How To Create A Production Calendar For Theatre

A Production Calendar is created as an overview of the productions which should include all relevant dates and deadlines. A single show calendar can also be referred to as a Production Calendar or a Show Calendar. The multi-show calendar will be created by the Production Manager as more of an overview of a season, and the Stage Manager typically creates the individual production calendar. This guide should give you all the tools you need to create either document, and I’ll note where adjustments can be made for either version. Generally both versions include all of the following:

Stage Managers: Some extra information should be included in your own personal calendar. Include confirmed rehearsal and performance scheduling conflicts for the company members, events in the area which might effect everyone’s ability to get to rehearsals or performances, and a place to tally up weekly hours for Equity contracts.

Building a Production Calendar in Word

Everyone has their own preference, but I like using Microsoft Word to create single show Production Calendars since I can easily format tables to fit my needs. This should still be relevant if you have your own software preference, just adjust to fit your needs. I have worked my way into my own template that works well for me, but there are plenty of calendar templates available for most programs that will probably work just fine.

For clarity on this template, basically each month is its own table. Each day is made up of multiple cells, with the horizontal lines invisible. This helps separate the things happening on each day, and gives individual control of highlighting events within each day. To add another month, copy and paste any other month, update the days and grey out days from other months. If you need to add an extra week within a month, you can copy and paste all of the rows of a different week. Although this manual formatting is a bit time consuming, the customization is simple and user friendly.

Organizing events by department and differentiating with color is a great way to make the calendar easy to use. For example, you can make all rehearsals and performances one color, and all production department deadlines another. Then actors can easily follow one color for all relevant dates, and scenic or costumes can follow other production dates easily. As always, you should make sure your background colors aren’t going make text difficult to read.

How to list multiple shows on one production calendar

Listing multiple shows on one calendar is easily accomplished by using short labels and color coding. For this, I tend to give up a little of the customization that Word allows and opt for Excel instead. I create a calendar in Excel similar to the one in word, and give each show a 3 letter abbreviation. Then using conditional formatting, you can automatically format cells with each shows abbreviation. This saves so much time when creating a year long calendar view.

Theatre Production Timeline

So you know how to create the calendar view, but when should the production deadlines fall? I’ve created an example production timeline based off the actual timeline I used for a small professional theatre while production managing. Because every theatre uses a different timeline, this should be adjusted to fit your needs, but this is an example of what your production calendar might look like:

Stage Managers: You will most likely be able to reduce the number of dates you need to include from this list, since production departments should get their deadlines from the Production Manager. Although this calendar is a bit basic it is another example of a production calendar for a smaller show: Example Calendar. If you are interested also see my article for step by step instructions on How to Make a Prompt Book.

Production Managers: Feel free to use this timeline as a guide, but many of these deadlines will need to be customized to your theatre and how things run there. For example, at this theatre we did 3 preview performances before opening night, but some theaters might only do one or two, and opt for more tech time. Your show might open on a different day of the week making some deadlines fall on awkward days. When in doubt though, opt for extra time when shifting deadlines.