Show dictionary · Production Management
Load-Out
Also: out · the out
Load-out is the post-show process of striking the production and loading it into the trucks: floor packages first, rigging last, trucks packed in the order the next day needs them. It overlaps with "strike"; where distinguished, strike is the dismantling and load-out is the loading.
In practice
Load-outs run at night, against fatigue, with the same equipment that took ten hours to install coming out in three. The speed comes from reversal discipline: the truck pack is planned before the show, every case has a home, and department heads push their gear toward the dock in choreographed waves.
The economics are blunt: overnight crew hours are expensive and curfews are real, so a clean load-out is a designed artifact. Touring crews defend their pack obsessively because tomorrow’s load-in inherits every shortcut taken tonight.
How you’ll hear it
"Curfew is midnight; if the last truck door closes by 1 we made the drive."
Related resources
Part of the eventools.io Show Dictionary, a free glossary of live event production terminology.