As previously mentioned by Christian, books down, a.k.a. off-script, is a bad day. I share with him the experience of having – once upon a long time ago – been the annoying twat who knows their lines so early on the play’s hardly been cast. It is puzzling, bewildering, annoying and bloody scary to find yourself unable to remember your lines with the former ease; and an additional problem is that those who remember you from the days of yore still expect you to be line-perfect from day one. Including, and probably mostly, yourself. You have  A Reputation to Uphold, at least in your mind. Which doesn’t help in the least when you step over the edge into the screaming void of having no script in your hand. These days, when I go off-script, the world around loses all solidity, three-word sentences become entirely unfamiliar uses of language never hitherto encountered, and a wild flailing and failing is all that I seem to manage.

We Shakers had that day yesterday. Cunningly, I had already put myself through the horrible experience a week early. It helps. For once it’s done, it’s never quite as bad again (at least not until opening night). As the scriptless days wear on, places start appearing in the play where – against all the odds – you find yourself doing the Wiley Coyote thing: as long as you don’t think about it, you can stop the free-fall, you can walk on air, even with an amount of panache and that cocksure way you must cultivate for stage purposes. As long as you don’t look down. Or count days until the opening night.

Once upon a time in my early days of acting (I believe ‘talkies’ may have been new…), I used to learn my lines obsessively early and be one of those hugely annoying people (to me these days) that are off book by the second rehearsal. It didn’t matter if it was a bit-role or a lead, I’d be sorted months in advance. Then something happened around five or so years ago which threw this routine into disarray. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but I curse it! Suddenly I went from being a line-swot to a line-dodger. I simply couldn’t learn lines without first having had a show blocked (all the stage movement being set) and run several times. This is actually a common occurrence with actors, as lines are easier to remember when associated with movements and doing specific actions. In most shows, this has worked-out well and lines have been in place ready for ‘the rehearsal of pain’. Sometimes it has been a close run thing, with some scenes being ‘crammed’ minutes before required.

I’ve frequently been asked if learning long passages of dialogue is the most difficult. No, it’s actually easier. Mostly. Longer dialogue usually flows, has continuity and tells a story. This makes it easier to remember and easier to recover if you lose the exact wording mid-flow. The one huge exception to this for me was learning the role of Pozzo in Waiting for Godot. I’ve never  in my life experienced dialogue so disjointed, illogical and disconnected to the other actors’ dialogue! It was a nightmare and totally impossible to learn!

No, the most difficult lines to learn are the ‘one-liners’. Those single words thrown into the middle of several other actors’ lines. Impossible to remember unless you learn all the other actors’ lines. Then there’s the ‘three-rounds-rapid’ lines; those ones where two or more actors are firing lines at each other quicker than they have time to think. I also mustn’t forgot the ‘bastard-repeats’ either; lines which are repeated several times throughout a show with a tiny variation each time, thus making it impossible to remember which is which. In terms of musicals, I can say, without any doubt, that the worst for this is I’m an Ordinary Man from My Fair Lady. That particular song took me the closest I’ve ever been to stage fright. Three verses hideously similar; lose concentration for a second and you lose the rest of the verse! I still hadn’t got it clear in my head after a solid afternoon rehearsing again and again on the day of the first performance. In the theatre, the more I thought about it, the more panicked I became. It was only by pacing the stage in the minutes running up to curtain-up that I calmed down. For anyone who has seen me pacing the stage or dressing-room before a show, this is where it finds its origins.

I write all this in the hope of giving some of you non-actors (or maybe actors too) an insight into the troubled world of theatrical line-learning. Today was ‘books down’ for the Shakers cast, and tomorrow is the turn of the Bouncers. Spare a thought for us tomorrow as we venture unarmed into ‘the rehearsal of pain’!