Acting terms: a glossary of audition and rehearsal words

Somewhere in your first few auditions, someone said "grab your sides, and you're after the next person," and you nodded like you knew exactly what that meant. Most of us did. Nobody explains the acting terms this job runs on. You pick them up in the corridor, from the person next to you in the waiting room, from an email from your agent that says "avail" and then silence for a week.

So here they are written down: the words of auditioning, taping, learning and rehearsing, each with a plain definition and then what it actually feels like. Some terms shift from country to country and from casting office to casting office. When a word in an email is unclear, ask your agent or the casting assistant. Nobody minds, and everyone has asked.

Acting terms for auditions and casting

Breakdown

A breakdown is the casting notice for a project. It describes every role being cast: age range, type of character, sometimes the shoot dates, location, pay and union status. Your agent sees the whole thing, you usually see only the part that is yours.

Sides

Sides are the pages of the script you are given for an audition. Usually one to three pages from a scene, not the full script. The phrase is used most for film and TV, and in a casting email it simply means the material to prepare.

They tend to arrive late. Treat them as confidential, because the script may not be public yet. How to break one down quickly is in how to break down a scene.

Casting director

A casting director is the person who finds actors for a production, runs the auditions and recommends who should be seen by the director and producers. They are on your side more than you think. They have a list to fill and a day to do it in, and they would very much like you to be good.

Prescreen

A prescreen is an early round, usually a selftape, that casting asks for before deciding who gets a live audition or callback. You send the tape and wait. It can feel like taping into a void. Treat it as a real audition anyway, because for most roles it is the only one you get.

Callback (recall)

A callback is a second audition for the same role, held after the first round. More decision-makers are in the room, and you are often given new sides. In the UK it is also called a recall. StageMilk's guide to the stages after a tape describes callbacks as the later stage for bigger roles, which can include sessions with the director or producers.

Chemistry read

A chemistry read is a callback exercise where you play a scene with the other actors being considered for the other roles. The point is to see how people sound and react together, not just how each of you reads alone.

It can feel odd to be judged on a connection with someone you met twenty minutes ago. Listen more than you perform. Listening is what they are watching.

Cold read

A cold read is reading material aloud with little or no preparation. Typically you are handed sides in the waiting room, given a few minutes, and sent in. Casting wants to see how quickly you make choices and how well you listen, not whether you can read perfectly.

Hold the page, look up when you can, and pick one clear choice instead of ten vague ones. The thirty-second method is in what nobody tells you about cold reading.

Avail

Avail, short for availability check, is casting asking whether you are free for the shoot dates. It means they liked your tape and you are one of a short list. Casting Frontier's glossary is clear that it is an encouraging sign but does not mean you have booked the job.

Reply fast and be honest about the dates. Then don't clear your calendar for a month; an avail can go quiet.

Pin and hold

A pin, or a hold, means casting is treating you as a frontrunner and asking you to keep the dates free. StageMilk calls it the last step before being booked, more common in film and TV than in commercials, and notes that you can still be released. Some markets use "pin" and "hold" for the same thing; in others a hold is the step after an avail check. Ask your agent what the word means where you are.

Keep the dates free, tell nobody you have the job, and keep going to other auditions. A pin is a very good sign and also not a contract.

Booking

To book a job is to be hired for it. "I booked it" is the sentence everyone waits to say. Until you hear it from your agent, it hasn't happened, so keep the other auditions in your diary.

The room

The room is the audition room, the live audition in front of casting. "I got into the room" means you were invited to audition in person. "Is it a tape or the room?" is one of the first questions you ask when a request comes in. The room feels different from a tape: there are people breathing in it, and you can see whether your reader is listening.

Selftapes

Selftape

A selftape is an audition you film yourself and send to casting. Usually at home, usually on a phone, usually from sides you have had for a day or two and with somebody reading the other part off camera. It has replaced the first-round audition for much of film and TV. The full picture is in what is a selftape.

The feeling is the panic of a tape due tomorrow and a flatmate who is out. It passes. A calm, simple setup helps more than any gear, and selftape setup, lighting and backdrop covers it.

Submit a tape

To submit a tape is to send your finished selftape to casting by their deadline. In practice that means uploading it to a casting platform, sending a link, or sending it to your agent, who forwards it. The casting request tells you which.

Check the file format, the file name they want and the deadline before you shoot, not after. Then send it and move on. Watching the same tape for the fifth time at midnight is not improving it.

Slate

A slate is the short introduction at the start of a tape, where you say your name and whatever else casting asks for. Often that is height, agent, location, or the role you are reading for. It is not part of the scene, but it is part of the audition.

It takes about eight seconds and is the only moment where casting meets you rather than the character. Say it like a person. If you forgot, the answer is in how to slate a selftape.

Reader

A reader is the person who reads the other characters' lines to you. In the room it might be the casting director or an assistant. On a tape it is whoever you could persuade, off camera, and ideally not performing too much.

A good reader gives you a clean cue at a sensible pace and gets out of the way. If you are the one reading for a friend, how to be a great selftape reader is written for you.

Eyeline

Your eyeline is where you look during the scene. On a tape it is almost always just beside the lens, on the side where the reader sits, not into the camera and not across the room unless casting asks for something else. In the room it is usually the reader or the person you are talking to.

Look at one spot, with intent, and keep it there between lines. It is the small thing that makes a tape feel like a scene rather than someone reciting at a phone.

Framing

Framing is how much of you is in the picture. A close-up is tight: face and a little shoulder. A mid shot goes lower, roughly to the waist. For most tapes casting wants something in between, a medium close-up from about mid-chest to just above your head, unless casting asks for something else.

Before you shoot, frame up on a test take and watch it back. Most actors are too low in the frame or cut off at the forehead.

Teleprompter

A teleprompter is a screen that shows your lines while you look at the camera. Newsreaders use them. Actors use them on tapes to stop worrying about one line that will not stay in, which is a different job.

Used well, it is a safety net. Used badly, it is obvious: the eyes move left to right and the scene goes flat. When it helps and when it shows is covered in teleprompter for actors.

Learning and rehearsing

Monologue

A monologue is a speech by one character, usually performed for an audition without anyone else on stage. Drama schools and agents often ask for one or two, with a time limit, sometimes one contemporary and one classical.

The strangest part is that you have to imagine the person you are talking to, then play the scene as if they are really there. How to rehearse a monologue alone is the working method, and the free monologues in the practice library are there if you need something to try it on.

Two-hander

A two-hander is a play, film or scene with only two main characters. In class and in audition rooms it usually means a scene for two actors, which is why scene study loves them. The practice library has free two-hander scenes you can read without importing anything.

Contemporary and classical

Contemporary text is written in the way people speak now or recently, and classical text is older and more heightened. In an audition "classical" usually means Shakespeare or a writer close to him in time, though it can stretch to the Greeks and other older plays.

When a drama school asks for one of each, they want to see two different muscles: truthful, natural speech, and the ability to carry rhythm and image without sounding like a recitation. Pick pieces that sound different from each other.

Scene partner

A scene partner is the other actor in your scene. In class it is the person you were paired with, in an audition it is the reader, and at home it is whoever will do it, or nobody.

The word is used loosely for three different people, and what you need from each is different. What is a scene partner goes through all three. The most common problem is having none at eleven at night.

Run lines

To run lines is to go through a scene out loud, with someone saying the other characters' lines and you saying yours. You do it before an audition, before a tape, in the weeks before a first rehearsal and again in the dressing room. It is the part of the job that nobody sees.

It is also the part that depends on other people's evenings. You ask a friend, then feel bad about asking again, and so you stop at three passes when the scene wanted ten. If you have to do it alone, blablabla is an app for running lines by yourself: it reads the other parts in distinct voices, pauses on your cue for as long as you need, and never talks over you. It is the best way to run lines when nobody is free to read with you. The wider method is in the complete guide to rehearsing alone.

Off book

Off book means you have learned your lines and no longer need the script in your hand. In a rehearsal room it is a deadline: by this date, scripts down. For a tape or audition it means you can play the scene looking at the other person instead of at the page.

Being off book is not the same as knowing the words. It is knowing them well enough to be changed by what the other actor does. If you have two days, how to get off-book in 48 hours is a plan.

On book

On book means you are still holding the script. Early in a rehearsal period everyone is on book. It is a stage, not a failing. Use the time to listen, not to apologize for holding the page.

Beat

A beat is a small unit of a scene in which what a character wants stays the same. When the objective shifts, because they got what they wanted, lost it, or found out something new, a new beat begins. The idea comes from Stanislavski, who divided plays into units of action, a "bit" that became "beat" in the American telling, as Wikipedia's article on units of action explains.

Find the beats in your scene, give each one a verb, and you will always know what you are doing at any moment. It also stops you playing one note for three pages. How to find them is in how to break down a scene.

Cue and cue line

A cue is the signal to speak or act, and in a scene it is usually the last words of the line before yours. The cue line is that preceding line. "Pick up your cues" means respond immediately, without a gap.

Learning your cues matters as much as learning your lines. If the last line before yours is a blur, your own line will not come when you need it.

In the rehearsal room, on set and on stage

Calling "line"

Calling "line" is what you say, in character, when you are off book and have completely forgotten the next line. The stage manager, or whoever is following the script, gives you the line and the scene carries on. The Shakespeare ensemble glossary at MIT sets it out: call it only when truly stuck, and do it without apologizing or breaking the scene's energy.

Everyone calls for line. The actor who apologizes for three minutes does more damage than the one who dried.

Blocking

Blocking is the planning of where actors stand and how they move. In theatre the director usually settles it in rehearsal, and the stage manager makes sure it stays the same every night. In film it includes the movement of the camera.

Write it in pencil in your script the moment it is set, because it will change, and by the third day you will not remember which version you are on.

Mark

A mark is a spot, often a piece of colored tape on the floor, that shows where to stand so you stay in the frame and the light. "Hit your mark" means arrive at that spot, usually without looking down at it.

On a selftape you can put a mark on the floor yourself, so you land in the same place on every take. On a film set it matters even more, because camera and light are set to it.

Table read

A table read, also called a read-through, is a session where the cast reads the whole script aloud, seated around a table. In film it usually happens near the end of pre-production, with the producers, writers and department heads listening, and for many people it is the first time the script is heard out loud. Wikipedia's entry on the read-through covers the format.

It is the first time you hear the whole thing in other people's voices, and the first time the producers hear yours. Read it, don't perform it; nobody expects the finished thing at a table.

Understudy

An understudy is an actor who learns a role in a production in order to go on if the person playing it cannot. Understudies often play a part in the show as well.

Learning a role from the back of the room, with little rehearsal and no notice, is its own discipline. How understudies and swings learn a track is about it.

Swing

A swing is a member of the ensemble who learns several parts, called tracks, and is on standby to cover for several chorus members. That is how a BroadwayWorld piece about Broadway swings describes it, reposted on the Actors' Equity site. A swing may cover tracks written for different genders or ages and may learn they are going on just before, or even during, a performance.

The difference from an understudy, in most theatres, is that a swing is not in the show on an ordinary night. Words shift a little from company to company, so ask what a contract is actually asking for.

The acting term that matters most

Next time someone says "grab your sides," you will know what they mean. The word that matters more never appears in a casting email: listening. Sides, beats, eyeline and cue lines are all about it. Someone said something, and you answered.