How to Rehearse a Scene Over a Video Call

Your scene partner took a job three time zones away. The class showing is still on the calendar for next Thursday, and the only rehearsal space the two of you share is a meeting link. You open the call, prop the script against a mug, and spend the first twenty minutes asking “Can you hear me now?”

Rehearsing on a video call can work well. Drama teachers and theater companies worked this way during the pandemic, and their guides share a few practical points. Most of them have little to do with the software and a lot to do with how you set up the hour.

The short version: decide what the call is for before you join, wear headphones, hide your own picture, let each cue finish arriving, then come in right away, instead of jumping on it, run the scene in a fixed order, and agree in advance what happens when the connection drops. Then do the solo work between calls, so the time you share goes to acting, not to remembering words.

Decide what this call is for

In a rehearsal room, a scene session drifts from lines to blocking to talk without anyone deciding. On a call that drift costs more, because everything takes longer: the pauses, the fixing, the “sorry, you go.” So name the job before you start. A call usually has one main job.

• A line run. You both say the words at speed, with the scripts down, to find what’s not solid yet. Nobody acts. The point is a list of trouble spots.
• A working session. You take one section at a time, talk about what each character wants, and run it until something changes.
• A full run. You play the scene top to bottom without stopping, the way you’ll play it in front of people.

Early in the process, a working session gets the most out of the hour. Near the showing, a line run followed by full runs does. If you’re not off book yet, our guide on what “off book” means covers what’s expected by when.

If you live in different time zones, settle the hour once and keep it. The American Repertory Theater, writing up its virtual workshop of 1776, surveyed the company about equipment, time zones, and internet reliability first, then scheduled group work inside the hours everyone shared.

Set up for a scene, not for a meeting

A work call setup (laptop on the desk, built-in speakers, face filling the frame) is the wrong setup for acting. Change four things.

Wear headphones, both of you. Start here. ProductionPro’s guide for theater teachers explains why: with headphones, people can speak at the same time, while without them the software tries to cancel the sound from everyone but one person. In a scene, that’s a stepped-on line or a laugh, and without headphones it can get cut out.

Wireless earbuds or headphones with a microphone let you move. The director Neil Silcox, writing about Zoom theater for Intermission Magazine, adds a warning: if you walk away from a laptop microphone, the software can decide you’re “background noise” and cancel you out. Silcox’s fix is wireless headphones, which almost always have a built-in microphone.

Stand up, and give yourself room. Silcox recommends getting actors on their feet and setting the camera against a wall so it faces into the room, which gives you space to move. We’d also raise the laptop to eye height on a shelf or a stack of books. You’ll breathe differently, and the scene will feel less like a meeting.

Clear the connection. The University of Washington School of Drama’s handout on simple scene work over Zoom is a good checklist: close other programs and browser windows, turn off notifications on your computer and phone, turn off devices you don’t need on the Wi-Fi, and check the microphone and camera before the session starts.

Have a backup. The A.R.T. write-up suggests having a phone ready to dial in by audio if a computer loses its connection. If your video freezes for good, you can still run lines by phone.

Look at your partner, and hide yourself

Where to look depends on who’s watching. In a rehearsal with no audience, the only person you’re playing to is your partner. So look at their face, the way you would across a room. Make their window the size of a real face and drag it to the top of your screen, close to the camera, so they see you looking almost at them.

Then hide your own picture. The University of Washington handout has each actor pin the partner’s video so they see only their partner’s face, or turn on the setting that hides their own view. Stanford’s Jeremy Bailenson, who studies virtual communication, argues that self-view is one reason video calls are so tiring: it works like an “all day mirror” that keeps you judging yourself. For an actor, that mirror pulls attention off the other person, which is exactly where it should be.

Bailenson’s other arguments matter here too. Video makes nonverbal signals harder to send and read, and the camera keeps you in a small space. Gregory Ungar, who teaches theater at the University of Denver, makes a similar point from the classroom: in a video class of more than five people, the call strips out many of the cues people read in a room, so he says “cuing big helps”, and he teaches standing up. In rehearsal, that means letting your listening show. A small reaction that reads across a table can vanish on a laptop screen.

The rule changes when someone will watch the scene on a screen, as in a showing or a reading for an audience. Then the viewer is the person you play to, and Silcox notes that looking straight into the lens makes each viewer feel you’re looking at them. Agree on that before the showing and rehearse it the same way at least once. Our guide to live Zoom auditions covers the lens, the window, and a piece of tape beside the camera in detail.

Lag: let the cue land, then come in

Every video call adds a delay between when your partner speaks and when you hear it. You can’t remove it, but you can stop it from wrecking the scene.

Here’s what happens if you ignore it. Stanford researchers Chris Chafe and Michael Gurevich put pairs of musicians in separate rooms and had them clap a rhythm together while the researchers added delay to what each one heard. As the delay grew, the pairs slowed down more and more. It’s easy to see the same thing in a scene: you wait to hear the cue, answer a little late, your partner hears that late too, and a four-minute scene runs long and feels heavy.

Quick exchanges suffer most. Look at this stretch of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, where Algernon cross-examines Jack.

ALGERNON. … Where have you been since last Thursday?

JACK. In the country.

ALGERNON. What on earth do you do there?

JACK. When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

ALGERNON. And who are the people you amuse?

JACK. Oh, neighbours, neighbours.

ALGERNON. Got nice neighbours in your part of Shropshire?

JACK. Perfectly horrid! Never speak to one of them.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I (Project Gutenberg; lines trimmed, stage directions omitted)

In a room, this goes like a tennis rally. Over a call, if Jack waits to hear all of “since last Thursday?” and then starts, every answer lands late. If he jumps in early, the two voices collide and one gets cut. So agree on a working rule with your partner:

1. Don’t overlap on the call. Let each line finish before you start, even where the script wants a cut-in. Mark those spots and practice them in person or on your own.
2. Don’t wait an extra beat to be sure, either. Come in as soon as the last word arrives. The delay already adds a gap; you don’t need to add another.
3. Speak a touch slower than you would in a room. ProductionPro suggests a slower pace to cover connection problems, and on a call clarity beats speed.
4. Judge the scene’s pace with a stopwatch, not by feel. If the call run is a little longer than your in-person run, that’s the delay, not your acting.

Tight pickups are still worth drilling, just not over a call. Our guide to picking up cues has solo drills, and the one on fast and overlapping dialogue covers the cut-ins you set aside.

A run order for a one-hour call

A fixed order keeps the call from turning into a chat. This one works for a two-person scene a week or two out from a showing. Adjust the minutes to the length of the scene.

1. Five minutes: tech check. Headphones on, self-view hidden, partner’s window by the camera, notifications off. Say a line each to check the sound.
2. Five minutes: agree the job. Name what this call is for and which section gets the most time.
3. Ten minutes: a line run. Scripts down, no acting, a touch slower than performance speed. Each of you writes down the lines you dropped or changed.
4. Twenty-five minutes: work the trouble spots. Take the hardest section, talk briefly about what each character wants there, and run it three or four times. Stop to talk only between runs.
5. Ten minutes: a full run. Top to bottom, no stopping for mistakes (a dropped connection is the one exception; see below). If one of you calls “Line,” the other gives just the first few words.
6. Five minutes: notes. Each of you says one thing that worked and one thing to fix. Type them into the chat so you both have them.

Keep to the hour. The A.R.T. team, working in four- to five-hour sessions, took a ten-minute break regularly, and Bailenson’s arguments suggest why an hour of video can wear you out more than an hour in a room. If you need more time, take a ten-minute break with the cameras off, not a longer stretch.

For the notes step, our guide on how to give line notes shows a quick format that keeps them specific.

When the connection drops

It will drop. Ungar describes losing his connection in the middle of a student scene, coming back, and everyone laughing about it. That’s the right attitude, and it helps to agree on two things before the first run.

First, where you restart. A simple rule works: go back to the start of the line that was cut off, not the top of the scene. Whoever drops out says the line number or the first words when they’re back.

Second, what counts as a full run. If the call drops twice in a run, it doesn’t count, and you go again. Otherwise you’ll finish the session without one clean pass, which is the thing you most need before a showing.

If your partner freezes but the sound keeps going, keep playing to the frozen face. You’d keep going in a room if your partner turned away. And if your video can’t hold up at all, turn the cameras off and do an audio-only line run. ProductionPro notes that turning video off eases the load on a connection.

Do the solo work between calls

The biggest waste of a shared call is spending it on words one of you doesn’t know yet. Arrive with the lines learned, and spend the call on the part only two people can do: listening, reacting, and changing what you do because of what your partner did.

Between calls, you can run the scene with Offbook. Upload the script, pick your role, and realistic voices read every other character; Offbook listens through your microphone and plays the next cue when you finish your line. The video below goes from a PDF to a first run in about a minute.

When the words start to settle, hide your lines and run the scene from memory, so the next call starts from what you know rather than what you read. On any paid plan you can share the scene with your partner by email, so you both drill the same version.

For a warm-up on a scene neither of you has to learn, our free run lines online tool reads the other part of a classic scene and waits for your line. Our public-domain plays are a good place to find a two-person scene for practice, and our guide on how to run lines with someone covers the reader’s job if your partner is helping rather than acting.

Questions actors ask

How do you rehearse a scene over Zoom?

The same principles apply on any video-call app. Both wear headphones, hide your own picture and pin your partner’s, stand up with the camera at eye height, and agree on what the call is for. Run the scene in a fixed order (line run, work the trouble spots, a full run, notes), and let each cue finish before you come in.

Can we rehearse on our phones?

You can, but a laptop or desktop is easier for scene work: a bigger window for your partner’s face, room for the script beside the call, and a steadier camera. If one of you only has a phone, prop it at eye height in landscape and use headphones. For learning the lines alone, rehearse on your laptop with the full script on a big screen, and listen to your scenes on your phone anywhere.

Should we record the call?

Record one full run near the end of the process, with your partner’s agreement. Watch it once for the things you can’t feel from the inside, like a moment where you stopped listening. Don’t record working sessions to study later; the notes you type at the end are more useful.

Does this work for a scene with three or more people?

Yes, with more structure. Use the grid view so everyone can see each other, keep anyone not in the section muted with video off, and have one person run the clock and the order. The no-overlap rule matters even more with more voices on the call.