It is the night before auditions for the community theatre's fall show, and the notice said bring a headshot and resume. The headshot is handled; someone's phone took it against the garage door and it looks fine. The resume is a blank Google Doc with a cursor blinking in it, a performer who is fifteen, and a parent standing behind the chair saying "just put your school plays," which is correct advice and also not enough of it.
This post is for both people at that table. If you are the one auditioning, the page is yours, and most of it works exactly like the grown-up version. If you are the parent, guardian, or teacher helping, there are four places where the page is different for anyone under 18, and every one of them is about keeping the performer's private details off a sheet of paper that gets handed to strangers. Here is the whole thing, including what to leave out and why.
What's in here
- What a youth actor resume is, and how it differs from the adult page
- What goes on it and what stays off, including the date-of-birth question
- Who the contact line names when the performer is a minor
- How to write credits that are school plays, camp shows, and ensemble tracks
- When a union line belongs on a young performer's resume, and when it doesn't
- A note for teachers building one for the whole cast
What exactly is on a youth actor resume?
A youth actor resume is a one-page acting resume for a performer under 18, in the same format casting expects, with one change at the top. The contact line names a parent, guardian, or teacher instead of the performer, and the page carries no phone, email, address, or date of birth of the performer's own.
Everything below that line is the ordinary acting resume: credits grouped by medium, strongest first, then training, then special skills, stapled to the back of an 8 × 10 headshot. If you have not read how to make an acting resume yet, that post has the columns, the fonts, and the scissors. This one covers what changes when the person on the page is still in school.
What goes on the page, and what stays off?
On: the performer's name, a grown-up's contact details, an age range the performer can play, height, hair and eye color, voice type if they sing, credits, training, and skills. Off: the performer's own phone and email, any home address, the exact date of birth, and, for a page going to a professional casting office, the name of the school they attend.
| On the page | Off the page |
|---|---|
| Name, large, matching the headshot | Home address, anyone's |
| Contact: a parent, guardian, or teacher, with their phone and email | The performer's own phone number or email |
| Age range played, such as 14–17 | Date of birth, or an exact age, on the paper |
| Height, hair, eyes, vocal range | Weight, grade level, and school name when the page is going to a professional office |
| Credits, training, special skills | A summary paragraph, an objective, or a list of hobbies dressed up as skills |
The date-of-birth question deserves its own paragraph, because a parent who searches this topic will find at least one industry coach saying a resume for anyone under 18 should carry a birth date. Please don't. SAG-AFTRA's own handbook for young performers lists what belongs on the page, and a date of birth is not on the list; home address, phone, and school name are named as things to leave off. The casting sites that handle youth submissions ask the parent for the birth date once, inside the account, and show a casting director the performer's age, not the date. If a production needs to prove an exact age for work-hour rules, that is the job of the work permit and the paperwork at booking, not the sheet stapled to a photo that ends up in a pile on a folding table.
So the paper carries an age range played. Keep it honest: a year on either side of the real age is the convention, so a fifteen-year-old writes 14–17 at most, not 12–19. Someone who can pass for twelve cannot also pass for nineteen, and a director who has been doing this for a while will notice the arithmetic.
Maya's header block. Her mother's phone number, her own age range, and nothing a stranger could use to find her.
Who is the contact on a youth actor resume?
A parent or legal guardian, with their own phone number and email, on the line right under the name. If the performer has an agent, the agency goes on the next line and the parent stays. If a teacher is building the page for a school production or a class, the teacher or the school's main office can be the contact instead, which is often the better choice when the same sheet is going out for an entire cast.
Write it plainly: Contact: Rosa Delgado (parent) · (828) 555-0147 · rosa.delgado@example.com. The word in parentheses matters. A director calling that number wants to know who is going to pick up, and "parent" or "teacher" tells them before the phone rings. It also tells them, without a lecture, that this performer has an adult in the loop, which is the thing a good youth theatre director is quietly checking for anyway.
For the performer reading this: yes, this means the callback comes to your mom's phone. I know. It is temporary, and it is also the way every working young actor's callbacks arrive, including the ones on television.
How do you write credits that are school plays and camp shows?
The same way an adult writes a regional credit: show, role, company, director, in four columns, strongest first. A school production is a real production. Cedar Valley High School is the company, Dana Whitcomb is the director, and Viola is the role. Nothing on that line needs an apology or an asterisk.
Show, role, company, director. School shows count.
Strongest first, not newest.
The things that trip up a young performer's page are not the leads; it is everything else, because most of a first resume is ensemble tracks, camp shows, and the fall play where you played three small parts. Here is what to write in the role column for the credits that don't fit neatly.
| You were | Write in the role column |
|---|---|
| In the ensemble | Ensemble. It is a credit. Directors were in the ensemble once too. |
| Ensemble with a named bit or a solo line | Ft. Ensemble / Spirit (featured ensemble, plus the bit's name if it has one) |
| Three small roles in one play | The largest of the three, or Ensemble / Sailor, Priest if they were equal |
| An understudy who did not go on | u/s Mei; if you went on, Mei (u/s, performed) |
| In a camp show | The role, with the camp as the company: Hermia · Curtain Up! Theatre Camp · dir. Jules Amari |
| In a middle-school show, and now in high school | Keep it while it is one of your strongest; let it fall off the bottom as better credits arrive |
| In a class scene, a recital, or a talent show | Under TRAINING, not THEATRE. A scene study class is training; a talent show is a Tuesday |
One habit to build now, while the page is short: keep the director's name on every line, and keep it correct. That column is the reference list. When a community theater director sees a name she knows in the fourth column, the callback conversation gets a lot shorter.
The Tempest, sixth on the page and still on the page. A featured-ensemble credit written correctly reads as experience, not as an apology.
Does a young performer put a union line on?
Usually not, and the page should say nothing about it. Most performers under 18 have no union card, and writing Non-union under a fifteen-year-old's name is a claim about a career that hasn't started. Leave the line off entirely. Nobody at a school, camp, or community theater audition is looking for it.
The exception is a performer who actually holds a card. Young actors can and do join SAG-AFTRA, usually after a couple of on-camera jobs, and Equity has a membership path for minors too, with a way to put the membership on hold for school shows. If that describes you, the union line goes on one line directly under the name, written the way the adult files show it: SAG-AFTRA, AEA, or SAG-AFTRA Eligible, and nothing else. If you have an older resume with EMC on it, that program ended in May 2026, so take it off.
The short version: the union line is either true and present, or absent. It is never a placeholder.
What if you're building forty of these for a cast?
Use the same page, one copy per student, with the teacher or the school office as the contact and the school as the company on every credit. Do not add a grade column, a birthday column, or a student ID to make your life easier; the page's whole design is that it can be handed to a stranger without giving away where a fourteen-year-old lives or goes to school.
For a drama class, the resume makes a good early assignment: every student fills the template from their own history, and most of them discover they have more credits than they thought once the ensemble tracks and camp shows are allowed to count. For a senior who is auditioning for college theatre programs, the same page is what the auditors expect. They have said in print that they know you are in high school, that they do not want embellishment, and that they would rather see a short honest page with a couple of activities outside the theater than a padded one. Extracurriculars can go in the special skills paragraph or on one line under training; they do not need their own section.
One printing rule for the whole cast: print from the PDF at 100%, never Fit to Page, or forty headers move a quarter inch and you find out at the audition.
How do you print, trim, and staple it?
Exactly the way an adult does, and the adult post walks through every step with a diagram. The sheet is letter size, the headshot is 8 × 10, and the difference is two straight cuts: half an inch off the right edge and a full inch off the bottom. The template prints a faint dashed line along each cut. Staple the trimmed page to the back of the photo at all four corners, flat side of the staple on the photo.
Two cuts, four staples. The corner you keep is the one your name is nearest. Same page, same scissors.
The one youth-specific note: a grown-up should do the trimming if there is a craft knife involved. A paper trimmer at the school is the better tool anyway, and the drama teacher almost certainly knows where it lives.
The full page, step by step
The margins, the fonts, the four columns, and the scissors are all in how to make an acting resume, which is the page this one sits on top of.
Common questions
Should the performer's actual age go on the resume?
No. An age range played does the job the age would do, without putting a number on paper that will be wrong by next year. Where a professional casting office needs the real age, it already has it from the parent's account or the work permit.
What if there are no credits yet?
Then the page is training and skills, and that is a real page. List every class, camp, choir, dance studio, and private teacher, with the teacher's name. A director reading a thin resume looks at who taught you. Three honest lines beat a padded page.
Can a twelve-year-old use the adult template?
The page is the same; the header is not. Use the youth version, or take the adult page and change the contact line to a parent, remove the union line, and put an age range on the stats line. Those three edits are the whole difference.
Can I write a grade level instead of an age range?
For a school production, a director may ask for it on the audition form, and that is where it belongs. On the resume itself, use the age range. A grade level dates the page and tells a stranger which building the performer is in every weekday.
Is a college audition resume different?
Same page, same rules. Auditors for theatre programs expect a one-page, plain-font resume and know you are in high school. A line or two of activities outside theatre is welcome; a summary paragraph is not.
The kitchen table, the next night. The performer prints two copies, cuts them at the dashed lines, staples the corners, and puts both in a folder with the headshots. Her mother asks if she wants a third, just in case. She says she is fine, and then takes it anyway.
Try this
Open a blank Doc and write the contact line first: a parent, guardian, or teacher, their phone, their email, and the word in parentheses that says which one they are. Then write every show you have ever been in on a scratch page, including the ones where you were a tree.
Circle the three you would most want a director to ask about. Those go at the top. The tree can stay if there is room.
If you would rather start from a page that already has the header, the columns, and the trim lines built in, the Acting Resume Template comes with a youth version, blank and filled in, alongside the adult pages.
The other page you'll be asked for
The program bio is a different document with a different job, and it is the one a school show usually needs first. A quick formula for writing an actor bio covers it.
More paperwork for the production, not just the actor: the full Theaterish template library.
The Acting Resume Template
A Google Doc in the format casting expects, with a youth version built for a performer under 18: a parent or teacher on the contact line, an age range on the stats line, and nothing of the performer's own to hand to strangers. Comes blank and filled in, plus the adult pages.
- 5 files
- Google Docs
- Youth version
- Guardian as contact
$25.00$5.00 on sale · Google Docs · make a copy and keep it