The Stage Manager's Tech Week Checklist (Printable)

Tech week is won or lost the week before tech. By the time you are sitting at the prompt desk with a headset on and forty cues to place before dinner break, it is too late to discover that the run sheets do not exist, half the cast never saw the schedule, and nobody rehearsed the quick change.

This is the checklist I wish someone had handed me before my first tech. It runs from the week before tech through closing night. Print it, tape it inside your prompt book, and adapt it to your show; a straight play in a black box does not need the mic tracking, and a musical needs twice of everything.

The week before tech

Paperwork week. Everything below exists before you load in, because during tech you will have no time to create anything, only to revise.

• Distribute the tech schedule to cast, crew, and every designer, with call times per day. Chase confirmations from every single person. "It was in the group chat" is how you end up teching without your Act Two lead.
• Build run sheets: preset list, scene shift plot, props tracking (what starts where, what moves, who moves it), costume quick-change plot, mic tracking if applicable.
• Prep the calling script: clean copy, cue placements penciled from paper tech or your best predictions, page tabs for tricky sequences.
• Hold or confirm paper tech with the director, LD, and sound designer: walk the whole show cue by cue on paper before anyone burns stage time on it.
• Confirm crew assignments and that every crew member knows their call and their track.
• Update all contact info and the emergency sheet; post one at the desk and one backstage.
• Send a "what tech is" note to any cast who have never done one. A volunteer cast that expects to act will resent standing in the dark; a cast that expects to stand in the dark brings a book and a sweater.
• Stock the SM kit: spike tape, glow tape, batteries, pencils, first aid, snacks, spare headset ears.

Load-in and dry tech

The theatre becomes the set. You become the traffic controller.

• Walk the space first: sightlines, crossover route, escape lights, trip hazards, backstage running lights.
• Spike everything that moves: furniture positions per scene, in a color code you document in the book.
• Check headsets on every channel from every position. Do this before you need them, not during cue one.
• Dry tech without actors where possible: shift the scenery, run the fly cues, walk the transitions with the crew alone.
• Set the prompt desk: script light, running order taped up, God mic if you have one, sightline to the stage or a monitor.
• Post signage: dressing room assignments, sign-in sheet, backstage quiet zones.

Cue to cue

The long day. Your job splits in two: call the room, and build the show.

• Start with introductions and the plan. Tell the room the order of the day, when breaks fall, and how holds work. A room that knows the rules moves faster.
• Run the sign-in sheet and start every session on time, even when you are the only one ready.
• Call the holds: "Hold please" stops everything; only you say "moving on." Protect this convention from minute one.
• Jump between cues ruthlessly. You are teching transitions, not running scenes. The director who wants to "just run this bit" gets a gentle reminder of the clock.
• Mark every cue placement in the calling script as it is set, in pencil, with the standard "warning, standby, go" spacing worked out. If your script lives digitally, drop cue markers as you go instead of retyping tonight's pencil scrawl later.
• Track the changes: every "make that a five count" and "move that shift a page earlier" goes in the book and in tonight's report.
• Enforce breaks. Equity or not, ten out of ninety keeps a volunteer cast human. Nobody techs well at hour four without one.
• Send a rehearsal report every night of tech, same as the rehearsal room. Tech reports are the busiest of the run; the shop reads them at 8am. The format is the same one covered in our rehearsal report guide.

Dress rehearsals

The show starts pretending to be a show, and you start running it like one.

• Institute the half hour: calls at half hour, fifteen, five, and places, every dress, exactly as you will run them in performance. The routine is the point.
• Rehearse the quick changes separately before the run if they have not been walked. A failed quick change in dress becomes a cut costume in performance.
• Run presets from the run sheets, not from memory, and check them with a walk-through before the house would open.
• Time everything: acts, intermission, the total. The producer will ask; the house manager needs it.
• Call the show fully: every warning, every standby, every go, even the ones that feel obvious. Dress is your rehearsal too.
• Hold notes sessions to schedule and get the cast released on time. Goodwill spent in dress week is not recoverable.
• Coordinate photo call if it lands here: shot list from the director in advance, cast informed, changes minimized.

Opening night

• Sweep and mop the deck, check every preset, test every practical.
• Confirm crew and cast sign-in as the half approaches; know your understudy or cancellation plan before you need it.
• Give the calls calmly. The half hour on opening night is for steadiness, not speeches.
• Hold your pre-show ritual, whatever it is. The cast takes its temperature from the prompt desk.
• Call the show. Write the performance report. Go to the party (after the deck is checked and the theatre is locked).

The run and closing

• Performance report every night: timings, calls missed, tech issues, injuries, house notes.
• Maintain the show: watch for drift in blocking and pacing; schedule a brush-up rehearsal or line-through after any dark week.
• Track consumables and props repairs so Saturday's show has everything Friday's did.
• Plan strike before closing: assignments, tools, rental returns, and who is definitely not allowed near the fly rail.
• Archive the book: final calling script, run sheets, reports, contact sheet. Future remounts, and future you, will be grateful.

The meta-item: the schedule is the show

Look back through the list and notice how many items are really one item: everyone knows where to be, when, and what happens there. Tech collapses when the schedule lives in a group chat that half the cast muted in week two. Publish every call with times, location, and who is called, get an actual confirmation from every person, and re-publish the moment anything changes. Do that, and even a rough cue to cue stays a schedule problem instead of a people problem.

That workflow, publishing calls and collecting one-tap confirmations instead of chasing thumbs-up emojis, is exactly what Proscene's scheduling was built for.

Set up your tech week calls, with confirmations you can actually see: [Creating calls](/help/scheduling/creating-calls), part of [Proscene's calls feature](/features#calls). Free for your first production, a 60-day trial, no card required.