The next thing that happened to me was that I, we, were living in Paris where I then grew up.
Not that being so mature is a bad thing, but there are times to be mature and there are times to be loose.
When I did plays in high school and college, I never remember memorizing my lines, but once I had blocking, I had all my lines memorized. Once I had movement associated with words, it was fine. Before I had blocking, it was just text on a page. Once it became embodied, it was much easier.