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.
