Performers' Workshop: Auditioning with Sides

Performers' Workshop: Auditioning with Sides runs at the Liverpool Royal Court Studio on Thursday 22 October. It's part of the theatre's wider Performers' Workshop series, so it's one session in a regular run of workshops rather than a one-off.

The focus here is auditioning with sides — those short excerpts from a script that casting directors send you to prepare. If you've ever wondered how to approach them, how to make a few pages of dialogue stand out, or how to build a character from a fragment of a scene, that's what this session is about. It's practical stuff for anyone who spends time in audition rooms.

The workshop takes place in the Liverpool Royal Court Studio, the 150-seat space in the basement of the Royal Court Theatre on Roe Street. The main theatre is a nautical-themed Art Deco building that opened in 1881 on the site of Cooke's Royal Amphitheatre of Arts, and it's a place with a proper history — Richard Burton and Judi Dench both made their professional stage debuts here. The Studio is the smaller, more intimate sibling, used for smaller productions and stand-up comedy, and it's where the workshop series is based.

So, if you're working in the city and want to sharpen how you handle sides, you'll find it at the Royal Court Theatre, 1 Roe Street, Liverpool, L1 1AE, on Thursday 22 October.