How do you prepare for an audition?

Preparing for an audition is a short, specific kind of work. You rarely have the time or the script for a full performance, so aim smaller and sharper: about three minutes of clear, truthful behavior that shows a casting director you understood the scene, made choices about it, and can change those choices on a note. Everything below serves one of those three things.

The process is the same whether you are walking into a room or recording at home, and it is the same for a co-star line on a procedural as for a lead in a play. What changes is how much time you get and how deep you can go at each step.

Step 1: Read the breakdown, then the script

Before you look at the scene, read what casting wrote about the role. The breakdown tells you the project, the tone, the character's age range and essence, and often a line or two about what they need from this person in the story. It also tells you practical things you will need later: shoot dates, whether it is union, and how they want the audition delivered. If you have not read many, here is how to read a casting breakdown and what each part means.

Pay special attention to the adjectives. "Wry, guarded, quietly furious" is a set of instructions disguised as a description. You do not have to play all three on every line, but your read should make sense to the person who wrote them.

Then find out what you can about the project. If it is a series, watch an episode, and if it is a new show, look at the creator's or showrunner's last one. Tone matters more than most actors think: the same scene plays very differently in a single-camera comedy, a network procedural and a prestige drama. For theater, read the play if it is published, and check what else the company has produced.

For screen work you will usually only get the sides, the few pages casting chose for the audition. For theater, and for some film and television, the full script is available, sometimes on request through your agent and sometimes only in the casting office. If you can read it, read it. Everything you learn about who your character is, what happened before this scene and what happens after is information you no longer have to guess.

If you only have sides, accept the gaps and fill them deliberately. Read the sides several times, at least once without focusing on your own lines. Notice what other characters say about you; that is often the most reliable information on the page.

Step 2: Break down the scene

This is where most of the actual preparation happens, and it is the part that separates a prepared actor from one who has just learned the words. Work through the scene with a pencil and answer these questions in writing.

1. What are the facts? Who you are, where you are, when it is, and what just happened. These are your given circumstances, and they make half your choices for you.
2. Who are you talking to, and what are they to you? A boss, an ex, a stranger, a parent. Be specific. When Biff faces Willy in Death of a Salesman, "my father" is less useful than "the father I caught with another woman in a Boston hotel room, who still believes I am going to be somebody great."
3. What do you want from them? One active sentence you could win or lose. When Ilsa comes to Rick's room late at night in Casablanca, hers is "I want him to give me the letters of transit." This is your objective, and if the term is new, here is what an objective is in acting.
4. What is in the way? Usually the other person wants something different. No obstacle, no scene.
5. Where does the scene turn? Mark each place something changes: new information, a tactic that fails, a decision. Most audition scenes have two or three.
6. What happened right before the first line? Decide the moment before so you walk into the scene already in the middle of something.

On a three-page scene this takes twenty or thirty minutes, and it is the best twenty or thirty minutes you will spend. For a fuller walk-through of the method, see this guide to breaking down a scene.

Step 3: Make choices you can play

Analysis tells you what is happening. Choices decide how you, specifically, will play it. This is the part of preparation that gets you remembered, because casting will see many actors who understood the scene and fewer who had a point of view about it.

A good audition choice is specific, supported by the text, and active. "Blanche is nervous" is a mood. In A Streetcar Named Desire, "Blanche is trying to make Mitch see a refined young lady, so he never looks at her in a hard light" is a choice: it gives you something to do on every line, and it lets the fear show up in the cracks. Look for the choice that makes the scene harder for your character, because difficulty is interesting to watch.

Then decide what you would do if they asked for something different. Casting often gives an adjustment after the first take, and the actors who handle it best have already thought about a second way in. You do not need to prepare a whole alternate performance; you just need to know the scene well enough that you are not locked into one reading of it.

A few things to avoid. Do not decide how a line should sound and practice that sound; that is a line reading, and it goes dead in the room. Do not add elaborate business with props. And do not play the character's age, accent or job instead of the scene. Those are facts of who you are; the scene is about what you want.

Step 4: Learn it well enough to look up

For an in-person audition, the standard is "familiar enough to look at the reader most of the time, still holding the pages." Holding the sides is expected and protects you; if a line goes, your eyes drop and pick it up without breaking the scene. For a self-tape, you can do as many takes as you like, so being fully off book usually reads better, though a glance at a page held low is still acceptable to most casting offices.

Learn the lines by speaking them out loud, to someone, with your objective in mind. Learning them silently, or as a flat list of words, produces a flat read. Spread the work over two sessions with sleep in between if you possibly can. For techniques that work under time pressure, see how to memorize lines fast.

Run the scene with a partner if you can find one, even over the phone. Hearing the other lines spoken by a real voice tells you things reading them silently never will: where you need a beat to listen, where you jump in, where the rhythm wants to go faster than you planned.

One thing to drill specifically: the first and last lines. The first line is how they meet you, and the last is what they remember. Have both completely solid.

Step 5: Prepare the logistics

The night before, settle every practical question so nothing on the day costs you focus.

• Where and when. Confirm the address, the time, and any instructions about which door or which floor. Plan to arrive fifteen minutes early. For a self-tape, confirm the deadline, the time zone, and how they want it sent.
• What to bring. Your sides (printed, even if you know them), a headshot and resume stapled back to back if it is in person, water, a pencil. For musical theater, your book of sheet music.
• What to wear. Lay it out the night before. Suggest the character without dressing in costume; this guide covers what to wear to an audition in detail.
• Your slate. If they will ask for one, know exactly what goes in it. Here is what a slate is and how to do one cleanly.

Then stop working on it. Rehearsing until midnight the night before tends to make a read stiffer, and sleep does more for your memory than another hour of drilling.

In-person auditions versus self-tapes

Most first-round screen auditions are now self-tapes, and in-person rounds are more common at callbacks and in theater. The preparation is the same up to Step 4. After that they diverge.

In person, you get one or two goes, a reader you have never met, and a room you cannot control. Your job is to stay flexible: listen to the reader, take the adjustment, and keep your choices strong enough to survive whatever the room does to them. Be ready for a cold change, too; sometimes they hand you new pages, which turns part of the audition into a cold read.

On tape, you control everything, which is both the advantage and the trap. You can do ten takes, but casting will only watch one, so pick the take where you are listening and alive, even if a word slipped. You also take on the technical side: framing, light, sound, eyeline, and a reader who will not drown you out. For the full process, see how to self-tape. Follow the casting instructions exactly, including file naming and length; it is the first thing they check.

On the day

Do a short warm-up before you leave: some movement to get your body loose, a few minutes of voice work, and one easy run of the scene. Do not drill it again in the car. Arrive early, check in, and use the waiting time to stay quietly in the world of the scene. Avoid comparing yourself to the other actors in the waiting room; they are a different person with a different read, and you have no idea what casting is looking for today.

In the room, be pleasant and brief. Say hello, and if they ask you a question, answer it. If you have a genuine question about the scene, ask one. Then take a moment, find the person you are talking to, and start.

If they give you a note, take it fully. A note is usually a good sign: it means they want to see whether you can go somewhere else. Make the adjustment big enough that they can see it. If you are not sure what a note means, it is fine to ask a short clarifying question.

Nerves will probably show up. That is normal, and the preparation above is the biggest thing that helps. For practical ways to handle the rest, see how to deal with audition nerves.

When you finish, say thank you, take your things, and leave. Do not ask how it went, and do not apologize for anything you did.

After the audition

Write a few lines in a notebook: the project, the role, the casting office, what you did, any note they gave, and anything you would do differently. Over a year, this becomes a useful record of which offices call you in, what kind of roles you are being seen for, and what you keep learning.

Then let it go. Casting decisions depend on dozens of things you cannot see: who is already cast, how tall the lead is, a director's private picture of the role. The work you can judge yourself on is whether you were prepared and whether you played the scene. If you get a callback, you will generally want to wear the same thing and keep the core of what you did, since that is what brought you back, while staying open to new direction.

The actors who book consistently do these steps every time, for the one-line role as much as the big one, until the routine runs on its own and the room gets all of their attention.

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