Show Survival Kit

[mhowson]

Hey,

I work as Stage Manager for high school productions, which at our high school means renting out the local theatre in the world, getting some of the biggest ego-ed dancers you will ever meet and a show produced to professional standards without - well, without the money, frankly - which makes forms my friend. I've enclosed a PDF of my 'Show Survival Kit', which compromises:

• Cast Contact Form
• Cast Illness and Allergy Form
• Cast Register
• Props Register with accompanying key to Check Points
• Cast Schedule Conflicts Form
• Four different 'notepad' forms I use
• Sound and light cue planning sheets

Accompanied with my annotated scripts, these enabled me to single handedly SM a show with a cast of nearing 50, plus primary school kids, with only 2 stage crew.

Hope this helps!

[zayit shachor]

I like having as much paperwork as possible for each show I do in one Excel worksheet.  Here's my template; a lot of these forms have been borrowed and modified from documents posted to this very board, but it's been a while so unfortunately I don't remember who created each form.

The worksheet includes:

Contact sheet
Calendar (for "at-a-glance" schedules)
Daily schedule
Scene breakdown
Props tracking
Sign-in sheet
Run sheet
Shift plot
Props preset
Cut list
Line notes
Phone card

Some of the docs can do some cool things: in the calendar, if you change one date it automatically updates the following dates; for phone cards, if you enter info in the top left card all the others will fill in.

Enjoy, and feel free to PM me with any questions.

[Jessie_K]

This is an interesting idea.  I had never thought of combining documents this way.  Thanks to both of you for sharing.

[themikejones]

I like having as much paperwork as possible for each show I do in one Excel worksheet. 

What a great idea!   Thanks so much for sharing!

[MatthewShiner]

I think it is interesting to combine the documents in form . . . my only concern is if you are more then a one person team, how to update and access the form could be problematic.

How do you handle multiple users of the same document?

[Maribeth]

i did something similar for a show last year- one of the downsides is a file that large can be problematic to load on a slower computer. (i had a file with a backstage runlist, preshow/postshow checklist for each crew member, quick change plot, etc each on different tabs).

for a show with a larger SM team, you could use the 'track changes' feature, and leave the file on a shared computer drive. or pass a thumbdrive back and forth.

[MatthewShiner]

Our teams (4+) tend to work on documents on the same time, so I don't think this would work on a large team, but I think it's great for solo SM projects.

[acemetallic]

At my university we have a Theater Staff server that everyone can access and update. That's where we keep all the forms, plus examples of reports and such for new SMs.

[RenMan]

The Google Apps for business shows promise.

Allows -- internal website only those chosen to view it can access
joint real time editing -- both docs and spreadsheet
calendar all can see

considering using it in the theatre and journalism classes I teach.

(ed version free, business version has fee for the most advanced features)

[missliz]

I think it is interesting to combine the documents in form . . . my only concern is if you are more then a one person team, how to update and access the form could be problematic.

How do you handle multiple users of the same document?

I'd suggest creating a communal GoogleDocs account. That's been a lifesaver for my theater. Everyone on the production team has the username and password and can upload basic Doc/Excel files, access the calendar, contact info, etc. and edit it. Works very well.

[fetchthis]

Thanks for sharing this - I hadn't thought to combine my docs like this.   Appreciate the idea!!