# Michael Shurtleff's 12 Guideposts: How to Use Them on Audition Sides > What each of Michael Shurtleff's twelve guideposts from Audition asks of you, in plain words, worked through on one short scene from Chekhov's The Proposal, with an order of work for the night before an audition and what still applies on a self-tape. - URL: https://www.offbook.com/blog/michael-shurtleff-audition-guideposts - Published: 2026-10-25 - Last updated: 2026-10-25 The sides arrive at six in the evening for a ten o'clock appointment. Three pages, two characters, no script. You read them four times. You know what happens. You still have no idea what to do with it. That gap, between understanding a scene and having choices to play, is the gap the casting director Michael Shurtleff kept seeing in unprepared actors at auditions. So he wrote a book about it, built around twelve questions he called guideposts. The short version: the guideposts are twelve ways into a scene, starting with who this person is to you and what you're fighting for. You don't need all twelve every time. Work the first three on any sides, then use the rest to find what's specific and alive in this scene, and do it before you drill the lines, so you learn the words with choices already attached. ## Who Shurtleff was, and why the guideposts exist Shurtleff was a Broadway casting director. According to his [Playbill obituary](https://playbill.com/article/casting-director-michael-shurtleff-dies-at-86-com-138373), he started casting for the producer David Merrick with *Take Me Along* in 1959, went on to shows including *Oliver!* and *Carnival!*, and later, at his own agency, cast *1776*, *Jesus Christ Superstar*, and *Pippin*. He sat through a lot of auditions. The same obituary says he wrote *Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part*, published in 1978 with an introduction by Bob Fosse, out of frustration at how unprepared actors were. It became a bestseller and was still in print when he died in 2007. That origin matters. The guideposts aren't a theory of acting written in a study. They're a casting director's list of the things he kept wishing actors had done before they walked in. Read them as answers to what kept going missing in the auditions he watched. ## The twelve guideposts in plain words Study guides based on the book, such as [this one from Actor's Cultural Theatre](https://actbroward.org/michael_shurtleff.php), list the twelve in this order. Here they are, each as a question you can ask of any scene: 1. **Relationship.** Who is this person to me, and where is the love in the scene, even if it's buried under a fight? 2. **What are you fighting for?** What do I want from them, so badly that I'll push for it in every line? 3. **The moment before.** What am I coming in with, and what's my first action, so the scene starts strong instead of warming up? 4. **Humor.** How does this person use humor to cope, connect, or deflect, even in a serious scene? 5. **Opposites.** Whatever is true here, what's the opposite truth that's also in me? 6. **Discoveries.** What do I find out, moment to moment, that I didn't know a line ago? 7. **Communication and competition.** Am I really sending and receiving, and who's winning right now? 8. **Importance.** Why is today the day this matters most? 9. **Find the events.** What changes in the scene, especially between us? 10. **Place.** Where are we, whose turf is it, and how do I feel about being here? 11. **Game playing and role playing.** What role am I playing to get what I want, and what game are we in? 12. **Mystery and secret.** What don't I know about the other person, and what am I keeping to myself? Teachers adapt the list. The [Milne Acting Studio](https://milnestudio.ca/actor-resources/audition-the-michael-shurtleff-guideposts/) in Toronto keeps all twelve and adds a thirteenth, mischievousness, which it says lightens the scene up. And the guideposts travel beyond plays: a [2022 doctoral dissertation at LSU](https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/5858/) applies Shurtleff's twelve guideposts to five soprano arias. ## Try them on one scene: Chekhov's The Proposal Chekhov's one-act *The Proposal* is a good practice scene because every guidepost has something to grab. Lomov, a nervous landowner of thirty-five, has put on a dress-jacket and white gloves to propose to his neighbor's daughter, Natalya. He gets as far as mentioning his land: > **NATALYA STEPANOVNA:** Excuse my interrupting you. You say, "my Oxen Meadows...." But are they yours? > > **LOMOV:** Yes, mine. > > **NATALYA STEPANOVNA:** What are you talking about? Oxen Meadows are ours, not yours! > > **LOMOV:** No, mine, honoured Natalya Stepanovna. > > **NATALYA STEPANOVNA:** Well, I never knew that before. How do you make that out? > > **LOMOV:** How? I'm speaking of those Oxen Meadows which are wedged in between your birchwoods and the Burnt Marsh. > > **NATALYA STEPANOVNA:** Yes, yes.... They're ours. > > **LOMOV:** No, you're mistaken, honoured Natalya Stepanovna, they're mine. Anton Chekhov, *The Proposal*, translated by Julius West, from the public-domain [Project Gutenberg text](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7986). Read cold, it's two people saying "mine" and "ours." Now run the guideposts on it, as if these were your sides. ### The first three: relationship, fight, moment before **Relationship.** They're neighbors whose families go back years. Just before this, her father has told Lomov she's in love, "like a love-sick cat." Whether or not that's true, the love is in the scene: he came to marry her. Play the fight as two people who care, or it's just a property dispute. **Fighting for.** On the surface it's the meadow. Underneath, Lomov is fighting to be taken seriously, and Natalya is fighting not to be talked down to in her own home. Pick one want you can push for in every line, not a general mood. **The moment before.** Chekhov writes it for you. Right before Natalya enters, Lomov is alone, cold, trembling "as if I'd got an examination before me," worried about his palpitations, and telling himself he's already 35, "a critical age." He walks into the room already shaking. Natalya's moment before is different: she's been shelling peas in an apron, thinking a merchant had come. ### The middle: humor, opposites, discoveries, competition **Humor.** Neither of them thinks this is funny, which is why it is. In the guideposts, humor isn't jokes; it's how a person copes and connects. Lomov's elaborate politeness, "honoured Natalya Stepanovna," is his way of keeping his nerve. **Opposites.** The ActBroward guide gives three obvious opposites to look for: "I hate you," "you're right, I'm wrong," and "I give up." Lomov wants to marry her and he's arguing with her. Both are true at once. Let the want to win and the want to be loved fight inside the same line. **Discoveries.** "But are they yours?" is a discovery for Lomov. He came prepared for a yes or a no, not for this. Make the moment he hears it new every time, instead of playing what he already knows from reading ahead. **Competition.** Keep score. Each "mine" and "ours" is a point. Know after every line who's ahead, and let the loser of each exchange push harder in the next. ### The last five: importance, events, place, games, secrets **Importance.** Why today? Because today is the day he proposes, and he's told himself he can't hesitate or he'll never marry. A meadow on any other day is a dull legal question. On this day it decides his life. **Events.** The biggest event is the turn: a proposal becomes a fight, and the relationship changes with it. Mark the line where it happens. Find smaller events too, like "Yes, yes...." where she seems to be agreeing and turns it into "They're ours." **Place.** It's her family's drawing-room, her turf, and she's still in her apron. He's in a dress-jacket and white gloves in someone else's house; she even asks if he's off to a ball. That alone gives you how each of them sits and stands. **Game playing and role playing.** He's playing the correct gentleman neighbor; she's playing the gracious hostess who suddenly isn't. **Mystery and secret.** She doesn't know why he's dressed up. He's keeping the proposal to himself while he argues, and that secret should press on every line. ## An order of work for the night before Twelve questions is a lot for one evening, and running through them like a form gets you twelve shallow answers. Here's a practical order that keeps the important ones first. For a step-by-step on the sides themselves, see our guide to [breaking down audition sides](https://www.offbook.com/blog/how-to-break-down-audition-sides). 1. Read the sides twice for the story only, with no choices yet. 2. Answer relationship and what you're fighting for in one sentence each, and write them at the top of the page. 3. Build the moment before: what just happened, where you've come from, what you're carrying in. Our guide to [the moment before](https://www.offbook.com/blog/the-moment-before-in-acting) goes deeper. 4. Mark the events and discoveries in the margin, one word each, so you know where the scene turns. 5. Find one opposite and one bit of humor, and see if they fit where you marked the turns. 6. Ask why it's important today, and raise it if the answer feels small. Our guide to [raising the stakes](https://www.offbook.com/blog/raising-the-stakes-in-acting) has ways in. 7. Only now learn the lines, out loud, with those choices attached. The point of the order is that the words go in last. If you drill the lines first, you learn a reading. If you work the guideposts first, you learn a person who happens to be saying those words. ## Work the questions with your script in front of you Some guideposts are hard to answer alone at eleven at night. In Offbook, Genie is a script-aware assistant: you can ask about character motivation, scene context, or what's under a line, and highlight a passage for an answer about that moment. The video below shows how. It's a quick way to test your answer to "what am I fighting for?" against the whole scene. Video: [Ask Genie about your scene](https://www.offbook.com/learn/genie) (0:43) Then rehearse it: realistic voices read the other parts and wait for your line, so discoveries and competition have someone to react to. Rehearse on your laptop with the full script on a big screen, and listen to your scenes on your phone anywhere. Without an account, our [free run lines tool](https://www.offbook.com/tools/run-lines-online) reads the other part of a classic scene and waits for yours, which is a good way to practice the guideposts on one of its classic scenes. ## What still works on a self-tape Shurtleff was writing about a room with a casting director in it. Auditions often start with a self-tape now. The guideposts survive the move, with a few adjustments. Relationship and competition are about the person you're talking to, and on tape that person is your reader. Decide who they are to you and play to them, not to the lens. The moment before matters even more, because the frame starts on your face: have it running before you say the first line, so the scene begins in the middle instead of on a breath. Place is the guidepost a home setup tends to lose. Your back wall isn't the drawing-room. Decide where you are anyway and whose turf it is, and let it shape how you sit and where you look. For the practical side of taping without help, see our guide to [self-taping alone](https://www.offbook.com/blog/how-to-self-tape-alone). ## Three ways actors misuse the guideposts Treating them as a checklist. Twelve answers written neatly in a notebook don't make a performance. The guideposts are for finding the two or three choices that make this scene alive. If an answer doesn't change how you say a line, it isn't doing anything. Playing opposites at random. An opposite should come out of the same want, like Lomov's love and his need to win. Flipping the emotion every few lines just looks erratic. Find one real contradiction and let it run through the scene. Confusing importance with volume. Raising the stakes isn't shouting. The ActBroward guide calls it a day of crisis. Make the scene matter so much that you can't let it go, and the energy comes from that, not from pushing your voice. For the want underneath it all, see our guide to [finding your objective](https://www.offbook.com/blog/how-to-find-your-objective-in-a-scene). ## Questions actors ask ### What are Michael Shurtleff's guideposts? They're twelve questions from his 1978 book *Audition*: relationship, what you're fighting for, the moment before, humor, opposites, discoveries, communication and competition, importance, finding the events, place, game playing and role playing, and mystery and secret. ### Do I need to use all twelve on every audition? No. Start with relationship, what you're fighting for, and the moment before; they give you a playable scene on their own. Use the others to find what's specific about these sides, and keep the ones that change how you play a line. ### Is Audition by Michael Shurtleff still useful? Yes. The world of auditions has changed, but the questions haven't: who is this person to me, what do I want, and what just happened. Those apply to a self-tape as much as to a room, and teachers still build lessons on them. ### What is the best way to practice a scene with the guideposts? Answer the first three, then run the scene out loud against another voice, a friend or a recorded reading, so discoveries and competition have something to react to.