Line Run

A memorization app for actors

Notes on learning lines

Learning sides overnight for a self-tape: a working actor's routine

Kelly Wong · Updated

The email lands. Sides attached, tape due first thing tomorrow.

I should say up front: I'm mainly a stage actor. I've done some film and TV, and I've done my share of screen auditions and quick-turnaround sides, but most of my working life has been in theatre. My wife is an actor too. She works in film, TV and theatre, and she has a lot more screen experience than I do. We read for each other's self-tapes all the time.

And honestly, preparing for a stage audition is no different from preparing for a screen one. It's all just acting. It just happens in a different medium.

The shortest notice I've had

The tightest turnaround I can remember was around 2021, for a TV series. I don't even remember what the part was. What I remember is that I had to learn the sides, shoot the tape and send it off, all in one evening, so it would be sitting there when the casting director opened their inbox the next morning. My wife would have been reading for me. And all of that was crammed in around being a dad, and whatever work I had on that day.

That's the part of self-tapes nobody puts in the request. Casting says jump, and you say how high. You do what they ask, even when the timeline doesn't account for how long it actually takes to learn the lines, find a performance, shoot the tape, edit it and send it. All while you're being a parent, or a partner, or performing in the show you're already in.

What I actually do

There's nothing novel about my routine, and I think that's worth saying. You get the sides, and you start running them, over and over.

For years it looked like this. Print the sides. Highlight my lines. Then drill them everywhere: while I'm making dinner, while I'm looking after my daughter, on a walk around the block with the pages in my hand. These days the sides go into an app instead of the printer (more on that at the end), but the principle hasn't changed. You fit the repetitions into the life you've got that evening.

One thing worth adding if you're learning sides in a hurry: before you drill a single line, read the whole scene once, both sides, for what happens in it. What does your character want? What changes? Research on how actors learn lines found that professional actors rarely learn by rote. They work out what the character is after and concentrate on meaning the words, and the words follow. I wrote more about that in why covering your lines keeps you reading.

And when you do drill, hear your cues rather than reading them, if you can. Your line is an answer to something. Learn it as an answer.

How off book should you be?

My goal is always to be completely off book.

I really believe that if I'm not off book, I'm not having the thoughts, and I'm not actually playing the scene. I'm reciting the sounds of the words instead of letting the dialogue affect me.

Is it okay to hold your sides? I think it is. It's not necessarily frowned upon, and a casting director or director is going to understand when the turnaround is brutal. But it's not ideal. It's our job as actors to get those words into our heads, so we can play the character as if we are them. Unless it's an unusually large amount of material, I'd always rather be as off book as I can, so I can give the best performance I can.

The dirty little secret

Here's something that doesn't get talked about much. A lot of actors, especially on self-tapes, tape their sides up just out of frame, so they can read them outright or glance at them if they need to.

I've done it myself. Plenty of actors I know talk about doing it. It's not something I'd proudly admit to a casting director. But when the turnaround is that sharp, and the choice is between having the sides just out of frame or not sending a tape at all, I'm taping up the sides. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that. We're all human.

I think the reason nobody talks about it is the same reason it happens: learning lines that fast is hard, and the expectation is always a fast, fast turnaround.

Give yourself a grace period

I always build in a few hours of breathing room before the deadline.

If the tape is due at the start of the day on Monday, I shoot it by Sunday night. If it's not due until the end of the day Monday, and I don't feel confident I'd do a good job of it on Sunday night, and my schedule allows, I'll shoot Monday morning, or even Monday afternoon, as long as I'm confident I can still get it in on time. Those extra hours of work can make a real difference, but only if they don't put the deadline at risk.

Before you hit record, you're a technician

Right before I shoot, I'm not thinking about the lines, and I'm not thinking about the acting.

I'm setting up the gear: the tripod, the camera, the microphone, the lights. I'm adjusting how the shot and the room look, and the camera settings. I'm making sure the rest of the house is quiet, which usually means waiting until my daughter is asleep or at school.

In that moment I'm thinking like a videographer, an editor, a lighting operator, a sound operator. Actors are a jack of all trades now. Before anyone says "action," you've already been the director, the editor and the technician who set up the shot.

Which is one more reason to have the lines solid before this part of the evening starts. Setting up takes its own attention.

The reader

Whoever reads with you, whether it's a partner at home or a reader in the room, you have to go in open to whatever they give you.

Sometimes they're wonderful: present, and easy to play off. But often they won't read it the way you expected. They might be a bit lacklustre, or they might have a completely different take on the scene. Every actor is their own person.

That's why I try to know the text as well as I possibly can. If the words are solid, I can truly react and be in the moment with whoever's across from me. I can play off whatever energy they bring, or feel confident enough to steer the scene toward the energy I think it needs.

A tape I'm proud of

One of the self-tapes I'm proudest of was for The Tale of the Gifted Prince, a new musical at Theatre Calgary. It premiered there in 2026 with an all-Asian cast. I booked it, and it meant I got to go home to Calgary, where I was born and raised and where my theatre career started. It was a very special job to book.

How I use Line Run on a tape job

I learned the sides for that tape on a very early beta of Line Run, the app I'd been building for my own line learning. My castmates on that show were some of its first testers. Their encouragement, and seeing it help their own process, is a big part of why I kept going and built it into what it is today.

Here's how I use it when sides come in. With Line Run Pro, I can import the sides, even scanned pages, and every other character gets a natural-sounding voice, made right on the phone. But more often I record the other parts myself. It's the more lifelike way: my own pacing, my own pauses. The extra work up front is its own kind of learning, because I'm reading the scene again as I record it. And I pitch each character up or down, so it feels like I'm talking to a cast instead of to myself.

Then I rehearse. Line Run speaks the line before mine and listens while I answer, then moves on when it hears my line. It handles some paraphrase, but it expects real accuracy. If I go blank, I say "Line, please," and it prompts me. I start with my lines visible on the screen, and as the scene settles in, I hide them bit by bit, until I'm just listening and answering.

The free version is a complete tool, not a trial: one script of up to three scenes, the other parts recorded in your own voice, and every way to rehearse. There's no account and no ads. It has everything you need for an audition.

Then set up the camera, find your light, and let the reader surprise you.

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