You really don't like her that much, do you?

I’m not entirely sure what I’ve gotten myself into.
Let me explain.
I’ve eagerly agreed to be in a play a friend is directing through a fledgling theatre troupe. The fledgling is not the issue, neither is the directing friend : but I’ve now read the play and Holy Camole! I’m on stage for the whole freaking thing.
A rough outline : it is approximately 68 pages long, after I subtract the five pages where I don’t interact with the other two characters (although I am still on stage), we’re sitting at 63 pages. Approx 33 lines(ish) to a page translates to roughly 2244 lines in total. At least a third of those belong to the other two characters, which leaves me with 1496 lines to learn. Now, for anyone who has never tried to learn lines for a play? This. Is. Scary.
Scarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry.
Don’t get me wrong, this is an amazing role and (so far) a fabulous cast/crew that I’m working with. They’re mostly known quantities because I’ve done stuff with them before, and recently. But the Daunting, oh, the Daunting. And I’ve learnt significant chunks of Shakespearean dialogue in under three weeks so I can handle a bit of pressure (you know, not to toot my horn or anything – hee, toot toot!), but this? Ohhhhhhhh, the Daunting.
Normally, I highlight the text to help me with learning lines but I’m thinking it might be more useful at this point just to highlight the other characters lines. (Not to waste highlighter fluid needlessly or anything, bearing in mind that we’re currently experiencing an epidemic of global proportions.) And I’ll still do my usual tricks ie leave it until the last minute/in the car on the way to rehearsals/taped to the non-wet side of the glass shower partition/forcing people in the lunchroom to run lines with me.
But hey. It’s a challenge. And ultimately that’s what I look for when I audition for a part. You don’t want every character you play to be the same, unless you’re Gwyneth Paltrow, and then apparently it doesn’t matter because they’ll give you an Academy Award regardless of the tripe you make rather than give it to the incredibly worthy Australian chick playing a Virgin Queen who didn’t have the advantage of growing up calling people like Spielberg and Michael Douglas ‘Uncle’ (I’m just guessing).

Heh. Line learning with a side of bitter, anyone??