AIBU to wonder how busy actors memorise so many lines?

Thanks for the Betty Boo earworm, @DeftGoldHedgehog

I could never do it. I remember being in absolute awe when I read that every episode of the programme Adolescence was shot in one take. The actor who played the boy was so young too.

That said I find it harder to learn and retain things in my 50s. Because my brain is full. Of Betty Boo: Doin' the Do. Neneh Cherry: Buffalo Stance and Manchild. Rebel MC: Street Tuff. Every bloody word, from 36 years ago.

As actors I would have thought that the thing that they are busy doing is memorizing their lines. Some of them do wear ear pieces.

As a kid in plays I not only knew my lines, but everyone else's in the entire play. Have you never been in play and learned lines, or had to learn anything by rote? Did you not learn stuff for exams? It's just lots of repetition and practice then it goes deep into the memory banks. Plus it's their job, it's literally all they have to do. Being an inhouse lawyer and company secretary for a small organisation is much harder, writing my own lines and learning (ok not by rote, but to sound fluent/knowledgeable/confident) what I'm going to be saying for an hour's webinar of me talking to 80 people on my own, while I have to remember filing deadlines, advise clients and company on complex matters, organise travel, organise meetings, take minutes, practically change the lightbulbs.

The thing I'd find hard about acting is the very personal criticism they get sometimes and all the rejection you have to put up with, and the lack of work, and people bothering you if you were famous. Not learning lines and performing, that's the fun bit.

Typo for costuming?

I was listening to a radio program yesterday, talking about the play The Madness of George III (I think that's the title). At one point George III (played by Nigel Hawthorne) was questioning an aide and asks if he was married yet. The aide was supposed to say "no", but after many performances the actor playing the aide was not paying attention and said "yes". Nigel Hawthorne was understandably surprised but carried on with it and seemlessly asked who the aide was married to, so the other poor actor suddenly had to invent a wife and a backstory on stage 🤭

Agree with this. I have memorised huge chunks of films, comedy programmes and songs - not intentionally; just by repeatedly watching/listening and being completely immersed.

If your brain has to do a lot of this type of memorisation, you just get really good at it. If they are a good actor, they will have really immersed themselves in the story and understood their character really well which will help. Because then it’s not just ‘What does the character say next?’ It’s more like ’Knowing this character, what would they say in this situation?

The Archers actor (Ryan Kelly) who plays Jazzer is blind, so he has to learn all his lines (whereas the others read them) and apparently his memory is phenomenal, according to other cast members.

Well, if you look at the schedule of the old repertory companies (common in cities and big towns before TV and cinema essentially killed them off in the 60s -- theatres with a resident company that performed a bunch of different plays in rotation), they were pretty demanding.

Some companies presented a different play every night, with everyone taking one or several parts and understudying several more.

Weekly rep meant that there was a new play every week, so that week's play opened on Monday night and ran nightly, with an additional matinée performance on Wednesday and Saturday, while, during the daytime, they learned their lines and rehearsed for the next week's play.

On Sundays, the only day there were no performances, the crew dismantled the previous week's set and built the next week's set, hung the lighting, set up sound etc. On Mondays there was a tech rehearsal in the morning and a full, costumed dress rehearsal in the afternoon with lots of notes from the director, and the new play's first performance was that night.

On Tuesday, the cycle started all over, with them giving the second performance of that week's play at night and starting rehearsals for the next week's one in the day.

And although they only started rehearsals for a new play on Tuesday, actors were expected to know their parts and be off-script by the Thursday.

Plus being expected to understudy several parts other than your own.

So you could be playing Rosalind in As You Like It, plus understudying any of the other female parts, while simultaneously learning your lines and rehearsing Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest while understudying Miss Prism and playing any number of servants and walk on parts in both plays.

You really needed to want to act.

I remember watching a doc about an EE actor with dyslexia who had to write the lines over and over to learn them as her reading wasn't that good. This was all done after work had finished

In theatre a lot of it is muscle memory. You learn the lines as you rehearse, so the added intent of movement and words makes it easier. Often though you might be asked to be 'off book' for the first rehearsal which is very hard.

Most soap actors spend a lot of every evening learning lines.

It's hard. I was an actress for 30 years and always found it difficult. I learned by repetition and writing it down, others used mind maps, others used tape recordings of the other lines in the car.

Whatever the mitigation and training it is still hard work.

Actors spend hours learning lines outside of rehearsal hours.

'Attending a drama class' is not comparable.

But yes, training, technique and practice help.

And with then standing up and being essentially publicly tested on it, too.

Hamlet makes huge demands.

Rosamund Pike in Inter Alia (and her understudy) had a big job, etc.

Maybe they are busy actors because they are good at memorising things?

YABU. It’s their job!

When they are on camera for film or tv, they literally only have to learn a few lines at a time as they only film in very short takes. They then have ages between takes to learn the next bit. A lot of scenes are filmed out of sequence as well, so they only bother learning what they are doing on any given day.

In the theatre, they just have to learn it off by heart. I know that professional dancers' brains develop physical changes to those of the general population, so I dare say actors' brains do the same re the ability to memorise things.

I've heard of theatre companies in which the actors spend their days rehearsing next week's play and the evenings performing the play they learned the previous week! 😯

But the more you do it, the better you get. For example, the professional dancers on Strictly can learn dances quickly as they've already mastered the individual steps, also they will be consciously or sub-consciously aware of many patterns in the dances, e.g. which steps tend to follow each other. And their brains will have adapted to all this knowledge and practice by making a lot of additional connections.

PP have mentioned that memorisation does get easier the more you do it - and there's scientific evidence to explain this. Cabbies who do the London Knowledge for example - research published in 2000 (copied from AI search):

The Landmark Study
In 2000, neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire and her team at University College London (UCL) used MRI scans to compare the brains of London taxi drivers with a control group. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), revealed that: 1]

• Posterior Hippocampus Growth: The rear (posterior) part of the hippocampus was significantly larger in taxi drivers than in the average person.
• Experience Correlation: The volume of grey matter in this area directly correlated with how many years a driver had been on the job.
• The "Knowledge" Effect: A follow-up longitudinal study in 2011 showed that the hippocampus only grew in trainees who successfully passed the rigorous four-year qualification process, but not in those who failed. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Apparently, the research showed some shrinkage when the cabbies retired and were no longer actively using the Knowledge.

I asked AI if it's the same for actors and got this:

While actors do undergo significant neurological changes, the specific growth of the hippocampus is not as dominant as it is in London taxi drivers. Instead, research on actors suggests their brains adapt through a unique process of self-suppression and multimodal integration. src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ziJ8d3m4DIc?start=35" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen> 1, 2]

Differences in Brain Adaptation
The taxi driver effect is tied to spatial navigation, a specific function of the posterior hippocampus. Actors, however, use "active experiencing" rather than rote memorisation, which engages different networks: 1, 2, 3]

• Frontal Lobe Suppression: Research by Steven Brown at McMaster University found that when actors are in character, activity in the prefrontal cortex (associated with the "sense of self") actually decreases. This allows the actor to "lose themselves" in a role.
• Multimodal Memory: Unlike cabbies who memorise coordinates, actors link words to emotions and physical movements. This recruits the precuneus (linked to attention) and the somatosensory cortex (linked to movement), rather than just the hippocampus.
• Temporal Lobe Engagement: While the hippocampus is active during the initial encoding of a script, once a performance becomes spontaneous, the brain relies more on relational binding and schematic memory, which reduces the need for continued hippocampal growth. src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/zmMYPKsBeVk" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

I have always been good at remembering song lyrics and poems and my fave films I can probably do the whole script if I had prompting.
I reckon echolalia probably factors in to it and ocd.

I'm sure it's not the same in all cases but my pal and I have been in loads of amateur productions together, she has ADHD, I don't. She is far better at learning lines than me. Although I suspect I used to find it so easy that I've got a bit lazy about it, and need to start upping my game a bit again!

I dont think they film half hour episodes a day. They often do long drawn out hours with different scenes and change words last minute.

Maybe? It makes sense to me!