Software for a volunteer community theatre

I am a theatre dad. That is the whole origin story.

I have carried flats across a wet parking lot. I have counted a cash box at a folding table. I have stood next to a volunteer at 6:30 who was rebuilding the will-call list by hand, because the list she printed at lunch was already wrong. Then I would go to my day job and build software, and it never stopped bothering me that the hardest part of my kids’ show was the part that happened offstage, in a spreadsheet.

So we started building the thing we wanted for our own theatre. Not a presenting-house Ticketmaster stack with the numbers filed down. Not a class-registration product that learned to sell a recital. Software for the volunteer house, written by people who are still in the building on a Saturday.

The shape your house already uses

One organization. A season. Productions on the board. Performances with a date and a door. Nothing to translate, because that is already how you talk about it in the group text.

Reserved, general admission, and the night of

Most houses sell both. A reserved Saturday, a general-admission Sunday, a season ticket that has to land in the right seat, and a walk-up with exact change.

The door is part of that same sale. Will-call should not live on someone’s personal computer. The house committee should not become IT the week of opening. Nobody signed up for the show hoping to do a data export.

The production is the product

Ticketing vendors sell the door, which is the easy half. The hard half is the four months in front of it: auditions, costume measurements, a rehearsal calendar that moves on Tuesday, and the sign-up sheet nobody can find.

That is the difference, and it is why we started at the beginning of the work instead of the end. Because the cast list already lives here, a household and its tickets know each other. That is proof we understand the building. It is not the headline.

Free until a seat sells

Tools are free. Places earns a dollar when a reserved seat sells. General admission is free for small events for a limited time. Comps and free tickets are $0, because a comp is not a sale.

If your spring production never sells a seat, we never make a dime. That is the deal I would want if it were my kids on that stage, so that is the deal we wrote down.

If your ticket page has gone dark the week of the show, if a parent is still the box office, or if you are waiting on a payout long after strike, start with the ticket page, the volunteer at the table, and who holds the money.