One of your biggest jobs as an actor is to master the art of auditioning. That includes basic skills like being a great cold reader and knowing how to work with a camera, and more advanced techniques like using script analysis to transform your read from good to great. This week, we're talking about one of those advanced techniques.
Page numbers.
You may be familiar with the concept of a 'three (or five) act structure.' (And if you're not, now's your chance!) There are also four and six act structures - the number doesn't matter... What matters is that virtually every script - long or short, tv, film, theater, video game, whatever - shares a basic beginning/middle/end structure; exposition, confrontation, and resolution. Just as actors have objectives, so do writers, and those objectives change depending on where they are in the structure; exposition is about introducing the characters and relevant circumstances, confrontation is about building the conflict and characters to a climax, and resolution is about wrapping it all up to the audience's satisfaction.
Those basic chunks aren't spread out equally... Exposition (the beginning) and resolution (the end) are shorter than confrontation (the middle.) So in a 35-page half-hour comedy script, exposition might take up pages 1-9, confrontation pages 10-25, and resolution 26-30.
Why should you care? Because understanding structure gets you out of your actor-brain and into the decision-makers' brains. If you've got sides from the first few pages, it's a good bet that your character is there to help set up the basic who-what-where of the story. If your sides are from somewhere in the middle, you're part of the 'rising action,' building the conflict and character development toward the climax. And if your sides are from the last few pages, you're there to help tie everything together. (The bigger the role, the likelier that you'll be involved in more than one part of the structure.) Knowing where you fit allows you to make acting choices that help the writer/director/producers achieve their objectives. It gives you the power to make their jobs easier. And decision-makers love to hire actors who make their jobs easier.
Of course every script is different, so practice using contextual clues to figure out where you are in the structure, especially if you don't have access to the full script. Some projects use 'audition sides' rather than pulling material from the script, so you won't have access to page numbers. And some scripts eschew a traditional structure, so page numbers won't mean what they usually mean. But most of the time, paying attention to page numbers will add a layer of specificity and nuance to your audition, and leave the decision-makers thinking 'that's EXACTLY what we need.' And that's the kind of audition that builds relationships and books jobs!
If you've ever wondered if audition coaching is worth a try, this post is a sample of what it's all about; digging into the material to pull out every last juicy tidbit of specificity and nuance, and giving you skills you can use for the rest of your career.
Working Actor Wisdom audition coaching is available in-person or online, in combination with self-taping, and in varying session lengths. Read what your fellow actors have to say, and try it out next time you're called in!