CueCall Theatre Production Software for School/Community Theatres, Launches

CueCall, a production management platform for school drama programs, youth theatres, and community theatres, is available for the fall production season, offering each organization its first two productions free. The platform launched August 1.

The platform consolidates work that productions commonly track across spreadsheets, paper prompt books, shared drives, and group messages, the company says. It handles auditions and casting, rehearsal and performance schedules, cast and crew records, blocking and technical cues, props, costume and set inventory, budgets, and the printed audience program in a single system organized around individual scenes.

After that, a production costs $14.99 for a year of access, or $49 a year for unlimited productions. CueCall does not charge per user.

CueCall was founded by Jana and Alan Leard. Jana was producer and artistic director at the Cascade Theatre in Redding, California, from 2008 to 2018, and later served as the theatre's general manager and executive producer. As its education manager, she booked more than 20,000 student tickets a year. Alan is a technology executive who has built software companies for more than 20 years, including one he co-founded and took through an acquisition, and advises companies on artificial intelligence through his firm, Evolve Advising.

The platform was built in nine months by its two founders using AI-assisted software development, a practice Alan applies with corporate clients, in which a written requirement is turned into tested code that a person reviews before release. CueCall says the approach let a two-person company build and maintain software of a scope that would ordinarily require a funded engineering team, and that the resulting cost structure is what makes the pricing possible.

"AI is making it easier, faster and cheaper to produce high-quality software, which means we can serve markets that haven't been properly supported before," Alan says.

The company says the same approach shortens the time between a user asking for something and getting it. A feature request submitted inside the application reaches a production release in about four hours on average, CueCall says, because the request is passed automatically to an AI process that investigates it and drafts the change, which a founder reviews and tests before it goes out.

CueCall does not handle ticketing, box office, or donor management, and is intended to run alongside whatever system an organization uses to sell tickets. Access to contact information and performer measurements is limited by role, which the company said is a requirement for programs working with minors.

The platform also operates a marketplace through which theatre companies rent costumes, props, and set pieces to one another.