Best Way to Memorize Lines for a Church Christmas Play

A.,

How fun! I'm sure that there are lots of folks that were in drama that could help you, but I know one suggestion I followed when I was kid was to review what I wanted to memorize right before I went to sleep at night. My grandmother had read something about how you can set memory better by reading something right before sleep and so that's what I did. Sounds like he has a lot to memorize, so I wouldn't review everything every night right before bed, but I would take 1 or 2 things to go over just before bed (in addition to the practice during the day). Worked for me. In fact, many of the poems that I memorized this way for recitation as a child, I can still repeat.

Good Luck to him!

P.

I agree with the "study the script at bedtime" because I used to study for tests this way in high school. Another way is to act out the play reading the parts into a microphone and put it on a CD if you can. Then, play the CD in your car whenever driving your 9 year old around. Before long, he'll have everybody's part down. If it is a published play you might be able to find it on CD already. My church did had a CD of "Daniel Darius and DeLion" on CD and after listening to it over and over again my 8 year old daughter memorized the entire play, including all the songs.

A.,

Another good way to memorize is to put it to music and sing out loud the verses. This helped me when I had to memorize scripture for our Crown Financail class at my Church and believe my memory retention is somewhat older.

Good luck and god bless.

T.

I was in theatre and once had a 5 page monolugue to remember. One thing we would do was bounce a large ball to a beat as we read our lines... it gave us a nice rythym to work with. Another is to sing the lines to a good song. Like the other post said, review them every night before he goes to sleep, the brain will have better memory storage this way. I was embarrassed to practice my lines out loud, but he must if he truly wants to remember them!!!