How dyslexic actors learn lines: ear first, page second

Dyslexic actors learn lines mostly by ear and out loud: they get the text off the page as early as they can, hear the scene, and learn each line as the answer to a spoken cue instead of rereading until it sticks.

That is the short version. The long version starts at nine in the evening, with four pages of sides in your inbox and an audition at ten the next morning. You can read them. You will get there. But every pass through the page costs you twice what it costs the actor sitting next to you in the waiting room, and you have one night.

Why the page is the hard part

The British Dyslexia Association describes dyslexia as a learning difficulty that mainly affects reading and writing, and is really about how information gets processed. The same page says dyslexic people may also find it harder to process and remember what they see and hear.

That second part matters, and most advice skips it. Moving from page to ear is not a cure. It moves the load. You stop spending your effort turning marks into words, and you get to spend it on the scene. For a lot of dyslexic actors that trade is the whole difference, but it still takes reps.

It also helps to know you are in good company. Henry Winkler was diagnosed at 31, years into Happy Days. In his memoir he wrote that at every table read he would lose his place or stumble, and that he kept missing the right cue line, as TVLine reported. He played the Fonz for all eleven seasons anyway.

Get the sides early and make them readable

Deborah Groves, who coaches dyslexic performers and wrote The Dyslexic Actor's Toolkit, puts the first rule plainly in an extract on the Nick Hern Books blog: you or your agent should always ask for material in advance. Time is the access tool everything else depends on.

Then change the page until it stops fighting you. Groves suggests a clear font like Arial or Open Sans at a size you can read, coloured paper or a coloured overlay, and a reading strip that shows one line at a time. Dyslexia Scotland's summary of the BDA's colour advice is to avoid harsh contrast, like black on bright white, and to accept that each person has their own most comfortable colours. Cream works for some people. Pale blue works for others. Try three and keep the one where you lose your place least.

A few more things that make sides easier to work from:

• Retype them. Casting PDFs are often cramped, photocopied or watermarked. Your own copy can be large, spaced and clean.
• Put a blank line between every speech, so each turn sits on its own.
• Mark your character's lines in one colour and the cue line just before each of them in another. Now the page shows you the only two things you are learning.
• Cross out stage directions you do not need after the first read, so your eye stops landing on them.

How dyslexic actors learn lines by ear

Hear the scene before you work on it. Have someone read the whole thing to you once, all the parts, or read it aloud yourself slowly, stage directions included, which is also what Groves recommends. You want the story in your body before the words: who wants what, where it turns, how it ends. Once you know the shape, the lines have somewhere to hang.

Then learn in chunks, and make the chunk a thought, not a page. One cue and your answer to it is a chunk. Say the cue, say your line, out loud, until the pair feels like one sentence. Add the next pair. Go back to the top. If you only learn your lines, you will know them and still miss your entrance, because in the room nobody prompts you with your own first word. Winkler's missed cue lines are exactly this.

Say everything out loud and move while you do it. Walk the hallway, do the dishes. The reasons it works are in how to learn lines with ADHD or dyslexia, along with the research on speaking lines instead of reading them silently.

Record the other parts and leave a gap

This is the oldest trick in dyslexia and ADHD acting threads. You record every other character's lines into your phone and leave a silence where each of your lines goes. Then you play it back on a walk or with your eyes shut, and you answer the cues. The page is gone. You are listening and responding, which is what the scene asks of you anyway.

It has one real problem: making the recording. You have to read the other parts aloud, which is the very task you are trying to avoid, then guess how long each gap should be. Get a gap too short and the next cue lands on top of you. Then the director cuts a line and you do it all again.

That chore is what I built blablabla to take away. You import the sides as a PDF, a Word file or a photo of the printed pages, pick your character, and it speaks every other part in its own voice. When your line comes, it stops and waits, for as long as you need, and moves on when you have finished speaking. No gap to guess. If you need twenty seconds to find a word, it gives you twenty seconds.

Start in Listen, which plays the whole scene with every part voiced, yours included. That is the "hear it first" step without needing anyone on the other end of the phone. Then switch to Practice, where your lines go silent and you say them. A dial sets how much of your own line stays on screen: the full line, the first few words, the first letter of every word, or nothing. On iPhone and iPad you can also make the script text bigger, switch it to a paper, dark or high contrast look, and slow the voices down to three quarters of normal speed while you are still learning. Once the audio is made it all works offline.

To be clear about what it is: a rehearsal tool, not a treatment for anything. It does the boring half of the recording trick so you can spend your evening on the scene. If you prefer a person, keep the person. A friend who reads with you is still the best partner there is. The app is for the night they cannot.

Cold reads and table reads

Sometimes there is no advance copy. You walk in and get handed pages.

You are allowed to ask for a few minutes to look at them, and you are allowed to ask for a larger print or for a colleague to read your cues to you first. Groves is honest that telling an employer you are dyslexic can feel daunting, and says you should feel able to share it so you can ask for what you need. Whether you name it is up to you. Asking for time does not require a reason.

In the read itself, keep a finger or a card under the line. Look up between thoughts, not in the middle of one. If you lose your place, stop, find it, and carry on. Nobody in that room is marking your reading. They are watching whether you listen.

Short passes, then sleep

Learning by ear rewards little and often. Three short runs today, two tomorrow, one more on the morning of. Sleep between them, because that is when it sets. Five calm passes spread over two days beat twenty in a panic the night before, whatever your brain does with text.

For the general techniques that help any actor, playing an intention and tying each line to a reason to say it, see how actors memorize lines. For everything about working without a partner, from first read to selftape, there is the complete guide to rehearsing alone.

Back to nine in the evening and four pages. Ask for nothing, because it is too late for that. Retype the first page big. Listen to the scene once, all the way through. Then learn the first cue and your answer to it, out loud, and go to bed after the third pass.