Playbill credits — cast, crew, creative team and musicians

Credits live on the production, under Events -> Program -> Productions -> Credits. Three tabs: Program (what the printer gets), Credits (the editor) and Company (the people).

**Enter people once, credit them every season.** A person in the Company tab is a person, not a casting. The performer who plays Emily this fall and stage-manages the musical in the spring is ONE record with two credits. That is also what makes "have we worked with her before" answerable -- the roster shows how many credits and how many productions each person holds.

Add someone with the name exactly as it prints ("Ada B. Kerrigan"). "Sorts as" is for your own A-Z index and is never used for billing. A company email is for you and is never published.

**Headshots are reviewed, and the published copy carries no location data.** Choose a photo on the person's record and it goes through the same review every image on the platform does. It does not appear in the program until it clears, and the copy your audience downloads has the camera's GPS and EXIF stripped out -- a self-submitted headshot very often carries the coordinates of somebody's home.

**Sections.** Cast, Musicians, Creative Team, Crew, Production Staff, Front of House and Acknowledgments. Understudies, standbys and swings are NOT sections -- they are cast members, and where they print is worked out from their coverage.

**Coverage is five things, not a checkbox:**
- Principal -- the contracted performer of a role. Prints in the cast list.
- Alternate -- shares the role on a scheduled basis. Prints in the cast list.
- Understudy -- covers named roles AND appears in the show in another track. Prints in the understudy block.
- Standby -- covers named roles and does not otherwise appear. Prints on its own line.
- Swing -- covers several ensemble tracks and has no role of their own. Prints as a list of names.

The Program tab checks these against each other: an understudy with no track of their own is probably a standby, a standby who also holds a role is probably an understudy, and a cover pointed at a role nobody plays is usually a typo in the role name.

**Billing order is yours.** Nothing is sorted alphabetically, ever. Use the up and down arrows beside each credit to set the order -- order of appearance, or contractual billing. "Introduced by" is the contract word that heads a block: type "featuring", "with" or "and" on the first credit of the block and it heads that credit and the ones straight after it. Moving a credit out of a block ends the block there, which is what reordering a billing block means. "Above the title" lifts star billing ahead of every section.

**Publishing the program is a separate act from putting tickets on sale.** Until you choose Publish program, only your staff can see the cast list; performances can be on sale for weeks before you announce who is in it. Once published, the program appears on each performance's public page, with the bios and cleared headshots.