Still Not Off Book by Tech Week? How to Catch Up in the Last Days

The schedule on the callboard says tech starts Saturday. You know Act One. You mostly know the big scene in Act Two. And there’s a stretch near the end that you’ve been carrying in your hand, telling yourself you’d nail it this week, for two weeks now.

The short version: stop learning the play front to back. Rank your scenes by how badly a slip would hurt the show, and learn in that order. Drill your cue lines, entrances, and transitions before your long speeches, because tech will test those first. Use the dead time that tech hands you, test yourself instead of rereading, sleep on the hard scenes, and tell the stage manager where you stand before the first hold.

Know what tech will test first

It helps to be clear about what tech is for. Christopher Peterson, who founded OnStage Blog, puts it bluntly in his piece on why tech weeks go wrong: tech exists to add the technical elements to the performances, and actors should arrive fully off book and locked into their blocking.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the first day of tech usually doesn’t ask for your whole part at once. The Oberlin stage management guide to running tech says a cue to cue is usually the first form of tech rehearsal. Instead of working through the show, the stage manager jumps from cue to cue, picks a spot just before each one, runs it, and calls a hold.

So the first thing tech will test isn’t your big speech. It’s the line that triggers the blackout, the cue line your partner is waiting for, and how you get from the wings to your mark. Those are small, specific, and learnable in days. Start there.

Rank your scenes by risk, not by page number

Actors who fall behind tend to keep learning page by page, which leaves the end of the play for the last night. Triage flips it. Sort every scene you’re in into three piles.

• Red: scenes where a slip stops the show. A light or sound cue is called on your words, a partner can’t speak until you finish, you carry an exit or a quick change, or there’s a fight or a lift.
• Amber: scenes where you’re shaky but others can cover. Group scenes, scenes where you speak less, and scenes you know in shape but not word for word.
• Green: scenes you can already run cold, without the script, from any starting line.

Be honest about green. A scene is green only if you can start it from the middle. If you only know it from the top, it’s amber, because tech is about to start you in the middle a lot.

Then work red first, amber second, and green only as a quick daily check. Within red, put the scenes earliest in the tech schedule at the top. If Act One techs Saturday and Act Two Sunday, you’ve just bought a day for Act Two.

Drill cues and transitions before speeches

To tech, your part is a chain of hand-offs: their last words cue your line, yours cue theirs, and some also cue a light change. Learn the hand-offs and the scene can run while a long speech is still rough.

Here’s a short exchange from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I, where Jack confesses his origins to Lady Bracknell:

LADY BRACKNELL: Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class ticket for this seaside resort find you?

JACK: [Gravely.] In a hand-bag.

LADY BRACKNELL: A hand-bag?

JACK: [Very seriously.] Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was in a hand-bag—a somewhat large, black leather hand-bag, with handles to it—an ordinary hand-bag in fact.

LADY BRACKNELL: In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary hand-bag?

JACK: In the cloak-room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own.

If you’re playing Jack and you’re behind, don’t start by polishing the long hand-bag line. Learn the three hand-offs: “find you?” gets “In a hand-bag.” “A hand-bag?” gets “Yes, Lady Bracknell.” “ordinary hand-bag?” gets “In the cloak-room at Victoria Station.” Then learn your own last words, “In a hand-bag,” “ordinary hand-bag in fact,” and “for his own,” because Lady Bracknell can’t come in until she hears them.

Do that for every red scene, and put the hand-offs on one sheet: the last few words you hear, then your first words. That sheet is your script for tech week.

Transitions are lines too

Write down, for every entrance, what you hear just before you go on, where you enter from, and the first thing you say. Do the same for every exit: your last line and where you go. Say them out loud in order, like directions. Tech will run most of them, often more than once.

Walk them if you can. Helga and Tony Noice are psychologists who study how actors learn roles. The APS Observer’s summary of their work describes a study in which lines learned while making a fitting movement, such as walking across a stage, were remembered better later, even when the movement wasn’t repeated. Your blocking is a memory aid. Use it in a hallway, a kitchen, or a parking lot.

Test yourself; don’t reread

When time is short, the instinct is to read the script again and again. Eric Wargo’s APS Observer summary of Roediger and Karpicke’s testing research reports that students who were tested on a passage over and over read it only 3.4 times on average and recalled 61 percent of it a week later. Students who only reread it, 14.2 times on average, recalled 40 percent.

There’s a twist that matters this week. On a test given minutes after studying, the rereaders did better. Rereading makes you feel ready tonight. Testing makes you ready on Thursday.

So every session is a test. Cover your line, read the cue, say your line out loud, then check. Mark every miss and start with the misses next time. If a line won’t come at all, give yourself the first letter of each word as a halfway step; our free line memorizer turns any text into first-letter cues.

In Offbook you can hide your lines while everyone else’s stay visible, then say each one before you reveal it. The video below shows how to hide your lines and recall each one from the cue, with first-letter cues as a step on the way. Realistic voices read every other part, and Offbook listens and plays the next cue when you finish, so every red scene gets a full test.

Use the waiting time in tech

Tech days are long, but a surprising amount of them is waiting. Louis Butelli, writing on the Folger Theatre’s blog during tech for Mary Stuart, notes that for actors a fair amount of tech consists of down time, while the actors in a cue repeat their lines or actions while the stage manager’s team irons out the kinks.

That waiting time is yours, as long as you use it quietly and stay where the stage manager can find you. A few ways to spend it:

• During a long hold: run the next red scene in your head, cue by cue, with your script closed. Check only the lines you missed.
• When you’re repeating a cue: notice the lines just before it. You’re about to say them several more times, which is free practice. Make sure they’re right.
• On the way home: listen to your red scenes. Hearing the cues in sequence is a good review when you can’t speak out loud.
• Before bed: one short self-test of the scene you’re teching first tomorrow, then sleep.

That last one isn’t a throwaway. In a study in the journal Sleep, Cousins and colleagues had 52 young adults learn sets of facts; those who slept between sessions forgot less of what they were confident about after 12 hours than those who stayed awake. That was facts, not lines, but it suggests that learning a scene shortly before sleep, rather than first thing in the morning, may help it stick overnight.

For the listening part, Offbook’s listen mode plays the whole scene aloud, and you can listen to your scenes on your phone with your own lines spoken, skipped, or left as silent gaps for you to fill in your head. A silent gap is a test you can take on a train.

Tell the stage manager before the first hold

Being behind is a problem. Hiding it is a bigger one, because the stage manager is planning the week around you knowing your part. If they find out mid cue to cue, with a lighting designer waiting, everyone loses time and you lose trust.

Tell them before tech starts, privately and briefly. You’re not confessing; you’re giving them information they need to run the room. Go to the stage manager first: they track the schedule and the script, and they can decide whether the director needs to hear it. A good version sounds something like this:

• “I want to flag something before Saturday. Act One is solid. Act Two is solid except the second scene with Gwendolen, where I’m still shaky on about two pages.”
• “I’m working on it every night and I’ll have it by Tuesday’s dress.”
• “In the meantime, if I go up, I’ll call line straight away so we don’t lose time. Could I get line notes after tonight’s rehearsal?”

Be specific about which scenes, give a date, and offer a fix. That’s the whole conversation, and it turns you into the actor who flagged a problem and is handling it.

Then take your line notes well. Craig Mason, writing on the Theatrefolk blog as he went into tech week on his own show, describes the stage manager going through the prompt script and listing every place the actor strayed, down to a single dropped “yet.” His advice is to skip the explanations and “just accept the note, circle it in your book and say thanks.” Those circles are tonight’s red list.

What to do when you go up in tech

You probably will, at least once. Don’t struggle in silence; the crew can’t tell whether you’ve dried or are waiting for a light. Call “line” the way your stage manager asked, take the prompt, and go on. Don’t apologize, don’t explain, and don’t break the scene to fix the line yourself.

Then write it down. Every line you call in tech goes on a list in your pocket, with the cue before it. That list is the truest map of your weak spots.

For more on how prompting usually works, our guide on working with your stage manager covers calling for a line and taking line notes.

A five-day triage plan

Here’s a plan for the classic case: five days until the first dress, with two sections of the play still shaky. Adjust the days to your own schedule.

• Day one: sort every scene into red, amber, and green. Make your cue script for the red scenes. Talk to the stage manager.
• Day two: drill the hand-offs and transitions in every red scene, out loud, walking the blocking where you can. Self-test the first red scene on the schedule before bed.
• Day three: full self-tests of each red scene from three different starting points. Mark every miss and redo only the misses.
• Day four: move to amber. Keep a five-minute test of every red scene at the start of each session.
• Day five: run your whole part once, cold, top to bottom. Whatever you miss is what you drill before and during the first dress.

If you have even less time, our guide on memorizing lines in one day has a tighter version, and our tech week guide explains what each day of tech will ask of you.

Questions actors ask

Is it normal to not be off book by tech?

It happens, especially with short rehearsal periods. But the expectation is that you arrive off book, because tech is for adding the technical elements. If you’re behind, the normal thing to do is say so early and have a plan.

Can I carry my script during tech?

Only if the stage manager says so. Ask before rehearsal, not in the middle of a cue, because the answer depends on the company and the director. Never assume, and never bring it onstage without asking.

Should I tell the director or the stage manager that I don’t know my lines?

Start with the stage manager. They run the rehearsal room and the schedule, and they can decide whether the director needs to know. Tell them which scenes are shaky, when you’ll have them, and what you’ll do in the meantime.

Can I still learn lines on a phone during tech?

Yes, by listening. In Offbook you rehearse out loud on a laptop or desktop with the full script on a big screen, and you can listen to your scenes on your phone anywhere, with your lines left as silent gaps to fill in your head.