AIBU to wonder how busy actors memorise so many lines?

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To think that actors and actresses have super-memories? The question is prompted by seeing an underground poster for a theatrical production of Shadowlands, starring Hugh Bonneville - how on earth does he (and his equally busy colleagues) memorise large chunks of text if they are busy all the time and appearing in theatre and filming?

Repetition. Times tables, verb tables, poems, plays. You keep repeating them till you get it right. It gets easier with practice. Things like places can help - if I'm standing there, it must be this line, If I'm holding this prop, it will be this line, etc. Probably every actor has their own ways of doing it, things that help them.

I can still quote some of the A-level Latin poetry I needed for an exam 26 years ago... And I still know my times tables after endless repetition in class around age 6/7. Rote learning has been unfashionable, but for getting things into your head so it sticks, it works.

I bet most of us can sing along with many '80s/'90s/'00s/whenever tunes from our teenage years - it's because you heard it over and over. Repetition.

My dad was an actor and we all used to have to test him on his lines to help him remember - playing the other parts to give him his cues. I agree training but some people do just have better memories than others.

I wonder if having ADHD makes this harder. When your brain is acting like a badly behaved monkey bouncing from one thing to another several times a second memorising text seems impossible to me.

I was really very good at this as a child. I went to drama school for a while and then did drama GCSE. I was a bit of a tearaway teen and hadn’t learnt my lines over the school holidays as everyone else had so I had 2 weeks before crunch time to learn an entire script. I pulled it off. I was Oberon as well so not a small part. Not sure I could do it as easily now, out of practice.

They say the more they learn, the easier it gets. It’s a skill like gymnastics.

Nope. I have ADHD and have been performing since I was 4. It literally comes down to repetition and knowing your blocking and being able to move. Once you’ve done a scene a few times, you will “lock” it in place.
I did Drama GCSE, so we did 2 individual performances, one scripted, the other improvised but rehearsed. I was also in the school show as Hope Harcourt in Anything Goes, did my local am drama production of Cinderella as Cinderella and was Juliet in Romeo and Juliet all at the same time. Consuming helps. Cue lines help. But it’s second nature if you’ve done it all your life. I’m about to start Frozen and I already have begun choral training which is going to be harder as there’s less movement!

That should be costuming!!

I think I read that there is a higher ratio of people with ADHD in the Arts, because it's a career that required hyperfocus for a short time, then moving onto the next thing and the next thing.

Maybe? It makes sense to me!

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.

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 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.

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'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.

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.

YABU. It’s their job!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

Sorry, today Oxford Circus tube poster - Ralph Fiennes???? How on earth? So many films he does and a theatre play to memorise in between? How?