The run of show: a call sheet for the night

The books are for daylight. The night needs one page: when you arrive, when you are expected, who holds the door, what happens on the clock, and what is in the case. Theatre calls that a run of show. Film calls it a call sheet. Musicians call it a timesheet with a set list. Magicians often call it “I’ll remember.” They do not.

A run of show is not a second act. It is the cue sheet laid onto a real evening, plus the logistics the cues never knew: load-in, call, venue, host, crate. Housecue prints it from the booking you already have, so you do not rebuild the night in a new document at 15:00.

Times a body can obey

Load-in is not showtime. Call is not load-in. End is not “when they stop clapping.” Put all four on the booking — load-in, call, start, end — so the date is a schedule.

• Load-in — when the case may enter, park, and be in the way.
• Call — when you are expected in the room, dressed, ready.
• Show — the contracted start, which is when the clock on the cues begins.
• End — when you are done, not when the party is done.

If the act opens at 20:00 and the ambitious card is eight minutes, the rings begin at 20:08. That arithmetic is the whole trick. Without a start time, a cue sheet is a rehearsal. With one, it is a night.

Who to find

The person at the door is rarely the person who emailed. Write the on-site contact you were given — “Maya Chen, events desk,” “parent at the door,” “stage manager on channel 2.” Put the host phone next to it. The run of show is a poor place to discover you only have an office line that closed at 17:00.

Venue name and address belong here too, even when the host and the venue are the same words. Sat-nav does not read “the club.” It reads a street.

Cues on the clock, crate underneath

Each cue from the attached show prints with a clock time, duration, prop, and the director note. Music lives in that note if that is where you put it. Do not invent a second music plot the night of unless you enjoy missing the sting.

Under the cues, the crate: every prop attached to the set, where it lives at home, how many you own. That list is inventory filtered by tonight. Extra objects in the van that no cue uses are optional weight. Missing objects are how the closer dies.

Print it, or keep it on the phone

Paper still wins when the venue has no signal, when your hands are dusty, when a technician wants to see the next twenty minutes. The run of show in Housecue is print-ready; studio chrome stays off the page. If you would rather not print, open the same view on a phone. It is built for that width.

The overview puts today’s gig — or the next hold or confirm — at the top of the desk, with a door into this page. That is the point of one product instead of a calendar app, a notes app, and a spreadsheet that do not speak. See the features, then start free.

After the bow

Mark the booking completed when the night is over. If something in the crate failed, mark condition on the prop before you sleep. If the host still owes the balance, the invoice is still the invoice — the run of show does not collect. If you want a follow-up, that is a later product; for now, a completed date and an honest crate are how the next call sheet stays true.

A day-of checklist that fits on the same page

Before you leave home: packing list ticked against the case, backups in the quantity the book claims, condition still honest, invoice link or print in a pocket if money is due. At the venue: find the named person, confirm the start, glance at the light. After: complete the date, note anything that broke. None of that needs a second app if the run of show and the booking already hold it.

If you work with a technician, give them times and sound/light notes, not the method column. Two copies of the truth — house and performer — is professionalism. One copy with secrets in it, handed to a stranger, is a story you will tell badly later.

Mistakes that make a call sheet useless

No start time, so the clock is blank. No on-site name, so you ring an office. Cues still in draft with joke titles only you find funny. A crate list that includes the museum. Printing the whole studio chrome including navigation. All of these produce a page nobody uses, which is how people go back to a notes app.

The test is simple. Could you hand this page to a tired future-you in a car park and have them run the night? If not, fix the booking, attach the ready show, and print again. Housecue cannot save a date you have not told the truth about.