10:01 PM. The curtain is in, the house lights are up, and the stage manager's desk in the wings has a clock, a legal pad, and a laptop that has been open to the same document since the show ended. Oklahoma!, performance number two.... The dream ballet landed.... A pitchfork prop did not survive it....
Twenty people worked that show and nine of them will read about it tomorrow morning, because they weren't there: the director, the designers, the producer, the house manager, the costumer who went home at seven. What they read is the performance report, and it gets written now, before anyone leaves the building. Here's what goes in it and, just as usefully, what stays out.
What's in here
- What a performance report is and who it's for
- The two running-time totals, and why you need both
- Every section of the report, in the order you fill it in
- What a finished one looks like, from a real night
- Common questions, and something to try at your next performance
What is in a performance report?
A performance report is the stage manager's written record of one performance: when each act started and ended, how many people were in the house, what went wrong, what was fixed on the spot, and what still needs someone's attention before the next curtain. It goes to everyone who wasn't in the building that night.
In the UK and in a lot of professional houses it's called a show report, and the two names mean the same document. It's the sibling of the rehearsal report, which does the same job for the weeks before opening. The difference is the audience. A rehearsal report has one director reading it closely. A performance report has a distribution list, and most of the people on it will skim.
Why write one every night if the show is fine?
Because "fine" is a feeling, and the report is the record. A show that runs 135 minutes on opening and 141 by the second weekend has grown six minutes, and nobody in the building noticed, because it grew twenty seconds a night. The report is the only place that drift shows up. Same with the light cue that fades a little slow: every night it's slightly slow, and every night it's not worth mentioning, until someone reads five reports in a row.
The second reason is that the people on the list have a job to do tomorrow, and the report is how they find out what it is. "Pitchfork bent" is a note. "Pitchfork bent, props run crew, before house tomorrow" is a task with a name on it. Most of what makes a report useful is the difference between those two sentences.
And the third reason is the one nobody plans for: the remount. When the same theatre does the show again in three years, the performance reports are the only honest account of what the run was actually like.
The other half of the pair
The rehearsal report covers the weeks before opening; how to write a rehearsal report that gets read walks through that one section by section.
What exactly goes in a performance report?
Eight things, in roughly the order you'll fill them in: the header, the timings, the house count, what's still open from earlier, the notes by department, any accidents, the notes for front of house, and tomorrow's calls. The template I use puts them top to bottom in that order, so the report gets written in the order the night happened.
The header
Show, date, performance number, venue, director, stage manager. The performance number matters more than it looks: "performance #2" is how the director knows which night's notes she's reading when the reports pile up in her inbox, and it's what makes the timings comparable from one to the next.
The timings, and the two totals
Every act gets a start time, an end time, and a length in minutes. The intermission gets the same. Then two totals, and this is the part most templates get wrong or skip:
| Section | Up | Down | Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Act I | 7:31 PM | 8:56 PM | 85 |
| Intermission | 8:56 PM | 9:11 PM | 15 |
| Act II | 9:11 PM | 10:01 PM | 50 |
| Running time | — | — | 135 |
| Total elapsed | — | — | 150 |
Running time is the acts added together: the show itself. Total elapsed is curtain up to curtain down, intermission included: what the audience experienced. You want both because they move for different reasons. If running time goes up, the show is getting longer, and that's a note for the director. If total elapsed goes up and running time doesn't, the intermission is getting longer, and that's a note for the house manager, who can tell you whether it was the concessions line or the restroom line. One number can't tell you which. Two can.
135 is the show. 150 is the night. When only one of them moves, you know who to tell.
The house count
How many people were in the seats, against how many seats there are: 234 of 250. Write it as a fraction, because 234 means one thing in a 250-seat house and another in a 900-seat one. The house manager keeps this number too, on the front of house show report, and the two should match. When they don't, that's a conversation worth having before the next performance, not a mystery to solve at closing.
What's still open
A short list at the top of the notes: anything reported on an earlier night that hasn't been fixed yet, with the night it was first reported. The house lights that were slow to fade on performance #1 stay on the list until they aren't slow. This section exists so a note can't quietly disappear because it was three reports ago. It also keeps the report honest; a repeated note reads very differently from a new one.
Notes by department or team
The body of the report. One row per note, grouped by department: general, company attendance, sets, costumes, sound, lights, props, and so on. Each row carries the note, who it's for, and when it's needed by.
Every note gets a problem, a name, and a time it's needed by.
Send it before you leave the building.
"SQ31 was missed tonight, please check the timing" is a note the sound operator can act on at tomorrow's tech call. "Sound was off" is a mood. The difference is the same one the rehearsal report runs on: write down what happened, not what you think about it. If a scene felt slow, say which scene and what the clock said. If the audience was with you, the general note can say so; "the house responded well to the dream ballet" is a fact about the night, and the director will want it. There's no separate box for audience response on my report, and that's deliberate. It lives in the general note, where it reads as one more thing that happened rather than a review.
Company attendance gets its own row even when everyone was there and on time. A row that says "all company present" is doing work. A blank row reads as nobody looked.
Accidents and injuries
Anyone hurt, in any way, goes here: what happened, who was involved, who was told, and what was done. The night I'm describing, an actor cut a finger backstage during a quick change. It was cleaned and dressed from the backstage kit, no further attention needed, and the quick-change area gets relit before the next call so it doesn't happen again.
That's three lines on the performance report. It's also the first line of a second document, the accident report, which carries the same incident in the detail your theatre's insurance, board, or district will eventually ask for: time, location, witnesses, what first aid was given and by whom. The performance report says it happened. The accident report is the record. Fill in the second one the same night, while the ASM who dressed the finger is still in the building.
One cut finger, two documents. The report says it happened; the form is what gets asked for later.
Notes for front of house
Anything the audience side of the building needs to know: restrooms, the lobby, the temperature, the intermission length. This is the section where the rule about writing down the problem and not the solution is easiest to break, and I'll use my own report as the example. My front of house note that night read: "Two comments that the house was warm; set the air lower." The first half is the note. The second half is me doing the house manager's job from the wings, where I can't see the thermostat, the weather forecast, or the elderly matinee crowd coming in tomorrow. "Two comments that the house was warm" is enough. She'll know what to do with it.
Tomorrow's calls
Tech call, company call, curtain, and anything that has to happen at the top of the call: run transition #3 first, reset the quick-change area with the new work light. This is the section most people on the list actually read first, so it goes last, where it's easy to find.
What does a finished one look like?
Here's the notes section from that same night, the way it went out. Eight rows, and every one of them names a person and a time.
| Department | Note | For | By |
|---|---|---|---|
| General | Strong night. The house responded well to the dream ballet. | — | — |
| Attendance | All company present and on time. | — | — |
| Sets | Set transition #3 is running slow. Please check the wheels. | TD | Tech call |
| Costumes | Ado Annie's dress torn in Act II. | Costumer | Before house |
| Sound | SQ31 was missed tonight. Please check the timing. | Alex | Tech call |
| Lights | LX12 is not fading as quickly into intermission. | Sarah | Tech call |
| Props | Pitchfork bent during the dance sequence. | Props crew | Before house |
| Front of house | Complaint of untidy restrooms at intermission. Two comments that the house was warm. | House manager | Before house |
Nobody on that list has to ask what they're supposed to do. The TD knows to look at wheels before the company arrives. The costumer knows there's a dress waiting. Alex knows which cue. And the director, who wasn't there, knows the ballet landed, which is the note she'll read twice.
Notice what isn't on it. No opinion about whether the sound operator was paying attention. No guess about why the pitchfork bent. No "great job everyone," which is a thing to say in the green room, not a thing to file. The report is two minutes to read, and it's two minutes because everything on it is something that happened.
Common questions
What's the difference between a performance report and a rehearsal report?
Same shape, different weeks. The rehearsal report records what was called and what was actually rehearsed, and it goes mostly to the director and designers while the show is still being built. The performance report records a finished show in front of an audience, and it goes to everyone maintaining it. The timing section is the biggest change: rehearsal reports track hours worked; performance reports track running time.
What's the difference between a performance report and a front of house show report?
Same night, other side of the curtain. The stage manager writes the performance report from the wings; the house manager writes the front of house report from the lobby, with the house count, curtain holds, concessions, and anything that happened to the audience. The house count appears on both on purpose, so the two can be checked against each other.
Who gets the performance report?
Everyone responsible for the show who wasn't in the room: the director, the designers, the technical director, the producer, the house manager, and any department head with a note. In a school theater that's often the teacher-director and one or two parents running crews. The list is set before opening and doesn't change night to night.
10:19 PM. The report goes out. The laptop closes. The pitchfork is on the props table with a sticky note on it, and the quick-change corner is dark, and someone has already written "work light" on the whiteboard by the stage door.
Try this
Add the second total. Whatever your report looks like now, put a line under the acts for running time and a second one for total elapsed, and keep both for the whole run.
By the second weekend you'll know whether the show is growing or the intermission is, and you'll know which person to tell.
Everything above, blank and filled in, is in the Show Reports Kit, with the rehearsal report, the front of house report, and the accident form alongside it.
More paperwork for the production: the full Theaterish template library.
The Show Reports Kit
Google Docs for the three reports a stage manager and a house manager write on a show night, each with a filled-in example, plus an accident form for when something goes wrong.
- Google Docs
- Black & white version included
- Bonus accident report
$17.00 · Google Docs · make a copy and keep it