Spaced repetition for learning lines
What Ebbinghaus measured in 1885, why four short sessions outlast one long evening, and the Italian run as spaced repetition before the name.
The blog
What actors actually do to learn a text, prepare a scene and keep a working rhythm. Sources included, no miracle recipe.
15 articles · Follow the blog by RSS
The articles
14 articles-
Audition mistakes to avoid: what casting directors actually cite
What casting directors cite when they talk about eliminations, in France as in the US: mostly logistics, files and instructions, almost never the acting.
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The Stanislavski method: what the system actually says
The most quoted system in acting changed during its author's lifetime. What it contains, what it became, and what people make it say.
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How to become an actor in the UK and the US: what the rules actually say
Drama schools, Spotlight, Equity, SAG-AFTRA, agents: what the bodies that open the acting profession in the UK and the US publish, and what they actually count.
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How to memorize lines fast
What actually happens in express memorization, what speed costs in retention, and why the fastest techniques are also the oldest in the profession.
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Self-tape equipment: what is worth the money, and in what order
Phone or camera, microphone, ring light, tripod, backdrop: what casting directors and platforms say, and in what order to spend money on a self-tape.
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Acting techniques and methods: a map of the major approaches
Stanislavski, the Method, Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, Michael Chekhov, Brecht, Lecoq: what each approach actually proposes, where it comes from, where they part ways.
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Reading for a self-tape: what casting directors expect from the reader
Where to stand, how loud to be, whether to act, whether it has to be an actor, and what remote readers and apps are worth: what casting directors say.
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After drama school: what the first six months leave undocumented
Two surveys from the same French ministry describe leaving drama school differently. What the figures measure, what support exists, and what nobody documents.
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Becoming a professional actor: what the word actually covers
The word professional means a training, a status and an income, and the three do not line up. What the public figures say, and where the sources disagree.
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How actors train alone: what exists, what is missing
Why acting has no codified daily training the way dance or music do, what actors actually do between two projects, and what an actor's training is made of.
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How to prepare an audition in 24 hours
What gets cut and what never gets cut when the sides land the night before for the next morning.
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How to make a self-tape audition
The guides do not agree on framing, format or readers. What actually holds across all of them, and what depends on the brief.
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Learning lines alone, without a scene partner
What actors do when nobody is free to read the other part: recording the cues, blanking out words, and why the handovers are the real problem.
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How actors learn lines by heart
The Italian run, the memory palace, walking while running lines. Old rehearsal room habits, and what memory research says about them.
By topic
4 topicsLearning lines
For an actor, learning a text does not mean remembering it once. It means being able to produce it on demand, fast, under pressure, and to find it again after days without touching it.
Casting and auditions
An audition is mostly prepared before you walk into the room. Part of what happens there is out of the actor’s hands, and part of it belongs to them entirely.
Life as an actor
Most of an actor’s job happens off set: between two projects, with no room, no partner and nobody to say whether the work is done.
Acting technique
Acting has a vocabulary, schools and a century of disagreements. Knowing them does not tell you how to act, but it helps you hear what a note is asking for and choose where to enter a role.
The vocabulary of the craft
12 terms- Italian run
- A rehearsal where the whole text is spoken at high speed, seated, with no acting and no movement.
- cue pickup
- The moment one line triggers the next, and where nearly every dry happens.
- memory palace
- Attaching what you want to remember to a place you know perfectly, then walking through it in your mind.
- spaced repetition
- Revisiting a text at growing intervals, at the exact moment it starts to fade.
- self-tape
- An audition filmed by the actor, at home, and sent to the production.
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