Digital Playbill

The playbill is your production's program — the document that lists who is in the show, who made it, and the things audiences want to know on opening night. MusiCal generates a digital playbill automatically from your cast list and lets your audience read it from a phone in the theatre lobby.

The staff-side Playbill tab of a production, where directors edit the show description, sponsors, and acknowledgments

What the playbill includes

By default, every production's playbill has:

Title block — show title, your company name, performance dates and venue.
Cast list — every confirmed role and the performer playing it. Double casts and understudies are labeled.
Staff list — director, music director, choreographer, stage manager, designers, and anyone else with a hat assigned to the production.
Crew list — backstage and tech crew with their assigned positions.
Cast and crew bios — a paragraph from each person about themselves.
Acknowledgments — your company's standard thanks plus production-specific shoutouts.
Sponsor and donor recognition — if your company tracks them.

Everything except the title block can be turned on or off per production.

Bios and headshots

Cast and staff write their own bios from their personal portal. They see a prompt the first time they appear on a playbill ("Add your bio for West Side Story"), and they can update it any time. Bios are stored on the performer profile, so a cast member who has done three shows with you only writes a bio once and updates it as needed.

Headshots work the same way — the performer uploads one to their profile, and it travels with them across productions. You can override the headshot for a specific production if needed (a rare but real case: the show has a strict look the performer's standard headshot does not match).

The public playbill link

Every production has a public playbill URL — app.musicalendars.com/playbill/<your-key-code>.

The audience-facing public playbill, optimized for phones — show title, cast list, and bios that audiences read in the lobby The link is publicly accessible; no account is required. Common ways to put it in front of your audience:

QR code in the program — print a small printed program with just the basics, and a QR code linking to the full digital playbill.
Lobby signage — a single QR code on a sign in the lobby.
Pre-show email — sent to ticket holders the day of the performance.

The playbill is responsive — designed to be read on a phone — and updates the moment you change anything in the production.

Backstage inventory

Sharing the same data as the playbill, the backstage inventory is the staff-only view of who plays what, who is double-cast with whom, who their understudy is, and any costume or quick-change notes. Useful for the stage manager's master script and for the wardrobe team's run sheet. Open it from the production's Playbill → Backstage tab.

Customizing per production

For each production, you can override:

The show description at the top of the playbill (typically the show's logline or director's note).
The act and scene listing if you want to display it differently from how the catalog has it.
Any special acknowledgments specific to this production — donors, the venue, individual gratitude.

If your company has a standard playbill template (sponsor logos, season information, mission statement), set those up once in Admin → Settings → Playbill Defaults and they apply to every production.