How To Get Through Your First Table Read?

Iconic table reads bring scenes to life – Unknown

It’s the end of my two-hour coaching session with John Judy at the Theatre Lab. I’m rearranging all the pages of my script back in order when John asks if I’d done a table read with the current cast. I respond with, “No. I’ve only done a few rehearsals with two of the four cast members via zoom due to all of our conflicting schedules”.

He immediately emphasizes that zoom rehearsals are not as effective as in-person rehearsals and that it’s important to get all cast members in one room to say the lines and see if they sound right.

I definitely understood his reasoning because at a prior shoot I felt a bit uneasy working with a few cast members because I hadn’t met them in-person before that day. Whereas with one female cast member my comfort level was high because we managed to squeeze in an in-person rehearsal at Politics and Prose in DC before the shoot.

So, I knew John was onto something.

So, before scheduling anything, I made sure to finalize the shots and scenes for the second shoot with the director of photography (DP). I needed to know which cast members would be needed on set. I manage to schedule a Saturday afternoon with 3 of them. Then, I book a small meeting room in DC on Peerspace for 4 hours giving each cast member 1-1.5-hour timeslots.

Next, I did some research on YouTube on how a table read takes place and I found myself watching the season 4 table read for Black-ish, the season 8 table read for Game of Thrones and the season 5 table read for Breaking Bad. I couldn’t help but notice how sort-of in-character a few of the cast members were when saying their lines. And, seeing the shock on a few actor’s faces when they found out about certain scenes was quite interesting.

Then, I figured I should record the table read for content but unfortunately the videographer I was comfortable with was going out of town that weekend. So, that responsibility was on me. I only had a ring light and cellphone to work with. Let me tell you, I regret it. It was a disaster trying work the camera because as the cast came in and ran through their lines my phone storage kept getting full, stopping the video recording at abrupt times. I had to keep deleting apps, pictures, and videos to free up space.

Did I mention it was HOT that day? It was a hike carrying a ring light, refreshments, and scripts from my car to the meeting room. And the building had no air conditioning!

Doing my best to deal with my irritability, the cast and I realized that as were saying some of the lines out loud to each other, some of it actually didn’t sound right verbally. So, we began making tweaks. Cutting out certain parts of scenes to make the flow sound more believable and straight to the point.

Goodness!

Check out the second table read I did for my short film Blind Justice below:

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