What Are Sides in Acting? Where to Get Audition Sides, and What to Do With Them

When you get an audition, you usually don't get the script. You get sides: a few pages of it, picked by casting, with the scenes they want to see you in. (Yes, we named the app after them.) Here's what sides are, where actors get them, and how to prepare them when the tape is due tomorrow.

What sides are

Sides are pages lifted from a screenplay or stage play for an audition. Most of the time they're one to three scenes, sometimes a single page. They keep the original formatting, so you'll see scene headings, the other characters' lines and any action lines, along with yours.

Casting chooses scenes that show what they need to know about the role: a turn, a confrontation, a moment the character has to land. That choice is information. If they picked the quiet scene over the loud one, they want to see what you do with the quiet one.

Sides are often watermarked with your name or the project, and they're confidential. Don't post them or pass them on.

Where actors get sides

1. From your agent or manager. If you're represented, this is the usual route. Representatives get sides through the breakdown service when they submit you, and forward them with the appointment or self-tape request.
2. With the casting notice. If you self-submit on a casting site such as Actors Access, Casting Networks, Backstage or, in the UK, Spotlight, sides are often attached to the role or sent once you're asked to tape. Check the notice and the request email for attachments before going anywhere else.
3. From Showfax. Showfax, part of Breakdown Services, is where many US productions post their sides. You can download sides for listed projects with a membership or a per-page fee.
4. Straight from the casting office. For a self-tape request, casting often sends the sides with the instructions: due date, slate, framing and who reads.

If you can't find them, ask whoever sent you the audition. Don't work from a version you found somewhere else: scenes get rewritten, and casting will expect the pages they sent.

Why you rarely get the full script

Productions keep scripts close, especially before release, and casting only needs the scenes they chose. When a full script is available to read, read it: knowing where the scene sits in the story changes how you play it. When it isn't, the sides and the role description are all you have, so read them closely.

How to prepare your sides

• Read all of it, not just your lines. The other characters' lines and the action lines tell you what you're reacting to.
• Break the scene down. Who are you to the other person, what do you want from them, what's in the way, and where does it turn?
• Know it well enough to look up. You don't always need it word-perfect for a first read, but you need to be off the page enough that casting sees your face, not the top of your head.
• Learn your cues. The last few words before each of your lines are what you're listening for. Most dropped lines are really missed cues.
• Run it out loud with someone reading the other part. Reading silently tells you what the words are. Saying them to someone tells you whether the scene works.

Sides, scripts and monologues

A script is the whole story. Sides are the pages of it you audition with, and they almost always have another character in them, which is why you need a reader. A monologue is one character speaking alone, usually something you pick yourself for a general audition or class rather than something casting sends.

Rehearsing sides when nobody can read with you

That's what Sides is for. Upload the PDF, Word or Final Draft file casting sent, or paste the text, and Sides finds the characters and who speaks when. Pick your role, and an AI reader reads every other part out loud and waits for you to finish your line before it comes in.

When you're ready to tape, the record page keeps your lines on screen beside the lens and puts the same reader in the take. You can start free.