Thursday 20 March 2008

Learn Your Lines!

Many people find learning lines difficult. During Oedipus and The Winter's Tale, I've found that starting sooner rather than later helps. I've learned speeches in half an hour simply by taking the time to sit down and do it. It requires discipline.

We are now at the stage where we have worked out the text we'll be using, so it's down to the actors to learn it. Here's some good advice from director Richard Spaul about learning lines:

"LEARNING LINES:
The way to make the most progress at this stage is for everyone to have learnt their lines if possible by the restart - or as near to that goal as possible. if that can be done, we can move forward very quickly - if not, things will be slowed down. So I think that should be aimed
at.

Some tips on learning lines:

1. do it regularly. Could everyone spare 20 focussed minutes a day? That's the best way of doing it and is much better than making desperate efforts to learn lots of lines suddenly. So that's what I'd recommend.

2. when I'm learning lines I make sure I understand everything and can see how one thing leads to another - if I can see how it all connects I can learn it more easily. With Shakespeare there's often a rhythm to the verse and if you can hear that it can help you to fit the words in (as people learn the words of songs along with the tune).

3. It's helpful to identify key points in a speech or scene. Once you've got those in your mind, you can start stringing stuff together.

4. Some people find it helpful to write their lines out or to make a recording of it.

5. I think it's always better to say it aloud and to act it out properly - to speak it with feeling rather than to parrot it mechanically. Preferably to a real person who's listening, if you have anyone to perform such a service for you. The most obvious people are other people in the cast, so why not collaborate on a spare evening some time? This will all help to make it stick.

But the main thing is diligence. Most people who complain of not being able to learn lines don't put enough time into it and end up rushing."

I might add Jerry Seinfeld's productivity technique - should be unbeatable..!

Wednesday 5 March 2008

Paranoid Choruses

in situ: The Winter's Tale - week 8

Two weeks out and I'm itching to get back, which perhaps prompts me to return a little too early. Tonight we work on the "paranoid choruses", taking the text originally spoken by one character and attempting to present it in different way.

I foolishly agree to speak Leontes's lines (because I'm a boy - not exactly breaking the mold there) in "Too hot! Too hot!" while Rachael and Tanya interject while stood facing each other in front of me and cutting off my contact with the audience. It seems to work well from early on, though I'm starting to cough within 15 minutes and begin to lose my voice by the time we come to perform the "finished" piece. I'm relieved when we break and sit down to discuss what we'll be performing in two weeks for the work in progress showing.

The Bohemian section we did before has been extended with more introductory dialogue included, but I'm not Florizel this time around. The perils of being ill. Instead I will be Leontes in the opening section, something we haven't worked on before. This will mean reading the dialogue from books, something we haven't done before in performance.

As usual the picture isn't entirely clear what will happen in two weeks' time, but these things have a habit of being worked out satisfactorily over the weekend prior.