To add a new show, also called a production, click the Season tab and then the “Add New Show” button. It doesn’t matter what season is on display when you click the button; you will specify what season the new show belongs to as you create it.

Fill in the information about the new show; you can hover over the question-mark icons for information about what each field represents. Click the “Create Show” button when done, or “Back to List of Shows” to cancel and start over.

Once a show has been created, it will appear in the list of shows when you click the Season tab. (Keep in mind, however, that if it’s currently 2023 and you are adding shows for the 2024 season, in order to see them in the list you will need to select 2024 from the “Listing shows for season:” dropdown menu.)

Click on the picture of a link next to the name of an existing show to get a popup window showing a link that takes a patron directly to a purchase page pre-populated for that show. You can copy and paste this link onto your theater’s website or into an announcement email.

You can click on an existing show’s name to modify any of the information you added, except for the season. (To move a show from one season to another, you will need to delete the show and create it again in the new season.)

Repeat this process to add additional shows as needed.

Adding Show Dates (Performances) to Each Show

From the Season tab, click on the name of a show to see its details. Below the general information about the show you will see a list of performance dates. To add new performance dates, click the “Add Performances” button. You can add multiple show dates in one step if all of the show dates share common attributes such as the curtain time.

Suppose the show will have a performance every Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and every Sunday at 2 pm, each weekend in October. You can add all of the Friday and Saturday performances in one step by clicking the check boxes next to Friday and Saturday, setting the time to 8 pm, and using the date picker to select October 1-31. (To use the date picker, click on the Date Range field, click the start and end dates of the desired date range, and then click OK in the date picking window.) You can then click the “Save & Add More Dates for This Show” button. Next, check off Sunday, set the start time to 2 pm, and again specify a date range of October 1-31. This time click “Save & Back to List of Shows”.

To add just one performance at a time, click the check box corresponding to the day of the week of the performance, enter the curtain time, and then use the date picker to select the single date of the performance to be added. To add multiple performances at one time, click the check boxes for the days of the week and use the date picker to select a range of dates as in the previous example.

If the performances follow a common pattern but there are just a few anomalies, you might still choose to create the performances in one step. Then you can go back and individually edit the anomalies. In the example above with shows every weekend in October, suppose you want to give the first Friday performance a description of “Opening night”. You can still create all of the Friday and Saturday performances in one step and then edit the first Friday performance to fill in its description.

You may add dates to a show individually or multiple at one time. Continue adding performances until all the performances for this show have been added. It doesn’t matter in what order you add performances, as they’ll always be listed in date order. You can even come back at a point far in the future and add more performances, as in the case of a show getting extended.

General Admission and Reserved Seating

Audience1st supports both general admission and reserved seating. For a complete description of how reserved seating works and how to set up seat maps, see the Reserved Seating and Seat Maps article.

At the time each show date is set up, you choose whether it will have general admission or reserved seating. You can choose to use reserved seating at some performances and general admission at others if you wish. However, you cannot use both seating schemes in the same performance.

When you set up a performance as general admission, you enter a number representing the maximum house capacity, that is, the actual number of patrons that can be seated. When you set up a performance as reserved seating, the house capacity is determined by the number of seats in the seat map.

In either case, you can set the maximum advance sales to a lower number in order to hold back some seats if you wish. Patrons will see the performance is sold out when the maximum advance sales figure has been reached, even if the house capacity is higher. (Theater staff can still sell tickets and make reservations until the actual house capacity is reached.) This can be useful with general admission performances to save some seats for VIPs or last minute accommodations. For reserved seating performances, setting up house seats is more useful than setting maximum advance sales lower than house capacity. See this article for a discussion of house seats.

Once the first ticket to a performance has been sold (or the first subscriber reservation has been made), you cannot change that performance from general admission to reserved seating or vice versa. For reserved seating performances, it will still be possible to change which seat map is used, as long as all patrons with current seat reservations can be accommodated. (For example, some existing reserved seats may not exist in the new seat map.) If you try to make such a change and some patrons cannot be accommodated, you’ll be told which patrons need to have their reservations cancelled and rebooked, with links to each patron’s “My Tickets” page to help you do that.

In general, if you think you might have to change seat maps after tickets have been sold, make the initial seat map the most restrictive, so that any other seat map you might change to still has all the seats of the original seat map. (It is less complicated to add seats than to take them away.)