Scene Steeler - an overview

Scene Steeler is designed to help you learn your part when you are performing in a play.

First, you import the script from a text file. Scene Steeler recognises common conventions so that it can recognise where Acts and Scenes start, which characters say which lines, and stage directions that should not be spoken. Look in Help in the app for details of how the script needs to be formatted.

Once you have imported the text of a script, you tell Scene Steeler which character or characters are the ones you are going to play. When you read the script, you can then tell Scene Steeler to highlight your lines assigned to your character(s), so you can start by reading through the script and quickly see which are your lines.

"You've aced the audition and won a leading role. Fantastic, but... now you've got to learn all those lines! Scene Steeler can help. Load in your script and away you go."

When you are ready, you can tell Scene Steeler to hide your lines. You can then read the script, and try to remember what your lines are. You can double tap to reveal each line individually as you go.

As well as reading the script on screen, Scene Steeler lets you listen to the lines being read aloud through your device's speaker or headphones. Scene Steeler will read the lines aloud using the device's 'Text to Speech' engine, or (on Android and iOS) using highly realistic sounding voices created by an advanced artificial intelligence system running in the cloud. You can also record lines in the script using your device's microphone.

Scene Steeler will read through the lines in the script using text to speech and your own recordings, and you can practise saying your lines at the appropriate points. Listening and saying your lines aloud is a much more effective way of memorising them than simply reading.

When listening and rehearsing, you can select for the computer to wait to give you a chance to say each of your lines, then have it read the line back to you so you can verify that you got it right. You can also tell Scene Steeler to read the whole script, or only a selected number of cue lines before each of your characters' lines. Set these options by going to the Settings page.