For most of western theater history, actors worked from cue scripts exclusively, the same way that a violinist studies the violin part, not the full orchestration. It was far too time consuming and expensive to write out copies of the full play; imagine writing out by hand every line in Romeo and Juliet just so that the actor playing the Apothecary could have their own full copy.  

Only in the 19th century, when printing became cheap enough to give each actor a full script, did theater practice move away from cue scripts.  Playwrights prior to this shift wrote their plays for a system of rehearsal and performance fundamentally different from ours. Working from cue scripts offers a far richer understanding of how these plays were written to be acted, forces one to focus on their own part, and encourages active listening.

Now that it’s so much cheaper and easier to obtain a full script, creating cue scripts for every character can be prohibitively time consuming; imagine writing out every line of Romeo and Juliet on 18 different scrolls when you can just pay $2.50 a piece for full Dover editions. 

‘Tis Your Cue returns part based study to the modern theater practitioner by instantly generating your cue scripts online. Most importantly, it allows you to edit the script prior to breaking it out into parts, so that your cue scripts are always bespoke for your particular cut and production.

‘Tis You Cue is entirely free to use in perpetuity.  It is a labor of love from a group of practitioners passionate about working from cue-scripts and the discoveries that come from them in rehearsal and performance.  We hope you’ll join us. Click the button below to try ‘Tis Your Cue with the texts we’ve prepared. Want to use your own text? Learn how to prepare it here!