Armin Shimerman

Armin Shimerman and Bruce French get together for breakfast once a week to discuss show business and how it relates to their careers. Drawing on their considerable experience and knowledge in film, television, stage, and union boardrooms, they have a lot to talk about. And now, with some nudging from Now Casting, they have agreed to go public with their P.O.V.!

If you took a poll among actors as to the least favorite part of the process of putting a performance together, many might say, "learning lines!" For some actors it’s easy, while for others it’s simply drudgery. There is no universal way to do it and as many approaches to memorization as there are actors.

For some the easiest method is to inscribe the words on a railroad tie and, with maul in hand, pound the lines into one’s head.

But, wait; there must be a better way.

Here’s one method reported by a young Simon Callow in his book, BEING AN ACTOR. Callow was thirty years old when he wrote it and had already made his presence known on the British stage by playing Mozart to Paul Scofield’s Salieri in "Amadeus."

Simon Callow: "It is, in my experience, impossible to learn words: you learn the thought patterns of the character, of which the words are the inevitable expression. If you learn the words, you lay down rail tracks, which you must follow, and any sense of the thoughts and impulses, which gave rise to the words, is very hard won. The only way for me to learn, at any rate, having nothing remotely resembling a photographic memory, is to ask of each fresh line, ‘How did this line give rise to that?’ and try to reconstruct the mental journey. Hence, very logical characters are very easy to learn, those with eccentric thought patterns, extremely hard."

This fits in nicely with two basic approaches to character study: what does the character want (objective) and how does he/she achieve it (action). Objective plus action equals thoughts. Trusting that the writer knows his characters well and has put the appropriate words into their mouths, memorization should come easily. (Indeed, we have all been presented with dialogue which is not well written and which is hard to learn.)

How you listen for cue lines can effect memorization. Simply waiting for the end of someone else’s speech (often referred to in psychological circles as the Blahblahblah-My Line-Blahblahblah-My Line Syndrome) is not enough. In those cue lines or even in a single word lay your impulse to reply to what is being said. You are impelled to speak because of what you have heard. That’s why so many acting teachers stress genuinely listening to your fellow actors. Auscultation (We apologize. We just stumbled across this word in the dictionary) improves concentration.

Images can help in memorization. A line may call to mind an image whether the image is directly related to the sense of the line or not.

Bruce: "I was having trouble getting a speech in my head in a recent play. The first line was "Peace makes me sick." Instead of thinking of "sick" in emotional or spiritual terms, I saw myself throwing up. I was hastily putting on a shoe at that moment, which drew my eyes to the floor, and I saw the vomit. I used that as a springboard into the rest of the speech. It never failed me. After a while I no longer needed the image. The line was there. It also became associated with putting on my shoes."

Legend has it that, when Laurence Olivier came to the first read-thru of a play, he had his whole performance in place. I’m assuming that included his lines. Some actors can learn lines at home before rehearsals begin. They have no problem making the transition to being on their feet, learning blocking, working with props, etc. We are in awe of them. While we feel that it’s best to get the script out of one’s hands as soon as possible, associating blocking and props with certain lines help us remember them. It’s akin to muscle memory in dancers. That doesn’t mean that once the play is up that we slavishly stay with what’s been set in rehearsal. We add variations without throwing our fellow actors. But the initial line-learning process can be supported in this way.

Learning lines can be affected by whether you’re oriented visually or aurally.

Bruce: "I once worked with a woman in summer stock who learned her lines by hearing them. I was amazed. I didn’t ask her how she did it. I assumed she put her part on a cassette tape and played it over and over. I couldn’t have done it that way."

We respond to visual stimulation. It doesn’t mean we have photographic memories. That phenomenon is beyond our understanding. Nor do we remember the speech’s location on the page. We simple learn our lines at home from reading them in the scene. In truth we all probably use some form of aural and visual learning as we hear the lines in rehearsal then revisit them at home.

Preparing yourself for work on a TV or movie set is a whole different deal, where time and rehearsal are at a premium.

We wrote earlier of associating words with props and blocking. While there isn’t much time on a set to link words to movement, sometimes having personal items around you can help anchor you in an unfamiliar set. If you’re in "your office," for example, a photo of a loved one in a small frame on your desk, which the camera could not distinguish from other objects there, might help you recall words. In a courtroom scene your own pen in your hand for "making notes" during the trial might help. Whatever you can find to make you comfortable, focused and concentrated on the set will help you in remembering lines. Of course there are those times when you find yourself on a set where nothing personal can be used. Then your only salvation is listening to the other actor.

If anyone out there has a quick, easy way of committing legal and medical jargon to memory, e-mail us at once and we’ll share it with our readers. We have a friend who puts a pencil in his mouth and repeats the technical term a dozen times. This exercise helps him fix the word in his oral "muscle memory."

"How do you remember all those lines?" The perennial question has become a cliché. We have our standard answer: The memory is a muscle that gets stronger when it is exercised. The ugly reality of age is that despite our nonchalant ripostes, we have found that being secure in our lines is not as easy as it was in those halcyon days when we could memorize whole Shakespearian leads in a week. Now, even after dozens of run-thrus of the lines at home, we find we may still "go up" during a take or in early previews of a play. The British term for this is "corpsing" which we find particularly descriptive of the gut-wrenching feeling that immediately ensues after a line hiccup during performance. As instances of "corpsing" accumulate in our careers, we begin to more and more distrust our powers of recall. Eventually, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy where we subconsciously "corpse" on a regular basis. In other words, we "will" ourselves to "corpse." We know that it is the FEAR of forgetting that is causing the problem, but over time we have programmed our minds that a screw-up is inevitable. The belief in the inevitability further forces us to concentrate on what our next lines are even as we are doing a scene on camera or in front of an audience. This addled pre-occupation makes it next to impossible to truly listen to what our acting partner/partners are giving us and the result is a less-than-perfect performance. It’s vexing to go home thinking you didn’t do your best because you were too concerned about remembering lines - a feat that any child can do easily.

Armin: "One benefit of getting older in this business is that experience provides insights. After years of being on a series and doing countless guest-star gigs on other shows, I have come to realize that "corpsing" during a take is truly only bothersome to the one forgetting the lines. Directors, camera crews, and most series regulars are all nonplussed by these hiccups. The reason being is that they know actors forget lines all the time. It’s a very normal occurrence on any set. What is aggravating to a crew is when an actor gets so hung up on his inability to remember a line that he reinforces the self-fulfilling prophecy and "corpses" time and time again. This can be made worse when an actor starts to vocally berate himself or continually apologize to the director.

Knowing this, I have devised a strategy. On the first take in any master shot or any close-up, I give myself full permission to "corpse." A sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. I accept the fact that I am working with new people, that the set is unfamiliar, and that I am aggressively eager to do my best. This permission allows me to deal with all the jitters and uncertainties that such new stimuli engender. This strategy allows me to fail without self-recrimination.

Having failed, having exposed my inadequacy to my peers, and having found that nobody cared, my anxiety about failing is reduced and thus alleviates the buildup of the fear of forgetting. Experience has taught me that this exercise will make the next take easier and, lo and behold, it invariably does. Take away the pressure of corpsing, and an actor finds himself getting more centered, more sure of his intentions, and, certainly, more sensitive to what his fellow actors are giving him/her.”

Finally, how can we keep our minds "in shape" as we get older. There are no guarantees that we’ll remain lucid. Time is kinder to some than others. We have a friend who is past his mid-eighties. His wife says that he can’t remember what happened the day before yesterday, but he can remember his lines! So he works. We salute him in awe.

You know when you really think about it. It’s quite amazing what we ask our minds to do. “How DO we remember all those lines?”