How to Remember Your Blocking (and Use It to Remember Your Lines)

The director spent two hours on the first scene last night. Cross to the window on this line, sit on that one, turn to face him when he says her name. You nodded at every note. Tonight you’re back on the same set and you can’t remember whether you sit before the line or after it.

Everyone in the room has been there. Blocking gets taught fast, often in the same week as a pile of new pages, and it vanishes for the same reason lines do: nothing held it in place. A move you were told to make is much harder to keep than a move you understand.

The short version: write every move down in pencil, in a shorthand you can still read in a week, the moment you’re given it. Give each move a reason in the scene. Walk the blocking at home with the lines, out loud, at least once before the next rehearsal. Then turn it around, and let where you are on stage remind you what you say next.

Write it down the moment you get it

Don’t trust yourself to remember it after rehearsal. You won’t, and neither will anyone else. The stage manager keeps the official record: stage-management guides like the Utah State University theatre handbook list recording all blocking, pauses, business, and cues in the stage manager’s book as part of the job. Your own script needs its own version, though, because you’re the one who has to do it.

Use a pencil. Blocking changes constantly in the first week, and a script full of crossed-out ink is unreadable by tech week. Keep an eraser on your pencil and expect to use it.

Write the note right next to the word where the move happens, not at the top of the speech. “Cross on sandwiches“ is a different move from “cross at the start of the line,” and a vague note will leave you guessing in front of everyone. If there’s no room in the margin, draw a line from the word to the note.

Learn the shorthand everyone uses

Stage directions are given from the actor’s point of view, facing the audience. Stage right is your right as you stand on stage looking out. Downstage is toward the audience, upstage is away from it. Get this into your body early; directors will say “go down left” and expect you to move without thinking.

Actors and stage managers usually write blocking with a small set of abbreviations. These are the ones you’ll see most:

• X means cross, a move from one place to another. “X DSL” is cross down stage left.
• US, DS, SR, SL, C are upstage, downstage, stage right, stage left, and center. They combine: DSR, USC, and so on.
• Ent and Ex are entrance and exit, often with a door or wing named, such as “Ent SL door.”
• Sit, Rise, and Kneel are usually written out; “to sofa” or “to chair” says where.
• A character’s initial stands for that person. “X to A” means cross to Algernon; “X below A” means pass between him and the audience.
• A small arrow or a quick floor sketch beats a long sentence for anything complicated, such as a curved path around furniture.

There’s no single official code, so make your own key on the inside cover of your script and stick to it. The point isn’t to match anyone else. It’s to read your own notes in a hurry, at night, the week before you open.

What a marked page looks like

Here is the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest, from the public-domain Standard Ebooks text. The blocking notes in brackets are an invented example for one production, written the way an actor playing Algernon might mark them:

Algernon: [Ent USL] Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?

Lane: I didn’t think it polite to listen, sir.

Algernon: I’m sorry for that, for your sake. I don’t play accurately [X DSC]—anyone can play accurately—but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. [Turn to Lane] I keep science for Life.

Lane: Yes, sir.

Algernon: And, speaking of the science of Life, [X to tea table] have you got the cucumber sandwiches cut for Lady Bracknell?

Four moves, each placed at the exact point in the line where it happens, each readable at a glance. You’d also want a sketch of the room on the facing page, showing the door and the tea table.

Give every move a reason

This is the step that makes blocking stick. A move with no reason is just an instruction to obey. A move that comes out of what the character wants is something you’d almost do anyway, so it’s much easier to find again.

The research on actors points the same way. Psychologists Helga and Tony Noice have studied how professional actors learn roles. As the APS Observer’s summary of their work explains, professional actors seldom learn lines by rote; they work out what each line means and what the character is doing with it, which the Noices call “active experiencing.” In their studies, lines learned along with a fitting movement, such as walking across a stage, were remembered better, even when the movement wasn’t repeated at recall.

So after each rehearsal, go back through your notes and add a word of why. In the example above, Algernon comes in wanting an audience for his playing. He crosses down to show off his “wonderful expression,” turns to Lane to land the joke, and heads for the tea table because he’s done with music and wants a sandwich. Write “wants praise,” “shows off,” “lands it,” and “hungry” in tiny letters next to the moves. Now the moves have somewhere to live.

If you truly can’t find a reason, ask the director at a good moment. “What’s taking me to the window here?” is a normal actor’s question. Sometimes the answer is technical (you need to clear a sightline or be in your light), and that’s a reason too.

Walk it at home, out loud

Reading your script on the couch doesn’t rehearse blocking. You need to move.

Mark out the set in your living room. A chair becomes the sofa, a table is the table, a strip of tape on the floor is the door. It doesn’t have to be to scale. Decide which wall is the audience, so stage left and right are fixed, and then walk the scene: every line out loud, every move on its word.

Do it with your script closed as soon as you can. Testing yourself works better than rereading. In a well-known study by Jeffrey Karpicke and Henry Roediger, published in Science, students learned word pairs. When they kept being tested on pairs they had already recalled once, they remembered about 80% a week later. When those pairs were dropped from the tests, recall fell to 36% and 33%, even for the group that kept studying them. Walking the blocking from memory, then checking your notes, is a form of self-testing, done with your feet.

Short, spread-out sessions work better than one long one. A review of study techniques led by John Dunlosky rated practice testing and spreading practice out over time as the most useful, and rereading and highlighting as low, according to the Association for Psychological Science. A few short walk-throughs on different evenings are a better bet than one long session the night before.

When you can’t move

On a bus, or late at night, you can still mark it. Close your eyes and picture the set from where you stand, then run the scene in your head, seeing each cross as you say the line under your breath. Some actors trace the path with a finger on a sketch of the floor plan. It isn’t as good as walking it, but it beats skipping a day.

Let the blocking carry the lines

Once the moves have reasons and you’ve walked them a few times, they start to work for you. Where you’re standing becomes a cue. You reach the table, and the sandwich line is there, because you’ve said it at that table every night for a week.

That’s one reason a scene can get easier to learn once it’s blocked. The room gives you a map. Each position holds a piece of the scene, and walking the path is a way of walking through the text in order.

Use it on purpose. If a speech keeps falling apart, look at where it falls apart. Often it’s where nothing happens physically, or where two speeches start from the same spot and you keep jumping from one to the other. Notice the difference in your body: what are you looking at, what are you holding, who is near you? Tie the first words of the line to that.

Props help too. A cup you pick up, a letter you open, a coat you take off: each is a small action that sits on a specific line. Track your props in your notes the same way as moves (“pick up letter,” “set cup on table”), and rehearse with stand-ins at home.

Keep up when the blocking changes

It will change. A director sees the scene from the house and moves you three feet left; a new piece of furniture arrives; a castmate gets a new cross that blocks your path. Each change is a small fight with what you already learned.

• Erase the old note completely. Two versions on the page will cost you a wrong cross in tech.
• Say the change out loud once, right then: “X DSR on accurately, not DSC.” It’s a quick first rehearsal of the new move.
• Walk the changed moment at home that night, plus the line before and the line after, so the new move joins the scene instead of floating on its own.
• If a castmate’s blocking changes, note it in your script too. Their move is often your cue to move.
• If you’re unsure, ask the stage manager. Their book is the production’s record of the blocking.

In the last week, run the whole scene at home with all the moves, start to finish, with nothing in your hands but your props or stand-ins. If you skip or swap a move, that’s your note for the next rehearsal.

Running the scene with the moves

The hardest part to practice alone is the timing: moving on the right word while someone else’s line plays out. One easy fix is to listen. Offbook can play your scene aloud on your phone with your own lines left as silent gaps, so you can walk the blocking in your living room, phone in your pocket, and fill each gap from memory as you hit your marks. Playback keeps going with the screen locked.

When you’re ready to test the words, rehearse on your laptop with the full script on a big screen: Offbook reads the other characters in realistic voices, listens while you say your line, and plays the next cue when you finish. You can hide your own lines or swap them for first-letter cues, which you can also make for free with our first-letter line memorizer. For practice scenes with plenty of movement, browse our library of public-domain plays, and see our guide to memorizing lines quickly for the words themselves.

Questions actors ask

Should I learn my lines before blocking rehearsals or after?

Ask what the director expects. A common approach is to learn the scenes roughly before blocking, so you’re not buried in the script, then lock the lines in with the moves once they’re set.

Why is stage left on my right when I look from the audience?

Stage directions are named from the actor’s point of view, facing the audience. House left and house right are the audience’s view, and they’re the reverse. If someone says just “left,” ask which.

Can I write blocking on a script I rented?

Ask first, and use pencil only. Rented scripts often belong to the licensing house, so check the production’s rules before you write anything. If you can’t mark the script, keep a separate blocking sheet with line numbers or page numbers and the first words of each line.

What if I forget a move during a show?

Keep going and get to where the scene needs you, the same way you’d recover from a dropped line. Your castmates will adjust. Tell the stage manager afterward so it can be checked before the next performance.