How to Rehearse with a Scene Partner

Directors have been saying it for a hundred years: time is money, and we’re running out of both. It’s cute and it’s true. Time is the one thing every person in the business has the same amount of, and I’ve watched two good actors spend three hours together and get less done than two average ones with a timer and a plan. So here’s the plan. Five rules, then a one hour rehearsal you can run tonight.

Five rules for rehearsing with a scene partner

1) Accountability

Hold yourself and each other to the things you can and should be doing alone. A good scene partner lifts the person across from them, and the way you lift is by walking in prepared: memorized, script read, choices made. Rehearsal is for the work that needs two people. If you’re using it for the work that needed one, you’re slowing both of you down.

2) Memorize again, every time

Even with rule one in hand, don’t overestimate yourself. Open every rehearsal with speed memorization, running the lines as fast as you can with no acting in them, and push to go faster each time you meet. Where it breaks is where you’re weak. Make a note, fix it before next time. If you’re not sure you’re memorizing the right way, that’s its own post.

3) Sharing is not always caring

Agree on the facts of the play, and keep your personal choices to yourself. Put simply: if your partner doesn’t need to know it, don’t spend rehearsal time saying it. A fact is something that can be found in the script. We have the same father, he walked out when we were eight, so we can agree his name was John because the other facts support it. A choice is yours. Maybe the coat you’re wearing came from an old relationship and it means something to you. That’s good work, and you should absolutely do it, on your own. Your partner should only ever feel it.

4) Be supportive and honest, and do not critique each other

That job belongs to your teacher. Even when you’re right, being a coach and a partner at the same time is sticky business and it erodes trust fast. What you can do is be honest about your own experience: I didn’t feel connected there. I don’t understand that choice. I wasn’t affected by the last thing you said. That’s information, not a note. And when your partner says it to you, be humble enough to hear it instead of defending. Then go back and try the moment again, together.

5) Actually rehearse

Stop talking about it. Set the timer, and do nothing but the work until it goes off. Here’s what that hour looks like.

A one hour scene rehearsal template

Assumes a scene about ten minutes long. Adjust the middle for shorter or longer.

• 5 minutes: vocal warm ups. Lip trills and a couple of tongue twisters will do.
• 10 minutes: speed memorization, both of you, as fast as it goes.
• 10 minutes: run the whole scene at half speed, with nothing on your mind but connection and listening.
• 5 minutes: talk. Pick the one part of the scene that needs the most work. One.
• 20 minutes: work that part, repeating the same few lines as many times as it takes until it’s finally right.
• 10 minutes: run the whole scene at full speed.

The hour goes fast. That’s the point. Without the timer, a rehearsal turns into a conversation about the rehearsal, and you can drive home after three hours having done what the template does in twenty minutes. In our master level courses students owe three hours a week outside class on the critique they got the week before, and the ones who use a plan like this are the ones who walk in Monday with something new to show.

Have fun with it. Rehearsing is the part of the job nobody watches, which is exactly why it’s the part that decides everything.