Are You Talking To Me??

If you're feeling brave (or a little crazy) and have decided to try writing your play backwards (scenes after auditions) you'll need something for actors to read during auditions - enter Audition Scripts.  Each Audition Script consists of just enough dialogue to give you a good idea of the actor's skill/stage presence/interpretation/voice/look, etc... but not too much to make your auditions last all day.  We've found that 2 characters and about 3 or 4 lines per character make a good sized Audition Script.

Your goal in creating Audition Scripts is:  When auditions are done, you'll have enough information to make all of your critical actor/character choices.  That means that your Audition Scripts must have enough range of emotion and character personality quirks to provide the information you need.  For "Wish Upon A Star", we created 14 Audition Scripts (a few more scripts than our average show since there are so many different characters in Wish Upon A Star).

In deciding which characters to highlight in our Audition Scripts, I simply went down the list of characters starting with principals first.  For "Wish", we need a strong leading female character that can make us laugh as we watch how naive she is, cry as she experiences loss, and one we will all believe as we watch her fall in love.  We also need a leading male character.  So, one of our Audition Scripts includes a female and male having a light and flirty conversation.  Another script has our female character being interviewed by a very overworked and tired Hollywood Casting Director.  This exchange shows how young and naive and enthusiastic our leading lady is.

These two scripts alone will help us cast multiple characters.  We'll have just about enough information to cast our leading lady, a good amount of information to cast our leading man, and plenty of information to cast our Casting Director plus several other lessor male and female roles.

The characters you choose to highlight in your Audition Scripts should include all principal characters, any stand-out characters, and enough generic characters so that you can make all of your final choices after auditions.  And here's a bonus:  Depending on the reaction you get from your first test-audience (the auditioning actors), you might even have some material in your Audition Scripts that is good enough to include in your actual finished script.

By the way, if you are still undecided about writing your play backwards, there is one very good reason to go ahead and dive in:  Your play WILL get written.  You won't have to worry about procrastination much.  The pressure of all those actors waiting for their next scenes is enough to push even the most stubborn procrastinator (like your's truly) away from the TV and into the writing chair.