The hallway outside an audition: seven people, one bench, everyone holding the same page. Write the wait.Angle: nobody speaks until the first name is called. Decide who breaks the quiet.
You sit house left and your friend sits house right at the same play. Compare notes on what each of you could not see.Term: house left and house right are the audience's left and right. Stage left is the actor's left.
Write a review of a school play that is honest and that every person in the cast could read without wanting to hide.Angle: name what worked first, and be exact about it.
A stage manager is calling a show. Write the ten seconds around the one cue that nearly goes wrong tonight.Term: a cue is the trigger for a light, a sound or a set change. It is called in three steps: warning, standby, go.
Closing night: the set that took six weeks to build comes down in one evening. Write the last piece to leave the stage.Angle: end on the bare floor and the tape marks still stuck to it.
Describe the green room of a small theater twenty minutes before the show, by what is lying on the table.Term: the green room is where performers wait when they are not on stage. It does not have to be green.
During a play an actor has forty seconds in the dark behind the set to become someone else. Write the quick change from the helper's side.Angle: count it down. Decide whether the shoes go first or last.
Explain blocking to someone who has never stood on a stage, using one scene: who stands where, who crosses, and why.Term: blocking is the precise arrangement of the actors on the stage. To cross is to move.
From backstage, describe a scene of a play you know by heart, using only what you can hear of it.Angle: footsteps, a door, the laugh that comes on the same line every night.
It is the dress rehearsal of a play and everything that can go wrong does. Write the director's notes afterward, kind ones.Term: at a dress rehearsal the cast wear their costumes and perform every detail, shortly before opening.
Stand on the apron of an empty stage and write what the rows of seats look like from up there.Term: the apron is the part of a stage that reaches out in front of the arch, toward the audience.
The theater is empty and one bare bulb has been left burning on the stage. Write the building at midnight.Term: a ghost light is the lamp left on when a theater is empty and dark, so that nobody walks into the pit.
Write about the person who sweeps the stage before the audience is let into the theater, and what turns up in the dustpan.First line: Glitter again, and one earring that was never in the script.
Write the minute before the curtain goes up, from the wings, as the actor who has the first line of the play.Term: the wings are the sides of the stage, hidden from the audience, where scenery and props are kept.
Write the page of the prompt book for the busiest minute of a show, then write the same minute as it felt.Term: the prompt book is the copy of the script that holds all the blocking and every light and sound cue.
Write the props table of a play as a list a stranger could set from: each object, where it lies, who collects it.Angle: one prop is missing tonight. Say which, and who notices first.
The audition 12
An actor is told not to aim the audition speech at the people behind the table. Write where the eyes go, and what they find there.Term: an audition is a sample performance. An actor may be asked to present a monologue.
At an audition you are handed a scene you have never seen and asked to read it now. Write the first ten seconds.Term: a cold reading is reading aloud from a script with little or no rehearsal. Auditions often use one.
Called back for a second audition, you read the same scene with a partner you met a minute ago. Write what changes.Angle: the lines are the same. The pauses are not.
The cast list for the school play goes up on a door. Write the walk down the corridor toward it.Angle: stop before any name is read. The walk is the whole piece.
For once you are behind the audition table, choosing between two people who were equally good. Write how you decide.Angle: say what you look for when talent is a tie.
The hallway outside an audition: seven people, one bench, everyone holding the same page. Write the wait.Angle: nobody speaks until the first name is called. Decide who breaks the quiet.
Someone arrives at an audition with the wrong shoes, a cold and no sleep, and it goes well anyway. Write how.Angle: find the second at which it turned.
Write one audition twice: from the actor walking in, and from the person behind the table who has seen forty people today.Angle: use the same thirty seconds for both, and let them disagree about how it went.
Write the letter a director sends to someone who did not get the part, saying what she noticed in the audition.Angle: she names one exact moment, and asks them to come back in the spring.
Write the list a director keeps during auditions: one honest line about each person, and none of them unkind.First line: Number four forgot the words, kept going, and made me laugh twice.
Write the warm-up an actor does alone in a stairwell before an audition, as instructions to yourself.Angle: the voice, the shoulders, one tongue twister, one slow breath at the door.
You auditioned for the lead and were cast as the third villager. Write the rehearsal where you decide to be the best one ever seen.First line: The third villager has no lines. The third villager has opinions.
In the audience 12
A child sees a play for the first time and believes every minute of it. Write what she tells the car on the way home.Angle: she gets the plot wrong and the feeling exactly right.
An actor walks downstage and speaks straight to the audience. Write what it is like to be looked at from the stage.Term: downstage is the front of the stage, nearest the audience. Upstage is the rear.
Describe the set of a play from the back row before anyone walks on: what it tells you about the people who live there.Angle: one door, one window, one thing out of place.
From a seat in the audience, write about the one actor on stage who is not speaking, and what they do while the others talk.Angle: listening is acting too. Say how you can tell.
The house lights go down in a theater. Write the three seconds of dark before the stage lights come up.Angle: what the audience does with its hands, its coats, its breath.
Someone in the third row unwraps a candy during the quietest scene of a play. Write it from five different seats.Angle: one of the five seats belongs to the person with the candy.
Something goes wrong on stage and the actors carry on. Write it as someone in the audience who is not sure it was a mistake.Angle: a dropped tray, a door that will not open, a line said twice.
Write about an usher who has watched the same show forty times from beside the door of the theater.Term: an usher welcomes people and shows them where to sit.
Write the applause at the end of a play: who stands first, who stands because everyone did, who is already finding a coat.Term: at the curtain call the performers return to the stage to be recognized by the audience.
Write the intermission of a play as a small play of its own: the line for the restroom, the opinions, the bell.Term: an intermission is the break between the parts of a performance. British English calls it an interval.
Write the lobby of a theater in the quarter hour before a show: the tickets, the programs, the coats, the person who is late.Term: front of house is the part of a theater that is open to the public.
You sit house left and your friend sits house right at the same play. Compare notes on what each of you could not see.Term: house left and house right are the audience's left and right. Stage left is the actor's left.
A review of a show 12
A review needs evidence. Pick one moment from a show and describe it so exactly that a reader sees why you called it the best.Angle: where the actor stood, what stopped, how long the silence lasted.
Review a rehearsal in place of a finished show: what is ready, what is not, and what you would bet on.Term: a rehearsal is the practice that prepares a performance, and in the theatre a director leads it.
Review a stage performance in exactly three sentences: what it tried to do, whether it worked, who should go.Angle: no adjective is allowed to stand without a because.
Review only the lighting of a show: when it changed, what it made you look at, and where it got in the way.Angle: a good light cue is one you did not notice. Find one you did.
Review the costumes of a play as if the clothes were the whole story: what each one told you before anyone spoke.Angle: one coat that was too new, one hat that did all the work.
Shut your eyes for one scene and review only the sound of the show: voices, footsteps, music, the cue that came late.Angle: say which voice you would know again anywhere.
Take a one-word review of a play (boring, amazing, weird) and rewrite it as a paragraph that proves the word.Angle: three things you saw or heard, and nothing you only felt.
Write a review of a play you have seen, at school or anywhere else, that gives three reasons and gives nothing away.Term: a theatre review is a short essay for ordinary readers, published while the play is still on.
Write a review of a school play that is honest and that every person in the cast could read without wanting to hide.Angle: name what worked first, and be exact about it.
Write the headline and the first paragraph of a review of a play that does not exist yet, the one you wish someone would stage.Angle: say what is on the stage when the lights come up.
Write the review a stage set would give of the actors who walk on it eight times a week.First line: The tall one slams my door. Every night. I have asked.
Write two reviews of one show, by someone who loved it and by someone who kept checking the time. Give both real reasons.Angle: they agree about one scene. Start there.
A musical 12
A school musical has thirty voices in the chorus and four microphones. Write the plan for who gets one, and the argument.Angle: the quietest singer has the line everyone needs to hear.
A tune from a musical is still in your head a week after the show. Write the week, and leave the tune unnamed.Angle: where it turns up: the shower, the stairs, the middle of a test.
At the end of a musical the cast turns and points down at the pit. Write that bow from a violinist's chair.Term: in musical theatre the performers typically recognize the orchestra and its conductor at the curtain call.
The conductor of a musical has their back to the audience all night. Write the show as that face would tell it.Term: the conductor usually stands at the front of the orchestra pit, facing the stage.
Describe one dance number of a musical from the back row of the chorus: the counts, the heels in front, the turn you nearly miss.First line: Five, six, seven, and do not look at your feet.
In a musical a character is talking and then has to sing. Write the moment just before, and why speaking stopped being enough.Term: musical theatre combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance.
The overture of a musical begins and the curtain is still down. Write what the music promises about the evening.Term: an overture is an instrumental piece of music written to introduce a dramatic work.
Think of a musical you know and leave it unnamed. Explain why its biggest song comes exactly where it does.Angle: say what the story needed at that minute that talking could not give it.
Write a musical from the orchestra pit: what the players can see of the show, and what they only ever hear.Term: the orchestra pit is the area where the musicians play, usually lowered and in front of the stage.
Write about the rehearsal pianist of a musical who has played one song two hundred times and still finds it funny.Angle: she knows every singer by the breath they take before the high note.
Write the last rehearsal before a musical opens, the evening the band plays with the singers for the first time.Angle: what is suddenly louder, faster and better than the piano ever made it.
Write the note a choreographer pins up for the cast of a musical after a run-through: three things to fix, one never to change.Angle: the thing never to change was an accident.
How it works
These theatre writing prompts are for a theatre class journal or a notebook in the back row. None asks for a script and no show or performer is named, so each piece is about a theater the writer knows.
Read the full guide
Theater writing prompts with the stage terms explained
Twenty-three prompts carry a stage term on the line underneath: the wings, the apron, blocking, a cue, a cold reading, the ghost light left burning on an empty stage. Each definition follows the Wikipedia article on that term, so a writer new to the theater can use the word the way the crew does.
A review with reasons
Twelve prompts ask for a review: of the lighting alone, of the costumes, of a rehearsal, of the sound with your eyes shut. One takes a one-word verdict such as boring or amazing and asks for the paragraph that proves it.
Write within a day of the show. The exact moment fades long before the opinion does.
Leave the show unnamed, and describe it well enough that the name is not missed.
Questions and answers
What are good writing prompts about theatre?
Ones set where the audience never goes. Write the minute before the curtain goes up, from the wings. Or write one audition twice: from the actor walking in, and from the person behind the table who has seen forty people today.
Can I use these as writing prompts in a theatre class?
Yes. Several fit the day after a rehearsal: explain blocking using one scene, review a rehearsal in place of a finished show, or write the director's notes after a dress rehearsal where everything went wrong.
Are there prompts about musicals?
Twelve. They stay with the people who make one: the players in the orchestra pit, the rehearsal pianist, the back row of the chorus, the conductor whose back is to the audience all night.