Cold reading practice: a ten minute daily drill for actors

Most actors only cold read in the room, in front of the people deciding whether to hire them. Then nothing until the next one, under the same pressure, with the same nerves. That is not practice. It is a series of exams with no lessons in between.

Cold reading practice does not need a class or a partner. It needs ten minutes, a scene you have never seen, and something that answers when you finish a line.

On a SAG-AFTRA project, the 2023 agreement gives you the sides at least 48 hours before a self-tape is due and caps a first self-tape at eight pages, so a first tape there is rarely a cold read. In practice that leaves the cold read to the room itself, to callbacks, and to commercial and non-union work, which that agreement does not cover. This piece is about the days in between. If the term itself is new, start with what is a cold read.

Where do you find cold reading scripts?

Cold reading scripts are free from four places: public domain plays, published screenplays, sides from auditions you did not book, and a friend’s sides. The rule that makes the drill work is that the scene must be new to you, and minutes zero to two go on picking one. Rereading a scene you know is line learning, a useful skill and a different one.

• Public domain plays. Chekhov, Ibsen, Wilde and Shaw are on Project Gutenberg and similar archives, free, and full of two person scenes. The Chekhov and Ibsen translations are a century old, which is its own kind of practice.
• Published screenplays. Studios post scripts on for your consideration pages every awards season, and some stay up. Search the film title plus “for your consideration screenplay”.
• Sides from auditions you did not book. Real casting material at the real length.
• A friend’s sides. Trade. Their commercial copy is new to you, your drama sides are new to them.

Do the sourcing once a week, not every morning. Each day open one at random and put your thumb down on a page. One scene, two or three pages. A longer one will not fit in five minutes and does not need to.

Never use this week’s audition scene.

Pick fast. If you catch yourself skimming the dialogue while you decide, you have already spent the cold. If the page has to go into an app or in front of a partner, do that without reading it. Then start the timer.

Minutes 2 to 4: the breakdown, on a timer

The breakdown of a cold reading scene, minutes two to four, goes on a timer: two minutes, roughly what the room gives you.

In those two minutes: who wants what from whom, where the scene turns, and how it ends. Read the last line first so you know where you are landing. The full method, page in hand, is in how to cold read at an audition. It is the step most actors skip when practising alone, and the one that gives the read a shape.

When the timer goes, stop. Half of the skill is being fine with not being ready.

How do you practise cold reading on your own?

You practise cold reading on your own by reading a new scene out loud against something that answers when you finish a line and waits when you have not. That five minute run, minutes four to nine, is the drill itself.

You are training the grab and deliver loop: eyes down during the other character’s line, take a clause or a sentence, eyes up, say it to a person. That loop only forms if there is something on the other side that speaks and then waits. Reading both parts to yourself does not do it: you already know what is coming, so you never have to listen. The options when there is no scene partner are covered in how to run lines without a reader. Three of them suit this drill.

A partner. Best, and rarest.

A recording of the other character’s lines. Works, with a catch: it plays on its own timing. When you stumble, restart or lose your place, it either talks over you or leaves a hole.

A cold read app that listens. Here it matters how. Some readers wait for the last word of your line and cue off that. On a memorised script that is fine. On a cold read it fights you: you paraphrase the ending and the reader never comes in, or you restart a line, hit the last word early, and it jumps in over you. A reader that follows the whole line word by word keeps its place through the stumble and answers when you actually finish.

Scriptmate does the second kind. It is ours, this site is written by the maker, so weigh that. It also imports photos of paper sides, so a paperback play works. coldRead keys on the last word, and it plays back the other lines as you recorded them, so you read the scene once before the drill. Its free tier, eight lines a scene, is a fair way to test whether you will stick with the drill. The different ways these apps listen are laid out in apps that read lines with you.

Run the scene once, straight through, no stopping to fix. Once more if there is time, not five times. By the third pass the scene is no longer cold.

Minutes 9 to 10: one line in a notebook

The last minute of a cold reading drill goes on one line in a notebook. The first thing to watch, every day: did you finish a line while still looking down. If so, take a smaller chunk tomorrow.

Write one line. Not a review, one observation: “eyes stayed down on the long speech”, “made no choice until page two”, “was reading ahead instead of listening”. Pick whichever was worst today.

Then change one variable for tomorrow, not three: the genre, the period, comedy instead of drama, screenplay format instead of play text, a character you would never be cast as. Play text runs to long speeches. Screenplay format has action lines to skip over. Commercial copy has no scene at all and asks you to make one up. Each format trains a different eye, and the room will hand you whichever it likes.

Vary the week so the skill stays general

A ten minute cold reading drill, most days, keeps the skill general only if two days a week are different from the rest.

One day a week, skip the scene and sight read a paragraph of prose out loud: a novel, anything dense. No character, no choice, just fluency. If you stall on unfamiliar sentences, you will stall on unfamiliar lines.

One day a week, play against type on purpose: the other gender, a character thirty years older or younger, the villain if you are always the friend. It stops the drill from becoming a rehearsal of the three things you already do well.

Keep the notebook. After a few weeks the line will start to repeat, and the repeat is your actual weakness, the one worth a class or a coach.

The short version

1. Two minutes to pick a scene you have never seen: public domain plays, posted screenplays, old sides, a friend’s sides. Stock them weekly. Never this week’s audition.
2. Two minutes on a timer: who wants what, where it turns, the last line. Then stop.
3. Five minutes out loud against something that answers and waits. A partner, a recording, or a reader that follows the whole line. Scriptmate is ours and does that; coldRead’s free tier is a fine place to start.
4. One minute, one line in a notebook, starting with whether your eyes came up. One variable changed tomorrow. Once a week prose, once a week against type.