A run of show is the document that decides whether an event feels calm or improvised. Most are written as an agenda — a list of what happens — when what the room needs is a list of who does what, when, and on whose call.
Here is the structure that works, and the three columns that cause most of the trouble.
The columns
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Time | Clock time, not durations. People read clocks. |
| Duration | Minutes, for the person doing the maths. |
| Cue | A short name the show caller can say aloud. |
| Item | What the audience sees or hears. |
| Who | Named person. Not "AV". Not "the team". |
| Audio | Mic states, playback, levels. |
| Video | What is on screen, including blacks. |
| Lighting | State changes only, not every fixture. |
| Notes | Risks, fallbacks, who to ask. |
Nine columns is as wide as a printed page takes. If you need more, you have two documents: a run of show and a technical plot.
The three columns that cause arguments
"Who" must be a person
"AV" is not a who. There are four people in black t-shirts and only one of them is holding the playback. Name them. The test: if that line goes wrong, is it obvious whose radio call it is?
"Cue" must be sayable
Cues get called out loud, over a radio, in a noisy room. Q12 – VT ROLL works. Transition to the sustainability segment video asset v4 final does not. Keep cues to three words, and make them unique — two cues called "Video" will collide.
"Duration" must include the gaps
The most common failure in a run of show is that the content adds up to the slot and the transitions do not exist. Walking to a lectern takes fifteen seconds. A panel of four sitting down takes ninety. A laptop handover takes two minutes and sometimes forever.
Add the gaps as their own lines. If the schedule only works when nothing takes time, it does not work.
The parts people leave out
Pre-show. Doors, walk-in music, holding slide, the moment the room is "live" and the crew stops swearing on headset. Put a line on it.
Rehearsal. A separate run of show for the rehearsal, with its own times. Rehearsals that are scheduled as "14:00–17:00 rehearsal" consume the whole afternoon and finish nothing.
The reset. What happens between the end of the main session and the start of the reception: furniture moves, lighting state, music, and who is allowed in while it happens.
The fallback. For each technical cue that can fail, one line saying what is done instead. Presenter's laptop dies → house deck from the backup machine, cue Q7-BACKUP. Writing it down takes a minute and removes the worst five seconds of the day.
Version control, in one rule
The run of show has one owner and a version number in the header with the date and time. Everyone else sends changes to the owner. The moment two people are editing it, the document has stopped being a shared memory and become a source of error.
Freeze it at a stated time — typically the end of rehearsal — and after that, changes are called verbally and written on the printed copy.
What it is actually for
A good run of show means nobody has to hold the event in their head. That is the whole benefit: on the day, the show caller reads, the crew listens, and the people on stage are the only ones improvising.
Related reading: the technical questions to ask a venue first — most run-of-show problems start as a venue question nobody asked.
