Sleep For A Memory Boost

Some memorization strategies are so easy, you could do them in your sleep. What strategy is that? Sleeping: you need to sleep to get the most out of your study. To memorize your lines in Shakespeare, don't stay up late.

A lot of recent research is pointing to the fact that memories are encoded in the brain during sleep. What you learned during the day will be forgotten more easily if you don't get a good night's sleep within 30 hours. That amount of sleep is different person to person, but it's probably around 8 hours for most.

Here is an excellent article about sleep and memory:

Hit the Books or Hit the Sack*?

If, like me, you find repeating your lines a little hypnotic and boring, and tends to make you sleepy, don't fight it! Use it!

1. Always study your lines before bedtime, after changing into bedclothes and brushing your teeth. When you get sleepy, just crawl into bed.
   
2. For those who like an afternoon nap, set an alarm for 1 hour. Study your lines for 20 minutes, or until you get really tired. Then nap for 40 minutes.

When you get enough sleep, not only will you find your memory improved, but you'll experience a greater connection and creativity with your lines because your brain is incorporating them more deeply.

Don't oversleep. Not only do you waste your time and get less done, but you'll actually feel less energetic. But never feel guilty for getting your optimal amount of sleep. 6-8 hours at night, plus 1-2 hours in the afternoon may just be the thing that makes you a genius, and have the best memory in your cast.

Trouble Remembering Act 2 & 3?

In our search for the best ways to memorize lines, there are certain principles that are well proven, and others that are unreliable. Today, we look at two memorization ideas that have been shown to work for everybody... so much that it's almost common sense.

Memory research has long known about two major effects from standard tests. One way psychologists study retention is to have the subject memorize a long list. Sometimes these are numbers, other times they use random words. Either way, the accuracy of the participant's recall always follow a predictable pattern: forgetting is highest for the middle of the list.

The Recency Effect refers to the fact that you'll remember the last few items really well because you heard or read them most recently. As an actor, you probably already read over a scene right before a rehearsal to refresh your memory.

The Primacy Effect shows us that no matter how long a list is, the first few items are remembered especially well. So, you probably know Scene 1 really well.

So how do you increase your memory of the middle of the play?

It's no mystery: rehearse those scenes more.

As an actor, you don't have control over the rehearsal schedule, but you do have control over the time you use for memorizing your lines. Whenever you start a memorization session, always start one scene later than the last time. Let's say you're playing the Prince in Romeo and Juliet. You'd have dialogue in I.1, III.1, and V.3. So, your first memorization session, start with I.1 and go through all your lines. The next day, start with III.1, go to the end of the play, then do I.1 last. On day 3, begin your study session with III.1. That way, the "middle of the list" is always a different scene each study session, and each scene you're in gets a chance to profit from the Primacy Effect and the Recency Effect.

In long scenes, you probably know your first line best, and your last line really well too. If you make any mistakes in rehearsal, I bet it's closer to the middle of the scene. If you memorize from the script, it's tough to get around this problem except by drilling the problem lines more and more. On the other hand, if you use ScenePartner, all your lines are on separate tracks and they're all numbered. So you can use the same method we already talked about: the first study session, start with line 1 and go through the whole play in order. The next day, go through all your lines again, but start with line 2, then line 3... then finish with line 1 at the end.

Once you've got your lines down, get the cues album, and say your line after you hear the cue line, and use the same pattern: one line later each day.

Then, put your Memorize Shakespeare playlist on random!

Sounds Prompt Sounds: Listen and Repeat Your Lines

"Oh, wait... I know this line. I can see it on the page... uh, the top of page 40. Argh, I can't remember... How does it start?"

I've heard so many actors say that sort of thing in rehearsal, and I can tell you exactly why it happens: memorizing from the page. In performance, you'll have to speak the lines, so you must use sounds (hearing and talking) for memorization early and often.

Of course, all you have to start with is the script, or your Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The problem is: if you keep using the written words to learn your lines, you'll "see" the text, and you'll have to "read" them each time you recall them. It also slows down your reactions to other characters for the same reason: you memorized the cue line as text. When you hear it said, your brain has to translate what you heard into text, recognize that it's your cue, retrieve the correct response line (as text), then translate it into the sounds you speak.

I can hear the outcry: "I have always memorized from the page, and I'm really good at it. I don't hesitate, and I don't see words floating in the air either. Poppycock!"

So, let's go over some proven facts:

1. Just because you're not aware of a mental process, doesn't mean it isn't happening. You'll never see magic text that you actually read... but the act of switching between modes of recall (vision vs. sound) takes mental energy away from your acting - and that is visible to the audience.

2. It's a tiny gap. For a natural English speaker, the translation between text and sound takes milliseconds. But that tiny pause is the difference between natural conversation and the recitation that kills so many performances.

3. The extra layer of processing harms your recall. Even if you're accustomed to learning your lines from the book, you'll find it easier and faster to learn by ear.

Have you ever noticed that you learn other actors' lines really easily during rehearsals? When they blank or call "line!", are you faster than the Stage Manager in feeding them their next words? That's because hearing Shakespeare is like hearing song lyrics (that's why they call it verse). Learning the lyrics to a song comes naturally from hearing it repeatedly, not from reading the lyrics sheet every night.

And when you hear other actors in rehearsal over and over, their lines get stuck in your head. Then it comes to your line, and you mess it up. Why?

Because you don't hear your own lines over and over... unless you get creative.

Some actors (including myself) record lines onto a mini-tape recorder. I hear only my own lines, and repeat. It's effective, but clunky. Here's some reasons it's not ideal:

1. Rewinding: Whether digital or mechanical, to go back a few lines to drill them is a pain.

2. Rhythm and tricky words: Even if you try to record with no emotion, what do you do about "incarnadine"? You can't record past that line until you check with the director about pronunciation.

3. Cues: To perform dialogue well, you should learn your cue lines by ear as well. However, you shouldn't listen to the same voice for the cue as the line, or you'll screw up even worse. So what do you do, get every other actor to record onto your mini-tape as well?

So Memorize Shakespeare has done it all for you. Select the character you'll be playing, download the lines and cues albums, and play them on any mp3 player, or burn them to CD.
Besides learning your lines faster and more reliably, you'll find your acting improving. No more translating between visual and sound... you hear a cue, you say your line.

"I can't remember... How does it start?" Right here: How To Learn Lines In Shakespeare

Why the "Palace Method" doesn't work for Shakespeare

Proponents of the Palace Method of memorization say that it's great for not only lists, but also for speeches.

If your speech is a list of points to talk about, then that's true. But if you have to deliver Shakespeare's words in exactly the order he wrote them, it's less than useless: it will harm your performance.

The Palace Method or the Method of Loci ("loci" means "locations") is described in WikiHow: Build_a_Memory_Palace and in Wikipedia: Method_of_Loci, and in most books on memory augmentation. The concept is this: you associate each item of your list with a specific item you see as you walk through a place you remember in vivid detail. A lot of people choose their house because they can remember it easily, so if I want to remember a grocery list, I associate "juice" with the front door-knob (the first thing I'll notice as I walk through my house), then I associate "lettuce" with the rug in the hallway... and so on. I'll remember my list well, and I'll remember everything in order. In fact, I don't even have to start at the beginning. You can ask "what comes after bread?" and I just remember that "bread" is my bedside lamp, next to that is my alarm-clock, which I've associated with "butter". It's weird, but it works.

It can work for speeches, if you only need to remember your outline. In many public-speaking engagements, that's all you need:

1. Doorknob: Thank the person who introduced me.
2. Rug: Tell joke about organizer.

and so on. Since it's a good idea not to write every word of a casual speech (you'll sound robotic), all you need is the outline. The Palace Method will allow you to give a long but structured speech with no index cards.

But Shakespeare is a very different matter. How would you use the Method of Loci to recall these lines:

This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate.

It's a line from Banquo in Macbeth. Would you make associations for every word? You couldn't even skip a syllable or else lose the flow of the line, because how would you recall that there must be "the" before "heaven's breath"?

And at a normal speaking pace, your mind would be running through your Palace, quite out of delicate air.

One thing that advocates of the Method of Loci suggest is that you must have vivid images in your mind of both the items in your Palace AND the items in your list. Are you going to spend a lot of time inventing a good mental image of the word "the"?

It's not only a handicap of the Palace Method... a lot of mnemonic strategies rely on visualization, and it just won't work when you have to recite Shakespearean dialogue in character. You get a song stuck in your head from hearing it, not by reading the lyrics sheet or imagining the topics of the song. That's why Memorize Shakespeare was invented!

Memorize Macbeth's Lines

Are you going to be playing Macbeth soon? Do you want to know your lines perfectly in as little time as possible?

Try ScenePartner, an audio memorization tool. Just like language-learning programs, you'll hear your line read by a professional actor, then you'll repeat after the sound of a bell. Long lines are broken up into meaningful chunks.

Worried about their delivery, that you'll end up locked into their way of saying it? We don't record a performance, just the words. So, you'll put your acting skills on top. All of our actors have a neutral accent, so you won't be memorizing a British accent while learning your lines.

There are a lot of advantages to memorizing your lines by ear, compared to reading the page repeatedly or writing down your lines, or other methods. The big bonus is that in performance, you'll be thinking of the sounds, not of the page. The words will come naturally, and you'll never pause in an awkward place just because there's a page-break in your script.

Macbeth's Lines from Memorize Shakespeare: the only product dedicated to your success learning your part.