RunlinesGuide
How to learn lines for an audition in 2 days
Short answer
Spend the first hour understanding the scene, not memorizing it. Then learn the sides in beats of three to five lines, out loud, against the cue, in short sessions across both days. On day two, run the whole scene from the top until two runs in a row are clean, then stop drilling a few hours before you go in.
First, check what is expected
Read the breakdown or the email from the casting office again before you start. Many in-person and self-tape auditions let you hold the sides, and what they want is someone who knows the scene well enough to look up from the page and play it. Others ask for you to be off book. Knowing which one you are preparing for changes how you spend the two days: familiar enough to look up needs fewer full runs than word-perfect with no page.
Either way, hold the sides in your hand during the audition if you are allowed to. A page you barely glance at is a safety net, not a weakness.
The two-day plan
The times below are a guide for a typical one- or two-page side. Shorter sides need less; a long monologue may need an extra session on day one.
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| Day 1, session 1 (about 45 minutes) | Read the sides three times: once for the story, once for what your character wants, once for what the other character wants. Mark your cues and split your part into beats. Read it out loud once with the page in hand. |
| Day 1, session 2 (about 30 minutes) | First half of the scene. Cover your line, hear or read the cue, say the line, check. Stack the beats: learn one, then run it with the ones before it from the top. |
| Day 1, session 3 (evening, about 30 minutes) | Second half, the same way. Finish with one run of the whole scene from the top, peeking when you need to. Write down every line you peeked at. |
| Day 2, session 1 (morning, about 20 minutes) | Before you look at the page, run the scene cold. Whatever you miss now is your list for the day. |
| Day 2, session 2 (about 30 minutes) | Drill the lines on your list with their cues. Then do full runs, out loud and standing, until two runs in a row have no peeks. |
| Day 2, last run | One run at performance pace, as if the reader were in front of you. Then stop. Before you go in, look only at the first line of each beat. |
Notice what is not on the plan: one long session at midnight. The same time split into short sessions, with a night in between, gives you several chances to recall the lines cold, and recalling them cold is exactly what the room asks of you. If your date is further out, the off-book planner spreads the work over more days.
How to run the scene without a reader
Sessions 2 onward need someone or something to say the cues. A friend, a voice memo you record of the other part, or an app that reads it aloud all work. Four ways to run lines by yourself compares them.
If you only have tonight
- Do three short sessions, not one long one. Twenty or thirty minutes each, with a real break between them.
- Learn the first line of every beat cold. If you know how each section starts, the rest of the beat tends to follow.
- Know your first line and your last line perfectly. You will start on solid ground and finish clean.
- Learn the cues, not just the lines. In the room the reader gives you the cue; you need to recognize it.
- Plan to hold the sides. If off book is not realistic, aim to know the scene well enough to glance down once per beat.
Common mistakes before an audition
- Memorizing before understanding. If you learn the words before you know what the scene is about, you lock in a meaning you may have to undo.
- Drilling one line reading so hard you cannot take a note. Casting may ask you to try it another way. Learn the words; keep the delivery loose.
- Ignoring the reader's lines. The reader will not perform. If you only know your own part, a flat cue can throw you.
- Silent study on a laptop. Read on a screen, you learn what the lines look like. Spoken aloud, you learn what they sound like in your mouth.
- Mispronouncing a name or a term. Look up anything unfamiliar on day one so you do not rehearse it wrong for two days.
Where Runlines fits
Runlines was built for exactly this week. Paste the sides from the casting email or open the PDF, tap your character, and it reads the reader's part out loud and waits at each of your lines with the words covered. On first launch, answer "This week" to "When is it?" and the plan asks for three runs a day of ten minutes each. After every run, the script page marks each of your lines off book, learning, or shaky, which is your list for the next session. The free version includes 5 runs a month, which is under two days at that pace; the yearly plan's 7-day free trial covers the whole audition week, and you pay nothing if you cancel at least 24 hours before it ends. Pricing.
