CUE 41 GO

A plan view of a stage: bars running across, lantern symbols hung along them, numbers beside each, a dashed line marking the setting. In the corner, a title block. To the right, in red, CUE 41 GO.

The audience gets the poster. This is what the other people had.

Why the plot rather than the show's artwork?

Because the poster belongs to the production and the plot belongs to the crew.

Show artwork is designed to sell tickets, it's usually the producer's property, and every single person involved already has the tote bag. A lighting plot is the crew's own document — drawn by one of them, marked up by all of them, and meaningless to anybody who wasn't there at seven in the morning on the get-in.

What does the cue line add?

The moment, called out loud.

CUE 41 GO is a spoken instruction, said into a headset by a deputy stage manager, and it's the thing that actually makes theatre happen. Every technical person recognises the syntax immediately, and one specific number turns a generic phrase into that cue in that show — the blackout, the gunshot, the snap to white on the last line.

Which is why the number should be a real one. A round number reads as decoration; an exact one reads as a record.

Can it name the production?

Depends who's making it, and this is worth checking rather than assuming.

A title alone is usually too short to be protected as a work, but shows are licensed, titles are often trademarked as brands, and a licensing house takes a dim view of unauthorised merchandise carrying a title. For a crew's own shirts, made for the people who worked on it, this is a very different situation from selling them at the merch desk.

The safer and frequently better version puts the venue and the dates in the title block instead of the show, which is the crew's own identity rather than borrowed.

Does it work for departments other than lighting?

Each department has a document, and they look nothing like each other.

Sound has a patch list and a signal flow diagram. Stage management has a prompt copy — a script page covered in coloured cue marks, which is one of the most striking documents in the building. Flys have a bar plot. Costume has a run plot with quick-change timings. Video has a projection layout.

The prompt copy in particular carries the whole show in one page and almost nobody outside the industry has seen one.

Is this for a production or for a venue?

Both, and the venue version has more life in it.

A show shirt is over when the show is. A venue's own plot — its house rig, its bar positions, its number of circuits — is the same for years and belongs to everybody who has ever worked there. For a receiving house, that's a genuine piece of shared identity.

For a touring crew, the truck pack layout does the same job and is even more specific.

Does the audience need to understand it?

No, and the design is better for it.

Lantern symbols read as an abstract pattern to anybody who doesn't know them — a repeating row of small hard shapes, which is a strong graphic on its own terms. The red cue line reads as a slogan of some kind. Nobody is confused, and the people who know are having a different conversation.

Does it print well?

Very — plans are line work with hard edges.

Symbols, bars, dashed lines and a title block are all flat and robust. The risk is density: a real plot has two hundred units on it and reduces to fuzz. Around twenty to thirty units, spaced wider than reality, keeps the symbols legible and still reads as a rig.

Black is the correct ground and there's no arguing with it. Two inks — cream for the plot, red for the cue — with the red used once and only once.

How do I get one made?

Describe the plot at JustOG — the rig, the title block, and which cue number to print. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Standby lighting cue forty-one. Lighting cue forty-one, go.