Last week I did a reading of a new musical. As with pretty much any process, at some point before the first rehearsal (ideally well before the first rehearsal), you have to read the script. This helps you not look like an idiot when other people on the production start rattling off names of songs and characters and expecting you to have some clue how they relate to each other, and is especially necessary once you start working on the schedule.
No matter how excited I am to do a show, I always have difficulty getting myself to read the script for the first time. Finding a time I want to sit down (or lie in bed) for probably a couple hours is hard for me. Once I get through that initial reading, I don’t mind sitting at my desk and taking notes, and beginning paperwork related to the script. I just need a reason to crack it open and sit through reading it.
Since I purchased a Kindle 4 this fall, I’ve been taking my books everywhere. When I got the script for my recent show, the first thing I did was forward the PDF to my @kindle.com email address, so that it would automatically sync to my Kindle. The next time I left the house, I had the script with me in an easy-to-hold format, and by the time I had completed my round-trip commute, I had read the script. It was also pretty interesting because this particular PDF was formatted with the score and script pages intermixed (which is normally weird, but works great for a reading where the actors have to perform with script in hand). The lyrics on the sheet music were very tiny and hard to read, but it was workable.
I really enjoyed this solution, and plan to keep using it. If you get a script as a PDF or other digital format you can convert to PDF, and have any kind of eReader or tablet, I highly recommend it.
