Memorization

[LaughingThesaurus]

Hardly the biggest of my worries but...
I've got an audition for a musical tomorrow! Hurray! I have never had any choir or musical experience whatsoever. What am I most worried about? Not the acapella singing part. I'm worried about my monologue. I need to memorize it. It's tomorrow at 7 and I have other things to do between now and then to make matters worse! What I'm looking for is, outside of simply reading it over and over, and charting out the common problem areas to help link my train of thought from one to another, what ideas do you have for memorization? Is there anything that anybody's found effective for memorizing around a minute worth of spoken text?
The monologue is below. I've been working on this all day, and I think my biggest problem is that I'm so stressed out that my memorization of it just isn't clicking... but it might be just that I haven't practiced enough.

from The Worker

Edit: To clarify, I didn't write this. My name is not Walter.

[madcow]

A few tips I would offer are besides reciting it, try writing it down (in actual ink on physical paper), I've always found I remember things better when it goes from brain through hand, to paper.

You could also record audio of it to listen to (or say along while listening) while doing other things.

If all else fails, there's always the trusty writing it on your hand trick

[LaughingThesaurus]

I want to do the audio thing, but I don't know that I can make it work really. I think what I might be doing tomorrow is just carrying it around and reciting it constantly instead of listening to music... and maybe also writing it on physical paper like you said.
And that writing it on the hand trick will probably not fool this director. XD

[madcow]

And that writing it on the hand trick will probably not fool this director. XD

You'll have to just modernize that with a suitably hidden earbud and some bluetooth audio action on it.

[keith.lamothe]

One fairly effective trick for memorizing text is to:

1) have a copy of it in front of you
2) type it out a few times, generally while reading it aloud to yourself
3) blank out every third word or so from the copy (just replace with equivalent number of underscores or whatever)
4) type it out a few more times, checking if you got it right
5) blank out every other remaining word
6) type it out a few more times
7) blank out the remaining words (and possibly even remove the underscores too)
type it out a few more times

This works better when you have maybe a week and can do this every day, but even once through should help.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Gosh, that'd be more tech than it's worth for a part in a musical.

Keith, good idea. I'd probably prefer to like, type it up and then white it out from the copy or something and use the typed bit. I may try that, but I do also need to be on the move. Tell you what though, if I get a part, I'll do that for my lines.

[zebramatt]

How'd it go?

I know it's after the fact now but aside from all the above (which is all really great advice) the best piece of advice I could give someone on learning lines is to buy into them emotionally. If you can immerse yourself in it sufficiently that you feel like what you're saying is actually resonates emotionally with you, it will carry you amazingly far. So much so that dropping or switching words or phrases becomes nigh unnoticeable to all but the keenest audiences. For an audition doubly so - they're looking less at how good your memory is (although it's obviously important) and more at how well you perform.

Coupled with repetition and the kinds of multiple sensory input mentioned above, it'll just become second nature to recite, and recite believably.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Ooh, that's excellent Zebramatt. That's actually something I've done in the past. I just haven't had the time this time around. Although, you have to make sure that you aren't sort of 'scripting' the emotions as well at the same time. Otherwise, your performance won't be as easily dynamically 'shaped' as it otherwise should be... since, after all, I've heard stories of many plays that don't go quite right.

What ended up happening was, after all my practice the one day, I woke up the next day feeling a lot better about it. My problem areas were smoothed out just by sleeping on what I had practiced, and I recited it over and over to be sure that I could recover from any mistakes. It ended up being partly-improvised almost, though I actually remember catching all the departments that I was dealing with, which I didn't always do while practicing. Overall, probably was at its best when I performed it in front of the director and all that.
Same with the singing. There were a couple bits that weren't quite perfect, but it was better than any time that I had practiced it, I'm fairly certain of that.

So, after all's said and done, I've got a callback tonight! I need to study the scripts and one of the songs for it today, so my work's not quite finished yet.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I went to callbacks.
I just got an e-mail saying that they need to see some more people in a second set of callbacks.

[zebramatt]

Great stuff!