Craft 4 min read
Off book without the dread
The off-book date is where many rehearsal processes stall. Taking the script away in stages, and learning cues as well as lines, makes it a step instead of a cliff.
For acting and drama teachers
Every player's part on their own card. A rehearsal with nobody holding paper.
Rehearse scripted work without paper: each actor's card shows their own next line and the cue before it, and a silent prompt from you when they dry. Then run the room, and the show night, from the same iPad.
Rehearse a script
The cue, then the line — as much of it as you decide.
The whole script lives on your iPad. Each actor's card shows the partner's last words in grey — the cue — and their own line beneath: in full, as first letters only, or not at all. You set that per actor and change it any time, so the card moves with the cast as they get off book.
What Spontar is
Rehearse · Run the room · Show night — and improvised scenes and live prompts too.
One case: your iPad and a small card for every actor. Three jobs every acting class has, done on the same cards, and each one leaves a record you can look back on.
REHEARSE
A script, without paper
Each actor's next line and cue on their own card, full, first letters or blank. When someone dries you tap their name, and the words appear on their card alone. An actor can hold the card to ask for the line. Afterwards: who dried, and on which line.
RUN THE ROOM
Turns, pairs and time
For any class with no script: the iPad proposes the next pair or group from who has been up least and who has worked together least. Their cards buzz privately, the time limit buzzes the stage, and the people watching get one word to watch for.
SHOW NIGHT
The running order in your hand
Places in 5 buzzes the next act. 2 minutes and Wrap it up buzz the act on stage. The jam sign-up is drawn into groups on the iPad, and each drawn card is told its group. Afterwards: the acts, and how long each ran.
And improv, as before. Improvised scenes — a situation and a feeling for each role — written in Composer or taken from the Library; live prompts typed on the iPad during a scene and sent to one player; pictures and icons on the card, for young players or an exercise built on an image.
How it works
From the script on your laptop to the rehearsal in the room.
Four moments — and the two in the middle happen while you are teaching, not instead of it.
1 · THE EVENING BEFORE
Import the script
Paste the text, or import a PDF, a Word file or a Fountain file, and Composer turns it into a scene: one role per character, one line per speech, with anything it did not use listed. Composer checks every scene before it can be used in a lesson. For Run the room and Show night there is nothing to prepare.
2 · IN THE ROOM
Hand out the cards, cast the scene
Switch a card on and it finds your iPad over the kit's own router — no venue wifi needed. You give each card to an actor by name, cast the parts, and choose for each actor whether their card shows the line in full, as first letters, or not at all.
3 · THE REHEARSAL
Run it from the iPad
Tap Next and the scene moves on: the next actor's card buzzes twice to get ready, and once, long, when the line is theirs. When somebody dries, tap their name and send the next words, the line or the speech — silently, to their card alone. Nobody calls "line" across the room.
4 · AFTERWARDS
The record is already there
Who was there, who played what, and who dried on which line — or, for a class, who was up and with whom; for a show night, the acts. Private to the teacher who gave the lesson, and uploaded when the iPad is next online.
The result
What is different when the rehearsal ends.
Nobody held paper, and nobody shouted "line"
Actors looked at each other instead of at a script. When a line went, the help arrived on one card, silently, and the scene kept going.
You know where the lines went
Who dried, on which line — counted once per line, whether they asked, you prompted, or both. Information for the next rehearsal, not a score for anyone.
The quiet ones were up too
In a class with no script, the iPad proposes the people who have been up least and the pairs who have worked together least, and says why.
AFTER THE RUN · THE LAST TRAIN
- Sam dried once · line 7
- Nora dried twice · lines 4, 12
An example of the record a run leaves. It is the teacher's alone, and no actor ever sees it on a card.
Why
Paper gets lost, prompters get loud, and whispers reach the whole room.
A rehearsal spends a surprising amount of its time on logistics: whose line is it, where are we, who comes in next, what is the line. Most of it is said out loud, in front of everyone — including "line!", called by the actor who has just lost it. Spontar takes it off the floor. Each actor gets their own part, at their moment, and nobody else sees it.
Why not the phone in their pocket
Not every actor has one, and the ones who do have notifications, messages and a lock screen between them and the scene. Plenty of rooms have a no-phones rule that exists for good reasons. And a line app on a phone serves one actor; it does not know where the scene is.
Why not paper scripts
If paper works in your room, keep it. What paper cannot do is show an actor only their next line, take the words away as they learn them, or hand one actor a prompt without the rest of the room hearing it.
Evidence
What is established, and what we will not claim.
One design choice leans on research published before we existed: feedback aimed at the person rather than the task backfires, and an audience degrades performance on a task not yet automatic. So a part, and a prompt, is seen by one actor alone. That research is about feedback and improvisation; what we say about rehearsing rests on what the build does, not on studies.
There is no trial of Spontar, and we have not run one. We have not measured whether a cast gets off book sooner, or whether a private card changes what a class will risk. We believe it helps. Belief is not a finding, and we will not present it as one. The sources, in full →
What we sell
One case, sized to your rooms — and the software around it.
1 per actor
Cards
Each one set up for your school or studio before it arrives.
1
Router & case
The room becomes its own network while the lesson runs; the case holds the kit.
1 per teacher
iPad
The teacher's screen, where each rehearsal, class and show night is run.
Per teacher
Licence
Quoted from the number of teachers and the size of your largest class.
What we provide
The material half: your scripts in, a place to write, and a Library.
Paste or import a script
Plain text, a PDF with a text layer, Word or Fountain, one speech per line as NAME: words. Characters become roles, speeches become lines. No AI is involved, so the script goes to no model.
An assistant for improv
Describe an exercise and the assistant drafts an improvised scene for you to reshape. It works on scene text only, never touches a script's lines, and never sees your actors or your lessons.
The Library, to start from
Three short original scripts and 24 improvised scenes, in English, German and French. Add one in Composer and run it as it is or adapt it. What you write stays your institution's own unless you choose to publish it.
The class app, Composer, Backstage and the card's own words are in English, German and French. A script is free text, so it plays in whichever language it was written. Composer & the Library →
Who it is for
Acting schools and studios
Acting schools, drama schools' evening programmes, youth theatre and mixed theatre-and-improv studios: productions and showcases in rehearsal, class nights, show nights — with no IT department to ask.
For acting schools →Schools
Rehearsals for the school production, set texts and devised work, a class of teenagers as the room, and the data-protection questions answered before they are asked.
For schools →Why us
Every part on its own card.
That is the whole idea. It started in improvisation, with the instruction one player should get without the rest of the room hearing it. Acting teachers showed us where the same problem is loudest: the rehearsal, the dried line, the prompt called across the room. The rest — no phones, no actor accounts, no score an actor can see — comes from taking that one sentence seriously. The story is on the about page.
What Spontar does not do
No listening for dries
The card does not decide when an actor has dried. You do, or the actor asks.
No recording
No camera, and nothing about a lesson is recorded as sound or picture. Ever.
No actor accounts
No sign-in, no password, no email address for an actor.
No score an actor can see
The record of dries is the teacher's; no card could show one.
Questions
- Does it replace learning lines?
- No. Learning the lines stays the actor's job; the card changes what happens when they are not there yet. You set what each actor's card shows — their own line in full, as first letters only, or nothing but the cue — and change it as the cast gets off book. Prompting is yours: nothing appears unless you tap, or unless you have chosen to answer an actor's request automatically. You can switch prompting off for a scene altogether.
- How does prompting work?
- When an actor dries, you tap their name on the iPad and choose the next words, the whole line or the whole speech. It appears silently on that actor's card — the next words for 2 seconds, a line for 4, a speech until the actor taps — and nobody else's. The card does not detect a dry; you decide. An actor can also hold their card to ask for the line, and you see the request and choose.
- Can we use the scripts we already have?
- Yes. Paste the text into Composer or import a file: plain text, a PDF with a text layer, Word (.docx) or Fountain. One speech per line, as NAME: words. Characters become roles (up to eight), speeches become lines, and stage directions are listed as not used so you can see what was left out. Speeches longer than 400 characters are split at sentence ends. A scanned PDF has no text to read, and Composer says so. Nothing is sent to an AI model.
- What does it do in a class with no script?
- Run the room. The iPad proposes the next pair or group from who has been up least and who has worked together least, and says why. The chosen cards buzz privately, then buzz again when they are on; at your time limit the cards on stage get a short buzz, and the people watching get one word to watch for on their cards. Afterwards you can see who was up, how often and with whom.
- And on a show night?
- The running order is on the iPad. Places in 5 buzzes the next act's performers; 2 minutes and Wrap it up buzz the act on stage. A jam sign-up list is drawn into groups on the iPad, and each drawn card is told its group. Afterwards: which acts played, and for how long.
- Can I still run improvised scenes and live prompts?
- Yes. A scene can be a list of situations and feelings to improvise from, written by you, drafted with the assistant in Composer, or taken from the Library. In Live mode you type a prompt on the iPad during the scene and send it to one player's card. Pictures and icons work on the card too.
- Does it work in French?
- Yes. The class app, Composer and Backstage are in English, German and French, and the card's own words follow the teacher's app language. The library scenes and scripts exist in all three. A script is free text, so it plays in whatever language you import it in. This website is in English only.
- Do actors need an account?
- No. An actor holds a card, which is a device your school or studio owns. There is no sign-in, no password and no email address for an actor — so there is nothing to issue, reset, leak or forget.
- What happens when the venue's internet fails?
- Once the lesson is open, nothing, if you chose to run it in the room only. The cards talk to the iPad over the kit's own router, and the lesson record uploads when the iPad is next online. Opening a lesson does need a connection, because that is when the iPad fetches the scenes and pictures.
- Is anything recorded?
- Not as sound or picture, ever. The card has no camera, and the firmware never uses the card's microphone. What is kept is a record of the lesson for the teacher: who was there, what ran, and in a rehearsal where prompts and line requests happened.
Writing
On teaching the thing, not the tool.
Classroom 3 min read
Prompting without shaming
How a line is asked for and given shapes how a cast feels about drying. A short protocol, agreed in advance, takes the embarrassment out of it.
Classroom 4 min read
Running a class show night
A class show is a small production with a running order, time calls and a host. The practical parts — the order, the calls, the jam and the end time — decide whether the evening feels like theatre.
Bring a script you are rehearsing, and watch it run.
A scene from your next production, a two-hander from class — we import it together on a 30–45 minute video call. We set schools and studios up by hand: slower than a sign-up form, and the reason nobody can talk their way into a tenant full of minors' data.
Talk to us