HOW TO LEARN LINES

How do you learn all those lines?!

Any actor will have heard this question. And actually it is a great question to ask yourself. How you learn your lines is the foundation for everything in your performance.

Your freedom in space, your imaginative universe, your connectivity with your scene partner, your ability to change your offer... all these are directly related to how you learn the text in the first place.

For this article I am collaborating with Sydney actor Gerard Carroll, who has been on an incredible journey with his approach to text and his relationship with learning. I think you will find it interesting!

The video document at the core of this article is a performance by Gerard of a verbatim monologue. He plays a character called Smokey who features in Alana Valentine’s Verbatim play DEAD MAN BRAKE. You can watch Gerard’s three-minute excerpt here.

I have often invited Gerard to bring Smokey into my classes at AFTRS (the Australian Film, Television and Radio School) in Sydney; an…