How to Self-Tape a Scene With Several Other Characters

The sides arrive and they’re not a two-hander. Your character’s mother speaks, then the uncle, then a friend chimes in from across the room, and someone in the background gets a one-word line. You have one reader, one phone on a tripod, and every self-tape guide you’ve read talks about “your scene partner” as if there’s only ever one.

The answer gets simple once you know what the tape is for. The tape is about you, not the room: what reads is you listening, reacting, and talking to someone who matters to you.

The short version: for most scenes, keep the eyelines close to the lens. Put the most important character on the reader, and if it helps you, give the others their own marks on the other side of the camera. One reader can read every part. Trim the crowd noise that doesn’t cue you, but keep every line you react to. Then learn the scene so well that you know who’s speaking before they start.

Keep every character inside a small triangle

The first instinct is to spread the characters around the room the way they’d be on a set. Resist it. If you turn far left for the mother and far right for the friend, casting gets two profiles and loses your eyes.

Toronto acting coach John Boylan gives a useful rule in his note on audition eyelines: work in a triangle of about thirty degrees on either side of the lens, so the viewer can always see both of your eyes. Spotlight’s self-tape guide makes the same point from the casting side: keep your eye line close to the camera, because they want to see both sides of your face.

That triangle has room for two or three people. The workshop notes in Ardent Theatre’s self-taping guide, from a session led by Elizabeth Hill, advise choosing a different eyeline for each character you address, placed to the left or right of the lens, and not so far to the side that you end up in profile. Mark each spot with a small piece of tape so you look at the same place on every take. Boylan adds that you shouldn’t feel locked in: a very emotional or physical scene can break the triangle.

Put the most important character on the reader

You have one live human being in the room. Spend them on the relationship that drives the scene.

Broadway audition coach Kyle Branzel puts it plainly in his guide to working with a reader: if the reader is covering multiple roles, “assign them to the most important character in the scene.” Then place the other characters elsewhere in the space, so the eyelines stay clear and the relationships stay readable.

How do you pick? Ask who your character wants something from. In a family dinner scene where you’re trying to tell your father you’ve quit law school, the father goes on the reader even if your sister has more lines.

Here’s a working layout for a three-person scene:

• The main character sits on the reader. The reader stands or sits right beside the lens, with their eyes at about your eye level. Your look lands on their face, just off the camera.
• The second character goes on the other side of the lens. Boylan offers this as one option: look at the reader for the main character, and secondary characters can go on the other side of the camera. Put a tape mark there at the same height.
• A third character, if you need one, goes a little wider or lower on one side, still inside the triangle. Background voices, like a waiter’s “Ready to order?”, get no mark at all.

Height says something too. Branzel notes that eye level suggests equality, looking down can suggest status, and looking up can suggest vulnerability or deference. If the scene has a boss, a parent, or a judge in it, think about where their mark sits before you tape it to the wall.

Or play everyone to the reader

Here’s the option that’s easy to miss: you don’t have to split the eyelines at all.

Boylan’s note is blunt that you never need to show the producers that you know there are multiple characters in the scene. With three or four characters, he says, arrange them in a way you like, or “you can play just to the reader for all the characters.” Nobody books a role for proving they can track the geography of a dinner table.

So which should you choose? Split the eyelines when the scene is about the space between the characters: you’re caught between two parents, or you turn from one friend to confront another. That turn is the acting, and casting should see it. Play everything to the reader when the other voices are just context for one relationship, or when the marks make you think about where to look instead of what you want.

One more case: a line marked as an aside. Give it its own look, away from every character’s mark but near the lens. It’s a thought, not another conversation.

See it in a scene: Hamlet, the King, and the Queen

Here’s a short stretch of a famous court scene, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Project Gutenberg text). Imagine the sides are for Hamlet:

KING: But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—

HAMLET: [Aside.] A little more than kin, and less than kind.

KING: How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

HAMLET: Not so, my lord, I am too much i’ the sun.

QUEEN: Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not for ever with thy vailed lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET: Ay, madam, it is common.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2

Two people talk to Hamlet in six speeches, and once he talks only to himself, so there are three places to look. One way to lay it out:

• The Queen goes on the reader. She is the one asking him to let his grief go, and she is the parent he still talks to.
• The King gets a tape mark on the other side of the lens, and maybe a touch higher, because he’s the king, and Hamlet answers him with a cold pun.
• The aside goes nowhere near either of them: a glance down or just past the lens, a private thought before he answers the King to his face.

Now notice what you can trim. In the full scene, the King’s speech before this runs through state business and a long exchange with Laertes. None of it cues Hamlet, so for a tape the reader can start at “But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son.” The reader needs no second voice to make the Queen sound unlike the King. Your eyes do that work. If you’d like to read the whole scene, the full play is in our Hamlet guide.

Can one reader read all the other parts?

Yes. It’s the normal way to do it. Spotlight’s guide says to get a friend or fellow actor to read the other lines, and casting assistant Sophia Elizabeth Tamaro, in her quick self-taping tips for Spotlight, tells actors to find someone to read the other roles, and to coach them a little before filming so they give you the right cues. Nobody expects you to round up a cast.

A few things help a single reader cover a crowd:

• Mark the sides by character. Highlight each character’s lines in a different color on the reader’s copy, so they never read the wrong line.
• No character voices. Ask the reader to read every part in their normal voice, simply and clearly. A reader who switches to a gruff voice for the uncle and a squeaky one for the child pulls the viewer’s attention off you.
• Keep them quiet. The reader sits next to the microphone and you’re farther away, so they’ll sound louder than you. Spotlight’s guide says to make sure the reader isn’t too loud, and Branzel’s version is that the reader should never dominate the sound.

Our guide on how to be a good self-tape reader is worth sending to whoever reads for you, and if you’re still looking for one, how to find a self-tape reader covers where to look at short notice.

Trim the group lines you don’t need, but not the ones you need

Group scenes often come with lines that exist for the room, not for you: crowd reactions, a background exchange about the soup. Before you trim anything, reread the instructions. If they ask for the sides as written, do exactly that.

If they don’t say, use your judgment: tidy up the noise that has nothing to do with your character, while keeping the shape of the scene intact. A simple test for each line that isn’t yours:

• Does it cue you? Keep it, or at least its last few words.
• Do you react to it? Keep it. If you laugh or flinch at a line, the viewer has to hear it, or your reaction looks random.
• Does it change what you want or know? Keep it. That’s a beat of the scene.
• Is it just two other characters talking, with nothing for you to play? It’s a candidate for trimming, or for the reader to read quickly while you listen.

Don’t cut a line just because it’s awkward to read. If you’re silent while two others argue, that silence is where you get to show you’re listening. Our guide on how to react in a scene covers those moments.

Stage directions that describe the group, like a room falling silent or everyone turning to look, aren’t lines. The reader doesn’t read them. You play them: if the room goes quiet, let the quiet land on your face.

Learn cues from several voices before you tape

A two-hander trains you to wait for one voice. In a group scene, your next cue might come from any of three people. On tape, not knowing who shows up as a late pickup or a look to the wrong mark.

So learn the scene as a map of who cues you. Go through the sides and mark, for every one of your lines, the character who speaks just before it and the last few words they say. Our free cue script maker does most of it: pick your role and it prints only your lines, each with the last words of the speech before it. Write the speaker’s name next to each cue yourself. Then drill it until you could tell someone, without looking, that line six comes after the uncle and line seven after the friend.

Then hear it out loud with a different voice for each character, so you learn who cues you by sound before your reader reads them all in one voice. In Offbook, you upload your sides, pick your role, and give each of the other characters a voice. Realistic voices read every other part, Offbook listens through your microphone, and it plays the next cue when you finish your line. The video below shows that setup, from a PDF to a first run.

With a different voice on each character, you learn to know who’s speaking from the first syllable, and you can hide your own lines for the last few runs.

Practice your eyelines during those runs too: put tape marks beside the laptop and turn to each character’s mark as their voice comes in. If you can’t get a human reader, our guide to using an AI voice as a self-tape reader covers when that works and how to set it up. For more on learning a crowded scene, see learning lines in a big ensemble scene.

Questions actors ask

Where do you look when there are several characters in a self-tape?

Close to the lens, for most scenes. Look at the reader for the most important character, and if the scene calls for it, use marks just to the other side of the camera for the others. Keep every look within a small triangle around the lens, so casting sees both of your eyes. If splitting the looks gets in the way, play every character to the reader.

What if my reader is on the other side of the camera from where I rehearsed?

Flip the layout. Boylan advises being ready to switch your blocking to the other side if the reader ends up there. Keep the same relationships, just mirrored: the main character on the reader, the others across the lens.

What if I’m reading for two characters in the same scene?

Follow the instructions on how to send them, and make each file easy to tell apart. Ardent’s guide says the file name should include the character’s name, especially when you audition for more than one role, and suggests changing what you wear for each: a hint of the character, not a costume. Each character also gets its own eyeline layout, built around who that character wants something from.