Memorizing Lines

Wrote this back at the end of May 2012.

In three weeks I will be singing, dancing, and acting in a community theatre musical.  This is my fourth production with this company, and each time I get a slightly bigger role.  For the next show, I'm playing a hybrid of Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian/Lindsay Lohan, albeit reformed.  I have 25 passages to memorize, including an epic "moment" in the show where I blather on for one minute.  This passage is crucial to the musical as it provides an explanation for what is going on for the audience regarding a "magical potion."

The pressure is on not to flub it up.  I have a phobia of messing up left over from high school, when I was cast as Meg in Brigadoon--a "character" role with two major solo songs with four machine gun verses, plus a long scene where I attempt to seduce one of the two main characters.  The last 30 years I have been left with the trauma of messing up some of my lines one time for each song, and at least once for the scene.  I have a 0.500 batting average of flawless performances.  Not good.

Being a geek, I figured there would be some kind of software to assist in memorizing lines.  Preferably free.  The Obsessive Researching Mommy to the rescue!

Rehearsal 2

If you have an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone, you're in luck.  You can buy Rehearsal 2 from the iTunes store for $20 for unlimited usage.  It is quite sophisticated, allowing you to highlight your lines, blackout your lines, record your lines, and other fancy actor prep type stuff.  Well, I don't have an i-anything.  Which is probably why I can afford to stay at home and not work for a living.

ProProfs

It hit me that I could use flash cards to rehearse.  This site  is free and allows you to create your own flash cards.  For Side A, I would type in the cue line of the actor before me.  For Side B, I typed in my passage of lines.  You can "shuffle" the cards and test yourself on your lines out of order.  Side A is your cue, you say your line, and check if you're right by looking at Side B.

 
I stopped my research right there.  I found the perfect way of rehearsing for free online.

The other method I always use is to record my cue lines on my MP3 player followed by a pause and my line.  I record each as a separate file.  Then when I play the cues, I pause the player after the cue line and try to say my line, and continue playing to see if I was right.

July 16, 2012 Update:  And how did it turn out?  I managed to say all of my lines perfectly during performances, but I did have a brain fart on opening night at the beginning of my epic soliloquy.  But eventually got the whole thing out perfectly after a stumbling opening line.  Yay!  So, not absolutely perfect, but I am proud of overcoming my terrible batting average.