Running a Show

Once a production exists, this is your home base. The production's navigation is grouped into Casting (Auditions, Callbacks, Conflicts, Assign Roles), Scheduling (Characters, Groups, Scenes & Songs, Cast, Schedule, Publish Calendar), Production Resources (Printable Documents, Download Stats, Attendance, Playbill, Messages, Budget, Vocal & Choreography Resources), Tech, and Team (Production Team, Volunteers).

The Cast tab of a production in MusiCal, showing roles and assigned performers

Cast

The Cast tab is the cast list — every performer and their role(s), with understudies tagged "(u/s)". From here you can Invite Cast to Platform (each performer gets a link to create their account and subscribe to their calendar) and grab email lists — cast, parent, or all — as a CSV. Casting itself happens on Assign Roles.

Scenes & Songs

The Scenes & Songs tab is the show's structure: every scene and song in running order, with the characters and performers in each. This drives who is called — when you schedule a rehearsal and pick the numbers being worked, MusiCal computes which performers are in them.

Adding several songs or scenes at once. Above the add form there's a two-way toggle: Add one or Paste a list. Choose Paste a list, paste one name per line (blank lines are skipped), set the Act and tick All Songs if the whole list is musical numbers — both apply to every row — and MusiCal shows a running count of how many it will add before you commit. Afterwards you edit individual rows to set the setting, assign characters, or move something to another act. This is the fastest way to get a full song list in; the Scenes & Character Grid is for assigning who's in each number once they exist, not for creating them.

Tag each entry as any mix of Song, Scene, and Dialogue Only. "Dialogue Only" keeps scene-change bits off the Costumes and Set Design tabs and out of the playbill's song list.
Turn on Show # of Rehearsals per Scene/Song to see how many times each number is called on your schedule — a quick way to spot the song you've rehearsed six times and the one you've never called.
Performers see their own read-only version of this tab, with the numbers they're in starred.

Groups let you assign a set of performers (an ensemble grouping) to numbers together, and Characters manages the roles themselves.

The Scenes & Songs tab of a production, showing the running order and who appears in each number

Schedule

The Schedule tab opens on a calendar view; a List view is one click away.

Add fast — click any day on the calendar to add a rehearsal there, with the date and venue prefilled. In List view, "+ Add Rehearsal or Event" opens the full add box.
Duplicate — copy a rehearsal onto other days from the calendar ("Duplicate a Rehearsal", then click the days you want), or use an event's Duplicate button in List view.
Location — new events default to the location of another event that day (or your venue), and clicking the Location box opens the list of places you've used before.
Type — music, blocking, choreography, run-through, tech, dress, performance, work, plus any custom types from Company Settings.
Who's called — the cast call comes from the scenes/songs you pick. Staff and crew are an explicit choice: open "View & select crews" to call whole crews, Crew Heads, or your Company Staff in one click, and use "View All Crew Members" for specific people. You can drop one person from an otherwise-called crew without un-selecting the whole crew.
Notes — rehearsal notes marked visible to cast travel everywhere: the schedule, the printable PDFs, and each person's subscribed calendar. Director-only notes stay in the admin view.

Edits show up the moment you save them, and the List view's filter buttons (remaining rehearsals only, called cast & conflicts, called staff) help during a long season.

The Schedule tab of a production, showing rehearsals with their types and the performers called to each

Publish Calendar

Building the schedule and sharing it are separate steps. Performers see an empty schedule until you publish from the Publish Calendar tab — publishing generates each person's calendars and turns on their live subscription feed.

Subscriptions — each cast, staff, and crew member subscribes once; their phone's calendar then updates itself whenever you change the schedule and re-publish. Calendar apps typically re-check every 15–30 minutes.
PDFs — printable calendar grid and list documents, one set per person, showing only what they're called to. Busy days print in full — no "+2 more" truncation.
Download Stats — see who has subscribed or downloaded, including iPhone/Apple Calendar subscribers. A download counts whether the performer did it on their own account or a parent did it on theirs. Click any cast member to expand their row and see every account that subscribed or downloaded for them — the performer, a parent, or both — what they took, and which calendar apps are polling their feed. Refresh counts stop accumulating once a show's last event has passed.

One limit worth knowing: each performer has one calendar link, shared by the whole household. When a calendar app refreshes that link there is no sign-in involved, so MusiCal cannot tell which family member added it. A row can therefore read Subscribed with nobody named beside it — that means an app is genuinely polling the feed, but no one has clicked Subscribe while signed in. Where someone did click Subscribe in MusiCal, that person is named, and the row is tagged Performer, Parent, or Performer + parent.

Printable Documents

Every generated document for the show lives on Printable Documents — calendar grid and list, Scenes & Songs, the Scenes & Character Grid, actor groups, conflicts, sign-in sheets, plus anything you upload. Each document has a toggle: green "Shown to Cast" means performers can download it from their own Printable Documents page; red "Hidden from Cast" keeps it staff-only. Conflict and sign-in documents start hidden because they list other performers' details.

Attendance

The Attendance tab checks performers in at each rehearsal and builds a grid report across the whole rehearsal period — useful for spotting patterns and documenting attendance. You can print sign-in sheets straight from the Check-In tab: one page per rehearsal day, or just the day you have selected.

The Attendance tab showing a grid of performers across rehearsals, with check-in marks

Closing night

A production stays in MusiCal after closing — schedule, cast list, playbill, everything remains for reference, and performers keep their calendar subscriptions. Archived productions sit behind a "View archived productions" link at the bottom of your dashboard rather than cluttering the top. If you add events after closing (an extension, a put-in, a strike day), calendars pick them up as usual.