that will not help you in the long run. Don’t get into the habit.
3. Go over your lines every day from the day you get the script to the day the show closes. Every line. Every day. Regularity is key.
4. Be honest with yourself about the work you’re doing – it’s not enough simply to hold the script in front of your face, point your eyes at it and turn all the pages. Once you’ve identified your way of working, work. The amount of time you need to devote to this is astonishingly small once you’ve found the method that is effective for you.
5. Set yourself a date to put the book down. Stick to it. If, once you’ve tested the lines, you find that there are bits you need to tighten up on, get someone to feed you the lines. They take your script, read it to you a line at a time and you repeat what they say. This way you’re still moving and connecting and keeping your attention directed outwards while you learn, rather than going back to having your head stuck in a book.

Many actors I’ve spoken to, actors of various levels of training and experience, seem daunted by the prospect of being off-book at the first rehearsal. Believe me, though, it helps. Once it’s all learned you can work quickly and effectively in rehearsal, and you get to spend all your time doing the magical stuff that you got into acting to do. With that in mind, why prolong the less interesting bit where you’re still on the book?

I have a theory, which I’ll go into in greater depth in future posts, that many of us are scared of our own power and the power of theatre, so we find ways of putting off the moment when we wield that power. Lingering over line-learning is, I believe, often symptomatic of this. Affectable Acting is an empowering system, and learning to trust our own power can be frightening. We all know we shouldn’t let fear hold us back, but how do you put that into practice?

Start by learning the words.