The JOY & PITFALLS of PLAY READINGS
BEST PRACTICES TO MAKE YOUR PLAY READINGS THE BEST POSSIBLE EXPERIENCE
You’re a playwright with a brand-new script. Maybe a full-length play. Maybe just a ten-minute scene. You’re eager to hear it out loud. Before a serious production strategy can take shape, there’s always a testing phase: the reading.
You’re an actor cast in a reading. Maybe you know the playwright. Maybe you were invited by the director. Maybe you auditioned. Why do it? Because readings are fun, they offer early access to a project that might have a future, and, let’s be honest, they’re networking gold.
But let’s take a step back. A reading is never the fully realized version of a script, nor does it show the full potential of its artists. The audience may not feel the full impact of the play without the actual action and stage business. Actors are almost always under-rehearsed. Availability frequently determines casting above all else.
And yet, readings are always exciting.
Readings are about testing the raw electricity in the room. You watch to see if the audience leans forward, laughs where they should, or holds their breath when you hoped they would. You also watch to feel when they check out, shift in their seats, or vanish at intermission.
Knowing the tips, techniques, and well-established practices for readings will help you take advantage of them, help you learn from them, and help you avert disappointment. After years of participating in readings as playwright, actor, and audience, (my first reading was in 1991), I’ve learned that the difference between a reading that soars and a reading that sores often comes down to just a handful of practical choices. I’ve gathered these tips here:
3 Types of Readings
There are three types of readings. Each type asks for different skills from its actors and gives the playwright different information. Actors, you need to adjust and strategize accordingly. Playwrights, you need to adjust your expectations accordingly.
Cold Reading: Actors encounter the script for the first time when they walk in. It’s all instinct and spontaneity. They might have only a few minutes to skim the text…maybe once…before performing. This could happen at a table, in a living room, or on stage with chairs and scripts in hand. Cold readings are valuable for hearing the bones of a play: the dialogue’s rhythm, tone, and clarity without the polish. They reveal whether your words can stand on their own.
Prepared Reading: Actors have received the script in advance. There are usually one or two rehearsals (at most if it’s an Equity 23-Hour Reading). Actors are expected to arrive ready: familiar with lines, though not memorized, and choices largely made. These readings often use music stands center stage, with actors waiting in chairs off to the side. The audience will likely include friends, peers, and potential producers. Prepared readings test the play’s emotional pacing, structure, and chemistry between characters without the full demands of staging.
Staged Reading: Not a full production, but a polished presentation. Entrances, exits, minimal props, and costumes are integrated. Actors rehearse for one to three weeks under a director. Scripts remain in hand, but the performers are largely off-book. A staged reading is often attended by agents, producers, and artistic directors, and it’s as close to a workshop production as you can get without calling it one. Because staged readings require significant resources, this guide will focus primarily on Cold and Prepared Readings.
Actors: Tips for Cold and Prepared Readings
Yes, you can and should prepare for a cold reading as well as a prepared reading. Here’s how:
Remember who you serve. Your job is to help the playwright hear and see their writing. NOT to show off. You’re a vessel for their words and a tool to help them in small and large ways see their vision…their world…their imagination. As tempting as it is to break character and win the audience’s laughs (that you might interpret as approval), don’t. Stay in the imaginary circumstances.
Identify the playground. Is it comedy or drama? If so, which kind? If you don’t know, ask. If you guess wrong, the scene will fall short of the playwright’s vision. If you’re not familiar with the rainbow of genres, start getting familiar ASAP. Knowing the genre is critical to a successful reading. I’ve made a cheat sheet for the general kinds of comedy and drama you will encounter in most, if not all, readings (below). If you doubt the importance of identifying a play’s genre, or if it never occurred to you prior to this paragraph, see the section below on “Genres: Know Your Playground.”
Make choices fast. In acting class, you might spend weeks letting your character “reveal themselves.” In a prepared reading, you need to show up to the first read-through prepared. In a cold reading, you may have minutes to prepare, if not seconds. Bold, quick choices are your friend. Which choices should you make? All your choices must serve the conflict or the resolution. See the section below on Conflict.
Identify the conflict. Get good at identifying conflict and all the elements that a) set the conflict up, b) increase the conflict, and c) is part of the resolution. See the the section on Conflict below.
Assess the playwright’s experience. Sounds judgmental? It’s not. Your goal is to help them, regardless of their experience. But…
New playwrights tend to be super fuzzy about the conflict of the scene or play, so you may need to start clarifying for yourself what the playwright hasn’t. On the other hand, experienced playwrights will put everything you need to know in the text and assume you’re bright enough to infer it all, which means you’d better pay even closer attention to the script.
Inexperienced playwrights usually include clunky exposition dumps, forcing you to start strategizing now how you’re going to get through all that and still sound human. Experienced playwrights elegantly conceal references to the past in the dialogue, sometimes so naturally you might miss important historical information that informs your character.
Inexperienced playwrights do not understand how much actors can infer just by acting and tend to over-write vocal reactions…like a stream of consciousness. Thus you may need to figure out some unwritten approach to keep your character less cartoonish. Experienced playwrights write characters who do NOT vocalize every reaction, yet you may still have a that reaction. You may need to mark this silent reaction.
Inexperienced playwrights fear silence, for whatever reason. You may need to insert silence in places the playwright failed to: a) beats of silent reactions, b) silent transitions between your character’s tactics, and c) silent implications between or within lines. Experienced playwrights trust the power of not reacting, and often write “beat,” “pause,” or “silence.” Don’t ignore these.
Ask questions in advance. In prepared and stage readings, you will get the script in advance. Inevitably the playwright or the director will close their introductory email with “Don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.” DO NOT WASTE VALUABLE REHEARSAL TIME with questions that could have easily been resolved in an email in advance. (i.e. plot confusion, name pronunciation, costume options, unclear motivation, accent specification, etc.) Do your homework and contact them if you need clarity. You will not be judged negatively for this. In fact, playwrights always feel flattered when an actor has questions, because it evidences the actor is actively processing and digesting the script prior to the rehearsal - and invested enough in their work to want to get it right. Playwrights LOVE that, and that will earn points in your favor.
Volume. If only the people in the first row can hear you, you’ve failed. Keep the script below your chin. Lift your eyes off the page as much as you can. Resonate in both your chest and head cavities, adjusting according to the venue and number of attendees. (Chest will give you power, and that will help you express anger. Head will give you sharpness, and that will help cut through the din…particularly with comic moments.) Project effectively. Always.
Anxiety. Breathe. Give the dialogue space. Slow down the dialogue if appropriate. Make the imaginary circumstances too real for you to care about pleasing the audience. Make the conflict too important to you to care about pleasing the audience.
Default tics. Stammering and over-gesturing signal lack of preparation. This is not the way flesh & blood people behave in real life. This is insecure, untrained actors straining to be interesting when they don’t feel they are enough. Once you know your role in the conflict, your instincts will serve the scene rather than distract. If an inexperienced writer failed to focus the script around a conflict, invent a conflict as the moment before and ground your performance in that. See more about conflicts below.
Accents. Ask the playwright about an accent included in the script. Don’t guess. Nothing pulls focus from a reading faster than a badly executed accent…or a lack of accent where one should be.
Pronunciation. Take a moment to look up the pronunciation of names and words that confuse you. If you don’t, especially in prepared readings, you signal to the playwright, director, and other actors that you’re unprepared. Or even worse, that you didn’t even bother reading the script in advance. If the roles were reversed, would you ever want to work with an actor who doesn’t even do the very basic and easiest homework prior to a reading?
Interrupting lines. If you are being interrupted, write the rest of your sentence beyond the dash or slash, and commit to saying it. It’s your fellow actor’s job to prevent you from getting to the end of your line. Also, there’s a reason the playwright wants you to interrupt or be interrupted. More likely than not, this is important information that can inform your performance.
Mark up your script. Cold readings are not sacred. Be the one to give it shape. Believe me, in the heat of the moment, your brain needs visual cues to help you do all the little things that serve the story. Use a pen to underscore, highlight, or indicate:
The major stops on the train for this script or scene.
Entrances and exits.
Which music stand you should place your script. (The music stands are usually numbered for clarity.)
Important pauses, including beats you feel are missing (sometimes between lines, sometimes in the middle of lines.)
Actions. (Do you hold someone’s hand? Do you pick your teeth? Do you scream? Do you fist-bump your buddy?)
Lines you need to interrupt. It’s inconsiderate and negligent to leave another actor hanging, and it’s so easy to avoid! Just use your pen to boldly mark that interruption. I draw a thick arrow from those dashes to my next line so my eye cannot miss the interruption.
Important words to emphasize. Yes, you read that correctly. In acting classes, you learned not to anticipate the way you’re supposed to say a line. But in a reading scenario you don’t have time to become intimately familiar with the script, and it may (I’d go so far as to say mostly likely will be) imperative that you emphasize certain words to serve the understanding of the escalating conflict. Like it or not, this reading is about serving the playwright’s vision, not exercising your Meisner acting technique. (See the section that follows called The Actor’s Process.)
Anything that helps you quickly and clearly “grab” the thing that’s important to do, say, or feel in the heat of a very rushed, unprepared, under-rehearsed performance.
“Your job is not to show off.
It’s to help the playwright hear and see their writing. ”
THE ACTOR’S PROCESS VS. READINGS
Any actor who says they don’t want to prepare for a reading because it “interferes with their process” is confusing apples and oranges. They’re mistaking the rapid preparation required for a reading with the luxurious six-week rehearsal process of a full production. Readings are completely different beasts.
In readings you do not have time to organically discover character, backstory, motivation, subtext, and personal identification which justify why your character says and does what’s said and done. In a cold reading, you may have all of five minutes to prepare. For a prepared reading, you’ll have maybe two rehearsals…three hours each, tops. So, contrary to what your acting courses may have drilled into you, you must these specific choices in advance.
Is it great Meisner Technique? No. But to not prepare for a reading is like getting into a car, putting on a blindfold, and insisting you can drive 90 MPH without seeing the road. Every reading…cold, prepared, or staged…starts at 90 MPH with no leisurely acceleration. You will not have enough time to get to know the road well enough to serve the play. And trust me…I cannot stress this enough…you WILL frustrate the playwright, the director, and your fellow actors. Then, in turn, you may not be hired for future projects.
“To not prepare for a reading is like getting into a car,
putting on a blindfold, and insisting you can drive 90 MPH
without seeing the road. ”
Therefore, for example, you will need to underline key words in the script that are critical to the play that you should stress during the performance. Anticipate how you’re supposed to say certain words or phrases in order to properly help the playwright understand their play. If you think your brain will be able to recall these critical words and moments during the performance, it will not. You will NOT have enough time to become familiar with the script to remember to slowing down the words “honey lavender duck” in order to make them super seductive and suggestive, which will make the opposing council’s lunch together all the more illicit, which in turn will serve the conflict better. Mark this moment in your script to guarantee you don’t miss it this moment.
Do not worry: there will be plenty of moments between these markings for honest moments of discovery, spontaneity, and truthfully organic connection in the imaginary circumstances. Readings require a specific type of readiness…like it or not.
“Readings require a specific type of readiness…
like it or not.”
STAGE DIRECTION READERS (NARRATORS):
You, as the narrator, are as much a cast member as the actors. You set the pace of the reading, set the energy of the show, and ARE the action that readings do not allow. Your first job is to be understood by everyone in the room.
Be energized! (Nobody wants an anemic shadow stage right constantly deflating the balloon of fantasy everyone else is trying to create.)
Project! (If you can’t be heard, what’s the point of being there?)
Enunciate! (If you can’t be understood, what’s the point of being there?)
Your second job is to transition audience members into the world of the play, and even more importantly, KEEP people in the world of the play. Therefore…know the world of the play.
If it’s a comedy, keep that buoyancy in your tone and pick up the pace of your delivery. If it’s a drama, do not distract from the tension with inappropriate lightheartedness. If it’s a thriller, heighten the urgency of your tone.
Don’t pull focus from the actors with your own personality, but use your tone to help the people identify with the characters’ conflict even more. What’s the conflict? See below.
Conflict vs. Situation
Playwrights, let me be blunt: understanding the difference between a conflict and a mere situation will change everything. Every actor’s choice, every audience reaction, even your ability to assess the effectiveness of your own writing hinges on this. An experienced playwright doesn’t just identify the conflict…an experienced playwright builds the entire scene and play around it. In a reading, clear conflict is the difference between a scene that lies flat and one that leaps off the page. Here’s an example:
Situation: “Two sisters talk about their recently deceased father.” Sure, could be touching. Could be funny. But it’s static. Nothing moves towards any goal.
Situation moving in the right direction: “Two sisters jockey to establish who was Dad’s favorite daughter, and therefore who should inherit Dad’s house.” Okay, now we have motivation. But what’s at stake?
Conflict: “One sister needs to inherit Dad’s house in order to sell it to bail her meek son out of prison before he gets killed by other inmates. Her sister, Dad’s obvious favorite, firmly believes she is the rightful heir.” Boom. Clear conflict:
Someone clearly wants something.
Something important is clearly at risk if the person doesn’t get it.
Someone is clearly standing in the way.
Here’s another conflict for a comedy: “One theater critic realizes his best (and only) friend’s girlfriend is steadily driving a wedge between them. Without his friend, the critic faces the prospect of becoming the loneliest man in New York City. Meanwhile, the girlfriend feels perpetually like a third wheel and is determined to change the situation to only two wheels.” The conflict is clear. What’s at stake is clear. And that clarity compels the audience to need to know how it will resolve.
Conflict is your spine. Conflict is your engine. Your scene and the actors have a specific direction and fuel for forward momentum. Conflict gives the playwright and the performers clear structure that can be leaned into: setup, incremental development that raises the stakes, climax, and resolution. That resolution could be tearful understanding, comic kidnapping, or existential stalemate…depends entirely on the script’s tone and genre.
“Playwrights, let me be blunt:
understanding the difference between a conflict
and a mere situation will change everything.”
Actors, listen up: the moment the script is in your hand, your first task is to identify the conflict. Your second task is to identify your role in it. Are you the one who wants something? Are you the one blocking what another wants? Are you an instrument that sets the conflict in motion? Are you one of the bricks in the wall standing between a character and their goal? Or are you the sledgehammer used to break that wall down? Once you’ve understand your role, you’ll have a clearer sense of how every line, action, and beat either illuminates, escalates, evades, or resolves the conflict.
What happens in a reading when there’s no conflict?
If you hand actors a scene that’s merely a situation with no conflict, actors will float like boats without anchors. Instead of your words coming to life, you will get a parade of personalities jockeying for attention. Why? Because unanchored actors facing an audience get anxious. And when anxiety hits, out come their bags of tricks: grandstanding, bombast, hyperbole, stuttering as an approximation of spontaneity, playing to the audience instead of living in the imaginary circumstances of your world and connecting to one another. In other words, without conflict they can truly commit to, the actors will entertain the audience and themselves, but they won’t illuminate your text. Without conflict the actors will hijack the emptiness with tricks like clowns at a children’s party. Fun to watch? Sure. Useful for your writing? Not so much.
“If you hand actors a scene that’s merely a situation with no conflict,
actors will float like boats without anchors.”
Conflict, by contrast, gives actors and playwrights boundaries, purpose, stakes, and focus. Conflict is gasoline for everyone’s creative engine. With conflict, every line, every glance, and every pause start to matter. The energy becomes directed rather than chaotic. Which do you want to see? A limousine swerving dangerously down a clearly defined road? Or a herd of cats on roller skates scattering in every direction? Write conflicts, not situations.
STAGE DIRECTIONS FOR READINGS: LESS Is MORE
Playwrights, the only stage directions that should be read aloud are those that are critical to understanding the action of the play. The less the stage direction readers say, the more flow your reading will have.
Do not interrupt the performers whenever the script says beat or pause. Actors can and should perform these moments. If your script is formatted correctly, the actors will not miss these moments.
You do not need nor should you want the reader to interrupt the performance with stage direction that describes how an actor should perform lines, like “sadly,” “thoughtfully,” “obnoxiously,” “quickly.” Let the actors act.
The director, playwrights, and actors should decide in advance if hugging, kissing, hand-shaking, dry-heaving, snickering, screams, shoulder taps, head scratching, finger-pointing, raised fists, etc., will be performed by the actors in readings. If they are, obviously reading such stage directions aloud becomes redundant. The less action that needs to be read aloud, the smoother and more natural your reading will be.
To avoid any confusion, before you print the scripts, make VERY clear which stage directions will be read aloud during a performance: bold them, CAPITALIZE them, highlight them, or use arrows. And remember: the less your actors need to work to decipher which stage directions will be read, the better your reading will go.
“Let the actors act.”
PRINT VS. DIGITAL SCRIPTS
I’ll be direct: print your scripts. Why? The font and page sizes of digital devices are too small for readings, even on iPads...and especially on phones. Electronic devices keep your actors’ heads down the entire time, squinting. Inevitably, an actor will accidentally scroll or flip to the wrong page and interrupt the flow of the reading to find where they’re supposed to be. You want actors to glance down quickly to grab the next line, flipping pages quickly and discreetly, while keeping their heads lifted most of the time and oriented toward other actors…not buried in the tiny print of electronic devices.
Reading Screenplays: Keep It THEATRICAL
Screenplay writers, remember: you’re not filming this. You’re performing it aloud in a theatrical setting. Long narrative paragraphs? Skip or condense them. Focus on dialogue…that’s what will actually engage the audience. Not endless descriptions of action. If it’s a smoldering, romantic scene, is it really important to interrupt the dialogue to read that “the actors gaze into each other’s eyes with erotic tension hot enough to steam the windows.” That’s the kind of detail the actors can and want to act. Is it really worth interrupting the moment with narration?
Screenplays also tend to have more characters than stage plays. In a reading, if you pick a scene with twelve people on stage, you’ve instantly diffused the audience’s focus across a dozen faces all facing forward. Audiences WILL lose track of who’s who, and they’ll be in their heads trying to figure that out. Also, inevitably, you’ll be hopping from location to location, with the narrator reading “INT. Coffee Shop. Day” followed by a long descriptive paragraph before a single line of dialogue. Whatever emotional momentum you might have built will drop. You risk audiences checking out. They may politely applaud, but they will probably be largely disengaged. How helpful will such a reading really be for you?
“Screenplay writers, remember: you’re not filming this.
You’re performing it aloud in a theatrical setting. ”
So here’s the takeaway: if you absolutely must read a screenplay in an audience-attended reading, be ruthless about which stage directions are essential to be read. If you’re reading just a scene from the screenplay, be very judicious about which section you choose to present. Prioritize scenes heavy in dialogue. Strip down the narrative action that the actors will physically suggest anyway. Keep it focused, keep it human, keep it alive, keep it impactful.
Finally, knowing all this, ask yourself this question and answer it honestly: what specifically do you hope to learn by presenting your screenplay to an audience?
Genres: Know Your Playground
Playwrights: the best material for readings can almost always be clearly categorized. There’s a stage in the writing process when your brain is just throwing up raw material...beautiful, necessary chaos. That’s followed by a stage of shaping and honing: taking all that raw material and forming something recognizable, palatable, and performable. Eventually, your script will fall into one of the categories below.
Some artists hate labels. Some playwrights dream of bursting onto the scene as a fully formed auteur…flying in the face of the establishment, pioneering the next Virginia Woolf, Waiting for Lefty, or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I get it. However, more often than not, inexperienced playwrights who refuse to research the categories of their field - which has evolved after centuries of theater - or are simply unaware of them - write fuzzy, messy scripts. Actors struggle to sink their teeth into these fuzzy scripts, and audiences resent being asked to sit through them to some extent or to a great extent.
“Labels allow actors to commit to your work with more authority.”
In readings, labels are absolutely helpful. Labels allow actors to commit to your work with more authority. Even more importantly, they help the playwright and the actors avoid the well-known pitfalls that come with each category, because every genre has its traps. Stand on the shoulders of these genres to get a better view of your play.
If your script feels uncategorizable, ask yourself:
Are you avoiding a category because your ego wants to be seen as a “unique voice,” or is your play truly so unique that it somehow evades all 18 categories?
Is avoiding a category truly serving your story? Could embracing a category increase its impact?
If your play is uncategorizable, honestly ask yourself whether theater is, in fact, the best way to experience your work? Are you perhaps asking people to sit through something that would be better served as a YouTube short, a novel, a lecture, an essay, or slam poetry?
Actors: understanding the playground you’re playing in is essential. Each genre has its own rhythm, its own stakes, its own pulse. Each genre has its pitfalls. Knowing what kind of script you’re performing shapes your timing, emphasis, energy, and tone. Every choice. It directs your instincts toward the best approach. You wouldn’t play the same way in a farce as you would in a satire. Do you know the difference between the two? You need to. The playground tells you the rules of the game, When you know the rules, you can get closer to victory. Or you can break the rules with more intention.
Below are the playgrounds almost every script plays in, their characteristics, brief actor & playwright tips, and common pitfalls:
DRAMAS
TRAGEDY: Serious, weighty, often ending in downfall or loss. Stakes are inevitable; subtlety hits harder than grand gestures. Actor tip: Commit fully; every pause matters. Playwright tip: Cause-and-effect drives the story. Pitfall: Over-dramatizing dilutes authenticity.
MELODRAMA: High emotion, clear heroes and villains, moral stakes spelled out. Actor tip: Embrace heightened stakes but stay honest. Playwright tip: Avoid pantomime; clarity drives impact. Pitfall: Overacting turns tension into caricature.
POLITICAL/SOCIAL DRAMA: Societal issues, politics, injustice, or ethical dilemmas. Actor tip: Know your character’s stake in society; clarify motivation. Playwright tip: Anchor abstract issues in relatable human conflict. Pitfall: Pedantic lectures make an audience impatient.
DOMESTIC/REALISTIC DRAMA: Focus on family, relationships, social dynamics. Stakes feel personal. Actor tip: Subtext is gold; naturalism matters. Playwright tip: Anchor dialogue in real-life stakes. Pitfall: Over-explaining kills nuance.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA: Explores inner lives and mental states. Conflict often internal. Actor tip: Nuance is key; every hesitation communicates. Playwright tip: Write internal stakes clearly. Pitfall: Overacting internal conflict can read melodramatic.
HISTORICAL DRAMA: Depicts real events or figures. Actor tip: Research accents, context; avoid caricature. Playwright tip: Balance fact with interpretation. Pitfall: Overloading historical detail can stall pace.
ABSURDIST/EXISTENTIAL DRAMA: Life as illogical, cyclical, or meaningless. Dialogue may be repetitive. Playwright tip: Set clear rules for audience comprehension. Actor tip: Treat absurd situations seriously; commitment sells the world. Pitfall: lack of humor or tension and the audience will disengage.
HISTORICAL FANTASY/SPECULATIVE DRAMA: Alternate realities, supernatural, or “what-if” scenarios. Actor tip: Treat fantastical elements as real. Playwright tip: Establish rules of your world early and clearly. Pitfall: Inconsistent rules confuse actors and frustrate audience.
CRIME/THRILLER DRAMA: Tension-driven, suspenseful, fast-paced. Actor tip: Timing and stakes are everything; deliver suspense in beats. Playwright tip: Map out the reveals carefully. Pitfall: Poor pacing kills tension.
COMEDIES
FARCE: Fast-paced, exaggerated, over-the-top. Actor tip: Commit fully: hesitate and the joke collapses. Timing is everything. Playwright tip: Heighten ridiculousness without losing the story. Pitfall: Weak timing flattens the comedy.
PARODY: Imitates a work, style, or genre, exaggerating for effect. Actor tip: Know the reference; deliver recognition. Playwright tip: Don’t assume audience knows the target. Pitfall: Without the context, the joke misses.
SATIRE: Uses humor to critique behavior, institutions, society. Actor tip: Timing and subtlety are everything. Playwright tip: Pinpoint the target; don’t preach. Pitfall: Too broad and a satire becomes farce; too subtle and the satire falls flat.
SPOOF: Lampoons multiple genres. Silly and self-aware. Actor tip: Heighten absurdity but stay in the world. Playwright tip: Keep the logic of the spoof consistent. Pitfall: Too chaotic and audience loses track and disengages.
COMEDY OF MANNERS: Humor from social conventions, etiquette, class, hypocrisy. Actor tip: Precision, timing, and subtext matter. Playwright tip: Witty, elegant exposure of absurdity. Pitfall: Ham it up and you’ll lose the critical sophistication.
ROMANTIC COMEDY: Centers on love, relationships, and the obstacles to romance. Actor tip: Chemistry and stakes matter more than the dialogue. Playwright tip: Humor should emerge organically. Pitfall: Over-the-top antics overshadow the story.
SITUATIONAL COMEDY: Humor arises from circumstances or slightly exaggerated everyday life. Actor tip: Play stakes seriously; trust that the situation is funny on its own. Playwright tip: Identify comedic setup and payoff clearly. Pitfall: Overplaying destroys naturalism.
DARK COMEDY: Humor emerges from taboo, tragic, or serious situations. Actor tip: Balance empathy and irony; tone is everything. Playwright tip: Highlight humor without undermining stakes. Pitfall: Too broad and it becomes farce; too subtle and the audience will mss what supposed to be funny.
ABSURDIST COMEDY: Focuses on irrationality, repetition, circular dialogue. Actor tip: Commit fully; timing and repetition are your friends. Playwright tip: The world must feel real to the characters. Pitfall: Half-hearted delivery kills absurd humor.
Play Length
Playwrights: A play is economical storytelling. If you’re a box-office bonanza like Neil Simon Tracy Letts, or Tom Stoppard, you might get away with a 120-page script. But whenever I see a script that exceeds 100 pages, I immediately suspect the playwright has failed to identify the core conflict and structure the play around it, pruning away the unessential bits. I suspect immediately the playwright is still in the “raw material” stage and hasn’t yet honed all that stuff to something polished and presentable.
Do not plague your actors, your audience, your friends, and your agent with a script that exceeds 100 pages. You will lose the goodwill of your actors, your audience will resent you personally, and potential producers will stop responding to your emails. You may feel you wrote the next Angels in America, but your audience still needs to go pee, and they still have dinner plans. You will be disheartened by the number of people that leave at intermission. Aim for 90 pages, which…no matter what you’ve heard…can reliably translate to a two-hour reading.
“Do not plague your actors, your audience, your friends,
and your agent with a script that exceeds 100 pages.”
And in a ten-minute scene? You’ve got ten pages to take us through the full arc: establish conflict, raise the stakes, climax, and resolve it. That leaves almost no room for extraneous dialogue and characters, no matter how brilliantly written. Every millisecond…from dialogue to stage direction…supports the conflict. So think prudently and judiciously: does that character really need to utter “um…”? Is that tiny bit of exposition truly essential to the conflict? Once you’ve determined that bit of exposition is superfluous, maybe you can entirely delete the character of Harry the Doorman? Is that monologue essential or gratuitous? If it is a gratuitous monologue, it had better be fan-frigging-tastic and serve the purpose of tempting Helen Mirren to perform it.
Feedback
After a reading, feedback is where a lot of insight can come. However, feedback, like anything of value, needs to be handled with care.
“ Increasingly, performative reactions are becoming an epidemic. ”
GETTING FEEDBACK
Ask specific questions. You or the moderator should direct the audience’s attention to specific questions. “Is the conflict clear?” “Do these characters feel real?” “Were you confused by any event?” Start the ball rolling in the direction you want it to go. Otherwise, you’re opening the floor to a mass of information that may not be remotely be helpful…not to mention that could take up a lot of everyone’s time.
Discern useful feedback. Not every suggestion is helpful. Smile. Thank them. Don’t become defensive. Process the critique later. Some people acknowledge your destination and choose their critiques to help you get there. Some want to derail your train and put it on another track heading to to some other destination. While a few are simply unable to shed their artistic competitiveness. Ugh…there’s ALWAYS one in every crowd. Learn to separate signal from noise.
Actors. Actors frequently have helpful insights from their experience reading your scene or play. Some are able to articulate their feelings, and some aren’t. Be patient with the ones who need to filter through a muddy slough of tangential paths en route to discovering the gold nuggets. It may be worth the wait. Also, be aware that many actors are skewed not to offend any playwright ever. Take time to make them feel safe to be truthful.
Egos. If a person begins with “You’ve got to…” or “You have to…” then this person had better be of the caliber of Tom Stoppard. Otherwise, nothing that follows those words will be worth listening to. You do not have to do anything. It’s your play. Any attendee whose ego is so bloated they feel entitled to give your orders…in front of others…is in all likelihood a frustrated playwright whose career never truly flourished. Don’t let their personal frustration and toxicity bleed into the positivity of your reading experience.
Observe audience engagement during the reading. Are they fidgeting? Checking phones? Leaning in? Crying? Coughing? Laughing? Stone cold silent? Disengaged, but politely paying attention? Fanning themselves restlessly? Use all this as data, and don’t take any of it personally.
Performative reactions. Increasingly, performative reactions are becoming an epidemic. Start recognizing them. Start becoming aware if audiences are composed largely of friends and groupies who are there to support you regardless of the quality of your work. The positive, warm support can feel wonderful, but how much will you grow as a playwright and as a performer if mediocre work is applauded, whooped, and cheered with as much enthusiasm as great work?
The “Honeymoon Stage.” Playwrights, after finishing a scene or play, there’s a natural honeymoon stage...a period of pride, excitement, and a deep attachment to your work. This is natural. During this stage, you’ll be tempted to share your script immediately with friends, colleagues, or anyone who’ll read it. The problem is, during the honeymoon stage, what you’re really seeking is affirmation…not honest feedback. You’ll tell people you want “brutal honesty,” but in reality…no matter how good you are at lying to yourself…what you really want to hear is how talented you are, how moving the play is, and how bright its future looks. You’re not yet open to objective feedback. My advice: wait. Schedule readings only after the honeymoon stage has passed...a couple of weeks…a couple of months…when you’re truly psychologically open to hearing feedback without defensiveness. Ultimately, it’s more important to identify your script’s weak spots than to collect compliments. Wait until you’re ready for that stage. Remember...readings aren’t for affirmation, they’re for discovery.
“The problem is, during the honeymoon stage,
what you’re really seeking is affirmation...
not honest feedback. ”
GIVING FEEDBACK
There are a million nuances one can comment on during any feedback session. I use this metaphor when I think about helpful, well-motivated feedback: the playwright has written a train on a specific track, speeding toward a specific final destination, stopping at several critical stations along the way. As an audience member, your job is to 1) identify this final destination, and 2) help the playwright get to that destination.
If you’re confused about the final destination, that’s your first question. (FYI…almost 100% of the time, confusion about the final destination indicates the playwright failed to identify the genre of play that’s been written.)
Do not derail the train. Don’t comment on some hypothetical train on a hypothetical track going to a hypothetical destination. If you can’t help the playwright get to the playwright’s destination, stay silent.
If you like neither the track the train is on nor its destination, stay silent. A reading is part of a process, not a final, vetted performance. You do not need to like every play, nor does anyone need to know you do not like the play.
If you have identified the final destination, but you feel the playwright’s train skipped a critical station along the way, that’s when you should raise your hand and say something. For example, “It seemed like the antagonistic relationship between the mother and daughter was slowly escalating in Act I, and then the daughter is just absent in Act II. I very much felt I needed to see the confrontation that caused the daughter to leave.”
If you have identified the final destination, but a specific station along the way did not feel critical, raise your hand and express your feeling. “The window cleaner is hysterical and gets a huge amount of stage time, yet your central conflict is between the child and her father. I’m not clear what the window cleaner’s role is in the conflict.”
If you feel the conflict isn’t ever identified, raise your hand express your confusion. If you feel the conflict doesn’t get identified until seventy minutes in, and this made you restless, raise your hand and point this out.
If you feel like weeping at the curtain, raise your hand and weep. If the overall impact of the play fills you with joy, yet you have no specific critique, briefly raise your hand and express this. This is important feedback as well.
If you’re just feeling grumpy because you know your rent check is about to bounce, and the seat is uncomfortable, just stay silent. You’re not psychologically in a place to give helpful feedback. Know yourself well enough to know when you need to keep your thoughts to yourself.
“If you feel like weeping at the curtain,
raise your hand and weep.
This is important feedback. ”
GIVING FEEDBACK TO DEFENSIVE PLAYWRIGHTS
Inevitably, some friend will invite you to reading milliseconds after writing, “LIGHTS FADE TO BLACK. END OF PLAY.” In the reading, you enjoyed parts of the script, but there were sections that were just…not great. Your Spidey-senses tell you the writer is not ready for honest feedback. However, they corner you and practically demand your response. How will your working relationship and/or friendship survive this hurdle?
Here’s what I do: I ask the playwright what they specifically have questions about. The conversation will be a dance of diplomacy - playful but firm. Something like this:
“What did you think of my play?”
“Um…I need time to process it.”
“That’s okay. I want you to take your time.”
“What if your script made me want to shout to the sky that art is dead?”
“I want brutal honesty.”
“Mm-hmm. Then let’s start now: you don’t want brutal honesty. You never do.”
“Yes, I do!”
“What specifically are you concerned about with your script?”
“Oh, I just want your general thoughts about the whole thing.”
“It would help me help you if you told me your top concerns about the script.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Then you really don’t need my feedback, do you?”
“You hated it.”
“No.”
“Okay. Honestly, I’m concerned the characters don’t contrast enough with each other. They all feel overly erudite, with the same cadences. I’m also concerned that the conflict isn’t strong enough to hook the audience.”
“Ah. Perfect. I’ll give you my feedback on those points. I may even suggest how I’d fix them. But I will not give you notes or my reaction to your entire play until you’ve sent me draft one hundred to read. Do I need to explain why?”
“No, you bastard, you don’t.”
“Okay. Your main three characters all graduated from Harvard, however, they do NOT all sound the same. So that wasn’t a problem for me. You are right about the conflict, though. It didn’t hook me. Why? Because I didn’t feel the stakes were high enough. What’s the consequence if they don’t make it to their dinner reservation on time? There is no consequence. They just go to another restaurant. Am I wrong?”
“Going to that restaurant IS important though!”
“Why?”
“Because…because the whole play is about that!”
“I feel like you have a subtext to their going to the restaurant that I didn’t get.”
“Well…it’s not really about the restaurant. The main character needs to be respected for her choice of the restaurant. Her recent divorce, her being fired from her job, and her mother’s disdain has made her need one evening of fun with her friends. But then they start to show disrespect toward her choice of a restaurant.”
“So she’s sort of on the edge of nervous breakdown?”
“Yes.”
“I didn't get that from the reading. It could be the actor, of course. But according to what you wrote, she was the one who initiated her divorce. She seemed like she hated her job anyway. And her relationship with her mother felt fairly typical of everyone’s relationship with their mother. So if a nervous breakdown was pending, I totally missed that.“
“You really didn’t get that from the reading?”
“No. And obviously the actor missed it too.”
“Okay. I’ll think about that.”
“You’re welcome. You owe me dinner.”
The joy of readings
Yes, readings are messy. Yes, they rarely reveal the full potential of a play. But they’re always electric. Actors discover new characters. Playwrights watch their beloved words leap off the page for the very first time. Audiences catch the spark of something brand-new. And sometimes, in the middle of all that chaos, the play suddenly clicks. That one instant is worth every moment that doesn’t land…every stumble...every mangled line. That glimpse of brilliance...that’s the magic. That’s why we do it.
The bottom line for actors and playwrights is this:
Show up prepared, curious, and generous.
Serve the playwright, not your ego.
Identify the conflict in advance and commit your creativity, instincts, and energy to it.
Mark up your scripts.
Make choices quickly and know which ones you need to make.
Expect an imperfect reading and be open to discoveries in these imperfections.
Understand a reading is part of the process, not the end goal.
Cold readings, prepared readings, staged readings...they’re all part of the same ecosystem. Get good at them. Understand them. And leave the room not just a better actor or playwright, but part of a community that’s keeping theater alive...one imperfect, electric, heart-thumping reading at a time.
Yours,
Daniel Tobias