How to Prepare Your Sides

Read Before You Decide Anything

Read the sides straight through two or three times before you mark anything. If you have the full script or other pages from the episode, read those for context. If you have only the sides, work out where the scene sits: what has just happened, and what is about to happen. Then read aloud, because a scene that works on the page can behave differently in the mouth.

Given Circumstances

Given circumstances are the facts the scene stands on. Write them down in two columns: what the text tells you, and what you are choosing to add.

• Who you are in this scene, and who you are talking to.
• Where you are, and what time it is.
• What happened just before you walked in.
• What your relationship to the other character is, and what each of you knows.
• What is at stake if the scene goes badly.

Keep the columns separate. Facts from the text are fixed. Anything you add is a choice, and you should be able to defend it from the page.

Objectives

An objective is what your character wants from the other character in this scene. State it as a verb phrase: to get him to admit it, to make her stay, to stop him from asking. A useful test is whether the other character could grant it or refuse it. If they cannot, you are describing a mood, not a want.

Then name the obstacle: what stands in the way. The scene is the collision between the two. Finally, list the tactics you use, as verbs: coax, challenge, deflect, plead. Tactics change as the scene goes on, which is where the beats come from.

Beats

A beat is a unit of the scene in which you pursue your objective one way. A new beat starts when something changes: you learn something, a tactic fails, or the balance of power shifts. Put a slash in the margin where it turns and a verb beside each section for what you are doing.

A short audition scene often has only a few beats. If you find yourself marking one every line, you are probably marking words rather than changes.

Make Specific Choices

A general choice gives a general performance. Compare she is angry with she wants him to say it out loud so she can stop pretending. The second can be played. It gives you something to do and a reason to listen.

• Make a few strong choices rather than many weak ones.
• Choose the relationship in detail: how long, how close, what history.
• Choose where you are coming from, and what you were doing a minute ago.
• Test the opposite choice, and keep it if it is truer.
• Keep every choice playable in a small room, with a stranger across from you.

Rehearse Out of Your Head

Learn the lines well enough to stop thinking about them, and then stop locking in inflections. If a reading is fixed by the time you walk in, you cannot take an adjustment. Run the scene against the cue each time as though you had not heard it before. Rehearse once with a different objective or a different pace, so you know how it feels to change.

Preparing for a Callback

A callback means something you did worked. Do not rebuild the scene from scratch.

1. Reread your notes from the first audition, including any direction you were given.
2. Rebuild what worked, then apply the adjustment you were asked for.
3. Expect new pages or a different scene. Keep the preparation flexible enough to move.
4. Remember what you wore and how you moved the first time. A close match is usually the safer choice.
5. Be ready for a different partner, a different room, or a new person watching.