I always thought that I wanted to be an actress until I took 10th grade English with Mr. Hamling who made us memorize Shakespeare monologues for test credit. Memorizing those long passages was always so difficult for me and even if I knew it perfectly the hour before, once I tried to deliver it in front of him I would always leave out a word here or there or even miss an entire phrase. I decided that I would try to overcome my Shakespeare memorization nightmares when I signed up for acting 1101 my freshman year at UGA. I enjoyed the class very much, but it was a lot harder than I expected because memorizing lines and delivering them in a certain fashion are two very different things. Ever since we started talking about telenovela production, I have been so interested in the memorization process. I decided to do a little research on the technique of memorization and how different actors use certain methods to learn and deliver lines.
Many questions come to mind when thinking about acting out a scene. How do actors and actress memorize all of those lines so quickly and keep them straight? How do you know when your line is and when the person beside you is supposed to speak? Here are a few bits of insight I found:
1)First of all, I found that it is a two step process, some actors choose to work on their acting first and worry about the memorization later, others want to memorize everything first so they can then work on their acting.
2)Instead of reading lines to yourself, it helps to always read them out loud over and over again. Some actors even write each line down three times, until it is stuck in their head.
3)If there is a line that an actor just can’t seem to get right, they may need to review the profile of their character and learn more about his or her personality.
4)To remember cues, actors usually memorize the last phrase of the actor’s line before theirs and that way they know when they have to speak next.
The most important thing to know when you are trying to pursue a career in acting is that when it comes to learning lines- it gets easier the more you do it!
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I, too, didn't realize how hard the actors had it until we started studying production. It's just so hard for me to grasp the world of telenovels because they are so unlike anything we have here in the States.
ReplyDeleteWhen I picture a telenovela star, I think of someone who has lives a fabulous personal and work life, not someone who is bound to a script 23 out of the 24 hours in a day. These actors aren't only bound to their ever-changing scripts, but are also controlled by their network. I never realized how little control actors had over the characters. I feel like in the States an actor is considered espeacilly talented if they are able to inprove well, but as we learned today in class, that is not the case in the crazy world of telenovelas.
I agree that learning so many lines in such a short amount of time, day after day and scene after scene, must require intense concentration for telenovela actors. However, I can't help but think that TV script learning is perhaps the easiest of all, compared to motion pictures and theatre acting. Each scene only lasts a couple minutes each at most, before cutting to other characters and settings, and actors, as Dr. A has showed us, keep their scripts on them at all times. This is not a burden, it is a help.
ReplyDeleteGetting to know your character better sounds like a great way to recite lines more exactly. But if an actor changes lines somewhat but the true meaning remains, the directors usually allow it.
Actors definitely are allowed to develop their characters as the show progresses, such as the example Dr. A gave us that Marisa Roman perfected her character in Ciudad Bendita as the show went on.