For the production team

Running a show on Calltime.

You hold the schedule, the script, and the room. This is the reference for all three — what each room does, and the handful of rules worth knowing before you lean on them.

01 · WHO'S IN IT

Cast the company

A production is built from assignments. Adding someone to a show gives them a department, a role title, and an access tier. The department is how people get grouped on calls and callboards; the role title is what they’re called in the program and how the script finds their lines.

Departments

Cast, band, crew, production, and the rest. Grouping is what lets you call a whole department at once instead of ticking fifteen boxes.

Role title

For actors this should match the character name in the script. That match is what powers “my lines,” the beat sheet, and mention tagging. If an actor doubles, separate the roles with a slash.

Access tier

Separate from their company role. This is what decides whether someone can run the production — publish calls, edit the script, see the Beat Sheet. Being an owner of the company does not automatically make you a leader on a given show.

A person owns their account, not the company. You can remove someone from a show, but you can never delete the person or their history. That’s deliberate.

02 · THE SCHEDULE

Build the callboard

Every rehearsal, tech, and performance is an event. Making an event doesn’t call anyone — events start as drafts, visible only to the production team. Nobody in the company sees a draft, and no email goes out. That’s your workspace.

When a week is ready, you publish it. Publishing is the moment the calls become real: the company sees them and gets asked to confirm.

Who's called

Call the whole company, or pick people. You can set a different call time per person — the 6:00 people and the 7:30 people live on the same event, each seeing their own time.

Mandatory calls

A mandatory call auto-confirms everyone and doesn’t accept conflicts. Use it for the calls that genuinely can’t move.

Repeating

Set a weekly repeat and Calltime drafts an event on each chosen weekday through your end date. They’re drafts, so you can shape the whole month and publish it a week at a time.

Calltime is careful about what it sends. Something more than 24 hours out rides the weekly digest instead of firing an email the moment you publish. Changes always push. This is what keeps your company from learning to ignore Calltime.

03 · BEFORE YOU SCHEDULE

Read the room's conflicts

Your company submits the dates they’re unavailable, and those sit on the availability view alongside your mandatory days and the events you’ve already got. Check it before you build a week, not after.

Once calls are out, each person answers confirm, tentative, or conflict— and a conflict comes with a reason. The Conflicts tab collects every one of them in a single list so you’re not reading twelve cards to find the problem.

04 · THE SCRIPT

The Spine

The Spine holds the script and everything interpretive layered on it. Import it once and it becomes the thing your whole company reads from.

Versions

A script can carry several versions — an original edition and an acting edition, say. Locking a version freezes it read-only; it never hides it. Making a new version carries the beats forward, so a version bump doesn’t cost you your breakdown.

Beats

Tap a start line, tap an end line, label it. Beats are pinned to actual lines, not line numbers, so they survive a different edition’s margins. Adjacent beats alternate color so you can see where one ends.

Beat Sheet

Your breakdown as a live grid: who’s in each beat, who’s present but silent, when it’s blocked, what’s flagged for a cut. Filter by character to see every beat an actor touches. Leaders only.

Line notes & mentions

Notes attach to a line and can be routed to the actor. Mentions tag the lines where a character is named in the text, which is how an actor finds every place they’re spoken about.

05 · TIE THEM TOGETHER

Put beats on rehearsals

When you schedule a rehearsal, pick the beats it covers. They show on the callboard card and on the Run room’s day view as chips — and tapping one opens that exact spot in the script.

It answers the two questions a rehearsal always raises: what are we working, and who do I need in the room. The Beat Sheet already knows who’s in each beat, so the call almost writes itself.

06 · DAY OF

The Run room

Run is the stage manager’s room on the day. It opens on today: who’s called, who’s confirmed, who flagged a conflict, and the beats you’re working.

Check-in kiosk

Run it on a device at the door and people check themselves in. Late arrivals surface without you chasing anyone.

Run sheet

Your day-of checklist — preset, pretty, resettable between calls.

Reports

Rehearsal and performance reports: what was called, who was absent or late, what got worked, notes, and the next call.

Weapons log

If the show carries a weapon, custody is signed for each time it changes hands, with a chamber check. Leadership only, and worth the friction.

07 · THE REST OF THE BUILDING

Booth, Pit, Marquee, Playbill

Booth

The design and production team’s room — costume bible and measurements, cue lists, the tech rider, design questions.

Pit

For musicals: numbers, voice parts, practice tracks, choreography.

Marquee

Headshots and promo. One headshot per person, carried across every show they do with you.

Playbill

Build the program from what’s already in Calltime — cast, bios, sponsors — and print it.

08 · THE FULL KIT

Tools you may not know are there

Calltime has more in it than the walkthrough above. This is the rest of the kit, by room — the things most companies never find because nothing points at them.

Building the schedule

Drafts, then publish a week
New calls are invisible to the company until you publish. Shape a whole month, then release it a week at a time.
Staggered call times
Type an individual time next to any person. Blank means the event start — so a 5:30 crew call lives inside a 6:00 rehearsal.
Two calendars
Rehearsal is seen by the whole company. Production is seen only by the people you tag.
Repeat weekly
Tick the weekdays and an end date, and Calltime drafts the event on each one through that date.
Known-conflict warnings
If someone you've called already declared a conflict covering that date, an amber box names them before you publish.
Company availability calendar · Callboard → Availability
The whole run as month grids. Tap a day to see who's out and why, and post a call right there.
Add or drop one person in place
Expand the roster on a card and each person is a colored pill — green confirmed, amber tentative, red conflict — with their call time.
Default call buffer · Settings
Call everyone 15 minutes before start as a standing rule, instead of setting it on every event.

Day of

Check-in kiosk
A door board on your phone or tablet. People tap their name and enter a PIN. Names only appear an hour before their call, so a tech day doesn't dump 60 tiles at once.
Not checked in
The list you actually scan at five past — only the missing, with a red count, sorted by call time.
Leadership and designers are left off
Directing, stage management, design, and music are never on the kiosk board and never get a late-check-in nudge.
Tap to phone someone · Run → Today
A call link beside each name dials them from your device.
Run sheet
Preshow, Act 1, Intermission, Act 2, Post-Show, with who's responsible. One button resets every checkbox for tomorrow.
Weapons custody log
Signed chain of custody for any prop flagged as a weapon — locked storage or checked out, to whom, when, with a chamber check.
Calling script
The script with cues placed on it: standby chips before the line, a solid LX 12 GO at the line. It warns you if cues were placed against an older version.

The script

Beat Sheet · Spine → Beat Sheet
Every beat by scene with who's present, who's onstage but silent, ensemble, the date it was blocked, and what's flagged as a possible cut. Filter to one character.
Mark a beat by tapping two lines
Tap the first line, tap the last, name it. Calltime pre-fills who's in it.
Cue picker
Writing a blocking note, tap the exact word the move fires on. A superscript number then sits at that word in the script.
Cut a line
Struck lines drop out of run-lines, the calling script, the reports and the playbill, while staying visible to you.
Follow the run and log notes in one tap · Spine → Line Notes
A marker on the current line; space bar advances it. Log called line, dropped, paraphrased, jumped, cue, or a blocking issue without looking down.
Mark the exact words dropped
Choosing Dropped opens the line word by word. Tap what went missing; the actor sees those words struck through.
Preview as an actor
See any cast member's line-notes page exactly as they see it before you send anything.
Reports · Spine → Reports
Blocking coverage per scene, character tracks, a character-by-scene line matrix, estimated run time, and a scene call sheet listing exactly who to call.
New version, blocking carried forward
Duplicates the script into a fresh working copy and locks the old one, with the option to bring all the blocking across.
Alias map · Spine → Mentions
Record what a character actually gets called in the dialogue — JJ for Jeremy, Moor for Othello — so mention-tagging finds them.

Design and tech

Blocking map · Run → Blocking Map
An overhead stage with the nine areas and the house. Blocking is stored as named moments you can step through — or hit Play and watch it animate.
Actor mode on the map
Pick a character and everyone else fades back so you can follow one track.
Costume bible · Booth
Parade order for approval, plus a measurement sheet whose last column shows the inventory pieces already pulled for that actor.
Where to start
Each department's Progress view ends with a written how-to walking a less experienced designer through the order of work.
Seating and check-in · Seating
Table assignments with a line at the door showing which tables still have open seats and how many.

Music

Numbers in running order · Pit
Every song, dance, underscore and reprise in show order, with arrows to reorder.
Voice parts
A number carries its own parts — soprano, alto, tenor, whatever the show needs — and people are cast to a specific one.
Files to a part, not just the number
Label an upload Full mix or Tenor-dominant and attach it to one voice part. Cast members see their own part's files first.
Tie a number to the script
Give it an act and scene and it links straight into the Spine at that point.
Auto-cast the reading voices · Lines
Matches every character to a fitting voice, then Save for the whole cast so everyone hears the same show on any device.

Money and the public face

Planned vs. committed · Ledger
During planning almost everything is a draft, so a committed-only number reads far too small. Both are on screen.
Addendums
A signed contract's fee can't be quietly edited. You propose a new figure with a reason, the artist signs, you countersign.
W-9 threshold
Above the reporting threshold, an artist can't submit an invoice until a current-year W-9 is on file. Calltime asks, so you don't have to.
Press found for you · Marquee → Press
Calltime scans the news daily for the production and posts what it finds, marked Auto.
Headshots follow the person
One headshot per member, carried into the next production instead of re-collected every show.
Playbill from what's already here
Build the printed program from the cast, bios and sponsors already in Calltime.

Stuck? Ask.

If something looks off, or you just have a question, don’t wrestle with it. Your stage manager is the fastest answer for anything about your production: the schedule, your calls, your contract.

Something wrong with Calltime itself? Email company@checkcalltime.art.

Yes indeed,

The Calltime team