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History

Years before this project was called ShowRunner, its components were designed, developed and refined over a decade of theatrical and live productions. Each show presented unique challenges and opportunities for innovation, leading to the development of new features and capabilities that eventually culminated in the creation of ShowRunner as a unified platform for theatrical and live production management.

ShowRunner combines those tools into a single, unified platform.

Shows

Here's a brief history of notable productions that contributed to the development of ShowRunner, and the components that led to the project:

2013-2016 The Rocky Horror Show

  • Initial code experiments
  • OSC integration with 3rd party tools

2014 Language Archive

  • QLab integration
  • Multi-camera archival video

2014 African Dream

  • Sound reactive FX

2015 No Exit

  • Real-time video fx engine with VLC player
  • Full QLab integration

2017 Cesar and Rubin

  • First fully tech integrated show
  • Sound
  • Live fader control with fade cues
  • Controlled mutes for all channels
  • Lights
  • Cue integration with Eos
  • Video
  • Custom video rendering engine in python
  • Automatic supertitle creation in QLab
  • Interactive shell interface with full show controls

2018 The Wedding Singer

  • Realtime LED pixel fx engine with Ira
  • Arduino + FastLED
  • DMX integration with custom circuitry
  • Multiple show modes:
    • RGB
    • Custom FX patterns with DMX color input
    • Sound reactive modes
  • Remote firmware updating

2020 Holophonor

  • Plugin architecture for tools and show control
  • MIDI controller integration
  • Notes, control changes, etc. to trigger cues and control parameters
  • Patch management for different environments
  • Novation Launchpad integration
  • Multiple modes for different types of cues and interactions
  • Button light feedback to indicate current states
  • Multiple simultaneous controllers and state management

2021 Play To The Plants

  • Realtime full duplex remote mixing, monitoring, and control
  • Live remote controlled broadcasts to video streaming services

2022 The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

  • TheCueList app integration
  • PDF integration
  • Custom cue layers
  • Export to CSV
  • Create, configure, and label cues in QLab
  • Group cues to trigger in batches
  • ETC Eos Augment3d virtual modeling for PAC
  • Git revision control of show files and design documents
  • Offline design mode
  • Shows can be fully designed away from the performance space
  • Remote design collaboration and pre-production work

2023 Urinetown

  • Virtual Dry Tech
  • Virtual QLab, sound board, and lighting consoles
  • Full virtual set with virtual actors
  • Video chats with creative team
  • Realtime previs with multiple integrations
  • Exploring creative ideas with full tech away from the performance space

2024 1776!

  • Fountain script format integration
  • OCR
    • Corrections
    • Reformatting
  • Automatic generation of mute cues
    • From analyzing script
    • Custom "lookahead" values for non-speaking breaks

2025 Seussical

  • TheatreMix integration
  • Auto creation and labeling of DCA assignments
  • Auto creation of QLab reference cue via OSC/MIDI
  • Multiple assignment strategies and parameters for generation -

2026 12 Angry Men

  • [[ShowRunner]] v0.1.0
  • Unified application infrastructure
  • Plugin architecture
    • commands
    • API routes
    • events
    • custom databases
  • Web server
    • / Show control page
    • /docs - documentation and testing routes
    • /api - show control and plugin functions
    • /admin - Setup and configuration
  • sr command line interface
    • programatic access for show management, show control, etc. -