Memorizing a script

This is the best thing I've found on how to memorize a script.

Note: The following material is excerpted from an interview
with actor and director Tony Noice.


1. Read [the script] and read it again, and read it again, and
read it again, because the most important thing to lay
the basis for memory is to really understand the
meaning, the deep meaning.

2. Find the intentions or objectives.
Go back to the beginning and now that you have a
knowledge of the essential core meaning -- what we
call the spine of the entire piece -- you then start
looking at your lines and break them down into what we
call intentions or objectives.

Determine why you are saying everything that you are
saying.

And by determining that, that already has a lot to do
with memory because the lines are not coming out of
the blue. It's not material to be memorized. As I
often say, actors don't memorize material, they make
material memorable."

Analyze the script, saying, 'What am I really trying
to get from the other person or do to the other
person? What behavior can I see in the other person
that will make me know I've achieved my goal at this
moment?'"

3. Mean what you say.
The act of experiencing, of really meaning what you
are saying and meaning it in terms of the other actors
-- really looking them in the eyes and trying to
affect the change in their eyes by influencing them
with whatever you are trying to do at that moment --
improves memory for the specific lines.

Don’t pretend to do it, just do it. Do it for real.

Picture yourself giving this information to a person,
a good friend who vitally needs it. And you really try
to get through to this person in your imagination.

You'll have trouble with this because acting is an act
of bravery. It really is hard to go out there and
really try to affect another person.

Use your imagination to not just remember the
information but really live the material, try to make
it as active as you possibly can by, in your own mind,
communicating whatever you're trying to remember to
another person.