RunlinesGuide
Off book, sides, cues: rehearsal terms explained
What does off book mean?
Off book means you know your lines well enough to rehearse without holding the script. The off-book date is the day the director expects the whole cast to put their scripts down.
Learning lines comes with its own vocabulary, and nobody explains it in your first rehearsal. Here are the words you will hear most, in plain English.
- Off book
Knowing your lines without the script in your hand. Being off book does not mean perfect: most casts still call for a line now and then in the first rehearsals without scripts. It means the page is no longer between you and the other actors.
In the Runlines app, "off book" is also the mark a line gets once you have said it without a peek at least twice and the latest run was clean.
- Off-book date
The rehearsal by which the director expects everyone to have their lines learned. After that date, scripts stay in bags, and someone is on book to give lines. If you have an off-book date, work backward from it: the off-book planner turns the date and your line count into a schedule.
- On book
The person "on book" follows the script during rehearsals once the cast is off book, usually a stage manager or assistant. When an actor calls for a line, they give it. Confusingly, an actor who is still holding their script is also said to be "on book".
- Calling for line
When you go blank in an off-book rehearsal, you stay in character and say "Line". The person on book reads you the start of your line, and you carry on. It is normal and expected in early off-book rehearsals; the goal is to need it less each time.
- Sides
The pages of a script used for an audition: usually one scene or part of one, sent by the casting office a day or a few days before. Sides can be one page or several. You prepare them, and in many auditions you may hold them while you read. The guide on learning sides in two days covers the short-notice version.
- Cue and cue line
The cue line is the line just before yours; the cue is usually its last few words, the signal that it is your turn. A cue can also be a sound, an action, or an entrance. How to learn your cues.
- Picking up cues
Coming in right as your cue ends, with no gap while you search for the line. A director who says "pick up your cues" usually means the scene is dragging because everyone is pausing before they speak.
- Beat
A stretch of a scene or monologue where the subject or the tactic stays the same. When the thought changes, a new beat starts. Splitting a part into beats is the basis of most memorization methods, because you learn one beat at a time. (A "beat" written in a script as a stage direction means something else: a short pause.)
- Running lines
Saying the scene out loud from memory, with someone or something feeding you the other parts, to test and reinforce the lines. Running lines is not acting the scene; it is about the words and the cues. How to run lines with someone, or by yourself.
- Italian run
A run of the whole play or scene with the lines said as fast as possible, with no acting, to test that everyone knows the words and the cues. It shows quickly where lines are still shaky.
- Table read
Also called a read-through: the cast sits around a table and reads the whole script aloud, usually at the first rehearsal. Nobody is expected to know lines yet.
- Reader
At an audition, the person who reads the other character's lines opposite you. Readers often read plainly on purpose, so the focus stays on you. Practice with flat cues as well as performed ones, so a plain read does not throw you.
Where Runlines fits
Runlines is a line-running app for iPhone. You paste your sides, pick your character, and it reads the other parts aloud and waits at your lines, then marks each one off book, learning, or shaky. See how it works.
