The full arc

Documentation has a timing problem before it has a technical one. Begun at the end of a project, it can only work from what happens to remain — and the most valuable layer of any record, intent, is precisely what cannot be reconstructed later at any price. Begun at the beginning, documentation stops being an event and becomes a property of the production: naming conventions, data structures, and rights mapping laid down before rehearsals mean the record accretes as a by-product of orderly work.

The arc’s early half is invisible and decisive: research into the work’s concept and context, a documentation plan stating what must survive and to which standards, infrastructure that will quietly organize everything the production generates. The late half — capture, operational records, packaging, deposit — inherits its quality from the early half. Every handover between strangers translates the work and loses intent; presence across the arc shortens the chain of translations.

The alternative has a name in the discipline: salvage. Engaged after closing night, even excellent professionals can only reconstruct — interviewing dispersing crews, redrawing from photographs, clearing rights with people who have moved on. Salvage done to standard is honorable and sometimes necessary. The arc exists so that it is rarely necessary.