Script Breakdowns vs ActThread

Breakdowns — create scenes, tag elements, and break down every detail of your script. Scene Management — build your scene list manually or import from a PDF or Fountain script. Categories — tag cast, background actors, wardrobe, props, set dressing, vehicles, weapons, animals, and greenery. Custom Categories — create your own categories with custom names, icons, and colors. Attachments — upload photos and files to any item with captions and thumbnails. Comments — add notes to scenes and collaborate with your team. Collaboration — invite and work together in real time. Search — search across scenes, characters, props, locations, and more. Integration — connects with Shot Lists to keep your production in sync. Exporting — export in both PDF and CSV.

ActThread is a focused theatre blocking workspace for directors, stage managers, drama teachers, performers, and small companies. Organize a production into editable acts and scenes, build a clear ground plan, add character tracks, and save each important stage picture as a blocking beat. Duplicate a beat, move performers, shape directional routes around the set, attach the exact script trigger, and follow the scene with timed one-pass auto-step. BUILT FOR THE REHEARSAL ROOM • Edit production details and create, rename, duplicate, reorder, or delete acts and scenes • Start from production-default or scene-specific proscenium, thrust, in-the-round, traverse, black-box, or blank stages • Keep actor-perspective stage directions and audience orientation visible • Name and position entrances; edit walls, furniture, doors, set landmarks, and labels on a lockable ground plan • Track characters separately from optional performer names • Drag, snap, zoom, pan, nudge, undo, and redo with precision • Draw straight, curved, or waypoint movement routes with cues, directional arrows, explicit offstage entrances, and scenery-intersection feedback • Record trigger phrases, page or line references, and rehearsal notes • Step manually or use timed auto-step, which advances one beat at a time and stops at the final beat • Share one editable production through Apple’s share sheet; a friend imports it as a new, independent copy • Export polished PDF blocking packets with complete rehearsal-note appendices when notes are included, plus PNG diagrams • Separately export and restore an editable JSON backup of the full library through a Files or document-provider destination you choose PRIVATE BY DESIGN ActThread works locally with no account, ads, analytics, tracking, or developer cloud. Before replacing a valid primary library, it preserves that library as one on-device recovery copy and uses the copy if the main file becomes unreadable. The copy normally contains the previous valid save, so recently edited or deleted content can remain until a later valid save replaces it. Production copies, full-library JSON backups, PDFs, and PNGs leave the private container only when you request them. Send through Apple’s share sheet with Messages or AirDrop, or save to iCloud Drive in Files and share from there; the destination you select governs its copy. A friend imports a shared production as a new independent copy. Later edits do not sync or merge, and there is no co-editing. Restoring a full-library backup remains a separate confirmed replacement of every production in the current library. The included original sample, The Clockmaker's Lantern, demonstrates a complete scene without using copyrighted script material.