I've found that the utility of sign-in sheets goes something like this:
These numbers are approximate and depend on your specific cast. (More professional actors who are used to your systems will usually be more mature about these things. Less professional actors, actors who are used to different systems, and children in particular will create more problems.)
I: Cast has so few people that you already see everyone
anyway. With this few people, you can probably do attendance in your own head, or at the very least you'll quickly notice who is and isn't present as you go about your normal preshow routine. Sign-in sheets are really only useful for formal record-keeping. (1-4 bodies.)
II: Cast is still small enough that you can more or less do it in your own head, but there's a chance you might overlook or miss someone, so sign-in sheets begin to become useful. (5-10 bodies.)
III: Cast has enough people that you can no longer do it all in your own head, and you absolutely need an external method of keeping track. (10-20 bodies.)
IV: Cast is so large that sign-in sheets are not only useful for your own purposes, but add an (extremely useful) element of rigid routine and predictability to calls. If you're really lucky, cast members will even take it upon themselves to remind one another to sign in, saving you a lot of nagging. (15-40 bodies.)
V: Best of all worlds: sign-in sheets are still easy to use and understand, they add predictability to calls, they provide useful information to you as a stage manager, people take them seriously, and so on. (30-50 bodies.)
And then there's VI. Usually two things happen:
- Cast members stop taking them seriously. They start signing in for each other. They start doodling and drawing jokes which impede the usefulness of the board. They begin to realize that the "consequences" for failing to sign in are so minor that it's not worth the effort on their part to do so. (Bigger cast = more difficult to have these conversations, to reach all the perpetrators, etc.) You acquire one or two bad apples who get haughty and self-important about it. ("Have you signed in?" "Why? You're talking to me, so you know I'm here. Is there anything else?") If things get really bad, the entire callboard can be defaced or vandalized, and then what? There's 80 people in the cast, you really want to interrogate everybody?
- The sign-in sheets themselves become so large and byzantine as to become unwieldy. There are very few ways to arrange 60+ names on a few sheets of paper in any sort of useful sequence which will still make sense to everyone involved and provide useful at-a-glance information to the stage management team. (If you sort alphabetically, then you get almost no useful at-a-glance information if you have staggered calls, or if you want to be able to quickly pick out lead roles so you can fuss your understudies, etc. If you sort by any other criteria [call time, role, etc.], actors will spend
hours gawping at the sheets trying to find their own names, even if it's in the exact same place it's been at all previous calls, and this tends to incline them to stop taking it seriously.)
It's a tricky situation to deal with. I've heard some creative solutions, but they're very much tied to specific companies or venues. (Have people sign in with the stage door guard, attach sign-in sheets to dressing room doors, that sort of thing.) The best solution seems to be praying it doesn't happen to you to begin with.
