As actors, we’ve all been there: we get a script or a couple pages of sides and want to rehearse them with someone – anyone – to get a feel for the lines and character. Your roommate/wife/husband isn’t home to help and the cat can’t talk (at least not that we know of). So, what do you do?
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you download the new tableread app.
I talked to the creator of the app, Dan Conway, and from what he told me, it sounds like a must have. “For actors,” he said, tableread has “a full suite of powerful rehearsal features. They simply import the script and select their part by switching on rehearsal mode for that character. Now their character will be highlighted in the read. Actors have full control over playback, for example they may choose to have their part muted, or they may want the virtual character to read their lines but pause for them to deliver first. tableread also allows actors to rehearse together and has no limit as to how many people can participate. The actors just select the characters who are there to rehearse, they read their part and tableread does the rest.”
And here’s the one of the best parts: “tableread also has a really handy scene looping function so that actors can select targeted scenes to rehearse or only the scenes that they feature in.”
How cool is that?
The app easily imports formatted screenplays and teleplays from professional screenwriting software. “The tableread app identifies all elements of the script automatically,” he said. “For example, it knows the scene headers from the action and the character names from the dialogue. It even can separate characters by gender. With all this information we are now free to assign character voices to the virtual cast and let the narrator read the rest.”
The app is also really useful for other members of the production, like writers, directors or producers. “Writers can listen back to their scripts as read by an entire cast, they can even add a dynamic score which will play under the dialogue and swell over the action. Directors, producers and executives can listen to scripts, create script notes in app and share them with the cast and crew,” he told me.
And if you’re not a member of Team Apple (like me), don’t worry – an Android version is scheduled to be released in November.
Check it out at tablereadpro.com
