Show dictionary · Production Management
Tech Table
A tech table is the temporary control position built in the middle of the audience for technical rehearsals: designers, the director, and stage management sit at production tables laid across seats, with consoles remoted, comms, and script lights, so the show can be built from where the audience will see it.
In practice
Tech tables exist because the booth is the wrong place to design from: lighting and sound decisions need audience perspective, and the conversation between director, designers, and the calling stage manager needs everyone within whispering distance. The tables strike before first audience, and the operators retreat to their real positions.
Corporate production uses the term for the FOH-adjacent production row where the show caller, producers, and client sit during rehearsals and often the show itself. Same idea, different theology about whether it ever leaves.
How you’ll hear it
"Notes from the tech table: hold cue 58 until she clears the stairs, and warm the balcony rail two points."
Related resources
Part of the eventools.io Show Dictionary, a free glossary of live event production terminology.