Audition prep for kids: a parent's checklist

Your child has an audition. Maybe a school play, maybe a commercial, maybe a real casting for a film. You have never been on a set, and the email from casting reads like it was written for someone who has. This is the checklist I would hand you if we were sitting in the waiting room together.

I am a working actor in Denmark. I have sat in a lot of those waiting rooms, and I have watched a lot of parents try to help without knowing what helping looks like. Most of it is simpler than it seems. Your job is not to coach. Your job is to make the week calm, the material ready, and the day boring in the best possible way.

What the casting email actually asks for

Read it twice before you do anything. Then read it again with a pen.

Casting emails pack a lot into a few lines, and every line is an instruction. Somewhere in there you will find:

• The sides. That is the industry word for the pages your child needs to prepare. Usually a scene or two, sometimes a monologue, sometimes just a paragraph of "tell us about yourself".
• The part. Which character is theirs. If it is not obvious, ask. Nobody minds that question.
• The format. In person, or a selftape you record at home. If it is a tape, there will be instructions about framing, file names and where to send it. Follow them exactly, even the odd ones.
• The slate. A short intro on camera, name and usually age for a child, sometimes height or where you live. What they ask for is what you give. Nothing more.
• The deadline. Write it on the fridge.
• Any wardrobe note. "Neutral colours, no logos" is common. It is not a costume request.

If the email mentions work permits, chaperones, or hours, that is your country's child performer rules showing up. Every country handles this differently. Check what applies where you live before the day, not on the day.

If anything in the email is unclear, reply and ask. Casting would rather answer a polite question than receive a tape that missed the point.

The week before

This is the week where the lines get learned and the scene gets understood. Those are two different jobs, and the second one matters more.

Start by reading the whole scene together, not just your child's lines. Who are these people? What does the character want? What happened just before the scene starts? A ten-year-old can answer those questions if you ask them plainly. Once they can, the lines stop being a list and start being something a person would say.

Then the lines. Please do not turn this into homework. Short sessions, a few times a day, beat one long evening at the kitchen table. I wrote a separate piece on how to help your child learn lines without doing it for them, and the short version is: read the other part for them, let them hold the script as long as they want, and stop while it is still fun.

When you get tired of reading the other character, and you will, an app can take over. blablabla reads every other part in a different voice and waits on your child's cue for as long as they need, so they can run the scene ten times while you make dinner. If the audition is a monologue, the free pieces at /practice/monologues are good practice even when the real piece is something else, and the full scenes at /practice are there for the same reason. I put the teenage ones together in monologues for teens.

Somewhere mid week, run the scene once with the script out of their hands. Not to test them. Just to see where the soft spots are, so the last few days go to the right lines.

The night before

Lay everything out. Clothes, the printed sides, water, a snack, the address or the link, any forms casting asked for. Charge the phone if it is a tape.

If it is a selftape, record it tonight or earlier, not on the deadline morning. Kids run out of patience faster than adults, and a tape shot under pressure looks like it. The setup itself is in self tape tips for kids and teens: framing a small person, light, sound, who reads the other part, and what to do about the sibling in the next room.

Run the lines once, lightly, then leave it. One run. Not five. The work is done, and the last evening is for sleep. An overtired child cannot listen in the scene, and listening is most of what casting is watching.

Say the thing you actually mean: I am proud you are doing this, and it is fine however it goes. Then talk about something else.

On the day

Arrive early enough that nobody is rushing, and not so early that your child sits in a corridor for an hour going quiet. Bring the sides even if they are off book. Holding the pages is allowed, and it is calming.

In the waiting room, your job is to be furniture. Warm, present furniture. Do not run the lines one more time. Do not give notes. Do not compare your child with the child across the room, out loud or with your face. If they want to chat, chat about the dog.

When they go in, they go in alone unless casting says otherwise. That is normal. It can feel like a long five minutes. It is usually five minutes.

If it is a selftape day instead, the same rule applies in your living room. Set the room up, press record, read the other part or let the app do it, and then let the take be the take. Two or three tries is plenty. If casting asked for two takes with different choices, send exactly two.

After

Whatever happened in the room, the first thing you say when they come out is not "how did it go". Ask if they want a sandwich.

They will tell you about it when they are ready, and what they tell you is usually not what you expected. A great room can feel awful from the inside. A stumble on a line can feel like the end of the world and mean nothing to the people watching. Your reaction teaches them how to hold this, so keep it light and keep it kind.

Then wait. Casting rarely says no. They just go quiet. Weeks can pass. If a callback comes, repeat the checklist with the new pages. If nothing comes, that is also the normal outcome, for children and for me. Most auditions do not book. The ones that do are often not the ones we felt best about.

Talk about it once, plainly. What did you enjoy? What would you do differently? Then move on to the next thing, whether that is the next audition or football on Saturday. The kids who keep acting are the ones for whom an audition is something they do, not a verdict on who they are.

If you want to understand the craft side of what your child is being asked to do, the complete guide to rehearsing alone is written for actors, but the method is the same at any age. Read it once, and you will know what the calm parents in that waiting room already know.