A question I get asked a lot is can I use Cast98 for my upcoming summer series or season because I need to cast multiple shows from a single round of auditions.
I am happy to report that if you are running a repertory company, summer theater festival, or any other contract-based casting for a season, Cast98 can definitely handle your situation and improve your workflows. In fact, since Cast98's mission is to simplify complicated production logistics, this complex use case really fits the bill perfectly.
So without further ado, let's talk about some strategies that will maximize the system's capabilities and reduce your production overhead. Here's a summary of the overall workflow, and each step is discussed at length as you continue reading, in case you're new to Cast98.
TL;DR Summary of Next Steps
Upgrade your studio to XL or XL Pro
Invite each show's leadership team to Cast98
Post each show in your upcoming season
Post an extra show for your General Auditions
Setup your General Auditions
Add leaders as show managers on their assigned production
Hold auditions
Create the cast list and send role offers
Instruct cast members to join their assigned productions
Upgrade your studio to XL or XL Pro
Estimated time: 3 minutes
You are going to want to collaborate with each show's leadership team, so you'll need to unlock the benefits of an XL studio membership. Once you've added your organization/company to Cast98 as a studio, you can manage the membership under Admin Tools > Membership.
Cast98 XL lets you collaborate with up to 5 show managers per production. If you have a unique leadership team for each show or are expecting more than 200 auditionees, you'll probably want XL Pro which increases the collaboration threshold to 20 show managers per production.
You may even consider XL Max if you want to bolster your brand with a custom login portal and gain greater access to your talent pool of followers. XL Max also includes premium support with hands-on onboarding to get your shows setup and team trained. XL Max is only available by request.
All XL memberships enable you to customize the audition form, export auditionee data, and capture advanced costuming details for your cast members, which are other popular perks among repertory companies.
Invite each show's leadership team to Cast98
Estimated time: 5 minutes
Look in your studio's Admin Tools > Email Templates to find a boilerplate message you can copy and paste to send instructions to your leadership team for how to join Cast98.
This is included as the 2nd step because you can keep working while your team creates their user accounts, but you can complete this step later too.
Post a show for each of the productions you need to cast
Estimated time: 2 minutes per show
To post a show within your studio's Admin Tools > Post A Show, you only need to enter the show's title and opening night, and choose a starting point. The most appropriate starting point for your productions will be Capture Conflicts since these shows will skip the traditional audition form.
If your leadership team is already on Cast98, you can add them to your production as show managers right now, but most likely they need more time to create their user account (not because it's hard but because they probably haven't seen your invitation yet), so you can complete this in a later step.
Be careful that you don't publish the audition form for these shows (yet), as doing so will confuse your auditionees when they try to sign up.
Post an extra show that will serve as your General Auditions
Estimated time: 2 minutes
If you have 4 shows in your season or festival, add a 5th show to act as your Auditions HQ. Call it something like General Auditions or 2026-27 Company Auditions or something else that is intuitive and easily distinguishable from your other show titles. For the sake of understanding, the rest of this guide will called it General Auditions.
Set its opening night to be the first day of auditions* and make sure the starting place is set to Manage Auditions.
(*) If your auditions will span more than 14 days, you will want to update the opening night every 7-10 days to keep the show visible on the Backstage dashboard as an "upcoming" show.
You will use this show for auditions and casting only.
Setup your General Auditions
Estimated time: 25 minutes
Audition Details
Configure auditions within the extra show as you would for a regular production.
Write out the audition information/expectations
Add time slots
Customize the audition form
Write any custom questions as needed
Character List
Treat the character list in your General Auditions as a list of productions available for casting (so a list of the other shows you just posted, most likely). If your cast members will be given roles in every show, then you can probably skip the character list altogether.
You may feel an urge to create a comprehensive list of characters from all your productions, but this will end up as a lot of wasted effort since you will not use the rehearsal schedule on this production.
Audition Form
Lastly, publish the audition form to PUBLIC (when you're ready) so that potential auditionees can start signing up.
This is a good opportunity to double-check that the audition form on each other show is still set to ADMIN ONLY. You can tell this easily on the Backstage dashboard - a show with a published audition form will have a big green button to "AUDITION". The only audition button you should see backstage is the one for your General Auditions.
Staggered casting or all at once? Some groups cast all shows at once while others might cast the season's company but stagger role assignments as each show approaches. Either method will work with Cast98. We will discuss this more in a later step.
Add your leadership team members as show managers on their assigned productions
Estimated time: 8 minutes
Hopefully by now the rest of your leadership team has followed the instructions to create their user accounts. Within each of your shows, you can assign them under Director Tools > Show Managers. For the General Auditions, you can add them all or only a subset as you see fit.
To help you decide who should be a show manager for the General Auditions, here's a summary of the relevant abilities they'll have.
Audition Dashboard
Publish/Unpublish the audition form
Checkin/checkout auditionees
See all submitted audition forms
Edit audition reports
Add audition report comments
Cast List Creator
Assign auditionees to roles
Send role offers
Publish/Unpublish the cast list
I also recommend that leadership team members also submit the audition form for your General Auditions, so that everyone understands the process auditionees will follow and can proofread all the info for clarity and accuracy.
Hold auditions like normal
Manage your auditions using the audition dashboard under Director Tools > Auditionees. Enjoy!
Use the cast list for assignments, role offers, and next steps
When you are ready to assign auditionees to roles, you can use the Director Tools > Cast List. This is not a collaborative tool (yet) so unfortunately your show managers cannot work in the cast list creator at the same time without conflicting with each other.
If you followed this guide and leveraged your character list as a list of available shows, you can tag each auditionee for the shows they've been assigned. Activate the custom role for each cast member to detail specific role assignments as needed.
Staggered casting? If you will wait to cast each show until after you have your company under contract, then you really don't need to assign any parts or custom role except maybe as a "singer" or "dancer" or "musician" (e.g. cruise line casting).
Send role offers if that is part of your traditional workflow, then publish the cast list on General Auditions. Go to Director Tools > Welcome Messages to compose a gentle rejection message for anyone who does not appear on the cast list, and separately an informative welcome message for those who did.
Lastly, send a public announcement about the cast list to everyone who auditioned (again, see Director Tools > Email Templates) so that anyone who did not get cast does not feel ghosted.
Instruct cast members to join their assigned shows
Your cast members need to join their assigned productions so the director can add them to the (final) cast list, either now or down the road. Crossing the finish line here is simple if you follow these steps:
Reset the audition form for General Auditions to ADMIN ONLY
Publish the audition form to PUBLIC on each of your real shows (any show manager on each production can do this)
If you upgrade your studio to XL Pro, you'll be able to set these audition forms to INVITE ONLY which will prevent them from being publicly visible
Revisit the Audition Dashboard for General Auditions
Use the Sort & Filter tool to show everyone who is "In Cast" or "In Crew" (or both)
Use the Message tool to compose and send instructions for how to join their assigned show(s)
If you need help with the instructions, check the Director Tools > Email Templates in General Auditions for a boilerplate template you can copy and paste and rewrite as needed.
This might seem like a painful extra step, but it is a very easy process for your cast members to join subsequent shows after the first one.
Coming soon: I'm working on a special repertory-only tool within XL Pro that will enable you to skip right to adding cast members from General Auditions.
Questions?
If any of the above suggestions are unclear, or if you have lingering questions/concerns have about managing multiple shows with a single audition, contact support so we can get you answers and update this article!