Theater Extras

If you like theater and aren’t related to a Rockefeller, I Highly Suggest you join TheatreMania’s Gold Club. I’ve been a member for nearly a year and have seen a lot of great Broadway and Off-​Broadway shows. Sylvia starring Matthew Broderick, The King & I with the brilliant Kelli O’Hara, Stomp, Standard Time, Colin Quinn, my list goes on and on. I’ve saved At Least a few hundred dollars through my membership as my girlfriend and I see on average 2 shows a week. The membership is $ 100 per year and then tickets are just $ 5. How can you beat that?
The only problem is that you must check their site several times a day, especially in the late morning and early afternoon, as when they update their site with new offerings they are almost immediately all gobbled-​up by other members. You just need to be lucky and be online checking their site when they post something new, Especially a Broadway show. My girlfriend also has my username and password so that we can both check several times throughout the day and increase our chances.
I’m a member of several other seat-​filler ticket sites, including their main competitors Play-​by-​Play and Audience Extras. I recently canceled my AE membership as they just don’t have the variety of offerings that TheatreMania has. Play-​by-​Play is also a very good site to belong to which I recommend.
In short, if you like the theatre you should join these guys as you’ll end up saving loads of money. They also have great customer service, and an actual phone number that you can call and speak to a living human being at, who speaks English and lives in New York City, and not in New Delhi.

Here’s the quick and dirty — I have been a New Yorker for 25 years, and love to take in all that the city has to offer. That being said, city livin’ ain’t cheap! ;) This is what initially drew me to Theater Extras. You pay a reasonable annual fee, and then $ 4.50 per ticket for the shows and events you choose. In the past 14 months, I have seen 7 Broadway shows, 1 amazing dance performance at Lincoln Center, and 2 professional basketball games. Whoever is complaining about poor show selection, simply can not be a current member. I suggest that if you join, you refresh the site often, because it is not uncommon for new offerings to pop up 4 – 6 times per day or more. Of course the Broadway shows will sell out more quickly, so you must act fast when you see them. Though it was not the experience of an earlier reviewer, my experience is that I have seen many many famous actors in the shows I’ve attended. If you see only ONE show all year, it pays for itself in short order. When you live in NYC, there are a lot of difficult decisions to make on a daily basis about how to spend your hard-​earned cash. This isn’t one of them. With ticket prices soaring these days, this is an absolute no-​brainer.

I’ve been a member for a year. Without going into specifics as to which shows have been offered (that’s a violation of their terms of service) here’s what’s typical:
40 – 50 shows available
(this is all for NY, I haven’t looked at the LA site)
On average, I’d estimate the following:
2 or 3 one-​person shows (drama and/​or comedy)
1 or 2 stand-​up comedy (rarely full pro shows at top comedy clubs, but occasionally)
a pro sporting event that is NOT priced at $ 4.50
a dozen off-​off-​Broadway plays
a TON of music– lots and lots of cabaret, jazz, classical
Many of the shows are at venues with a 2 drink minimum so figure another $ 15+ for that. Almost all are in Manhattan but there’s stuff on occasion in Brooklyn, NJ or Westchester.
I’ve seen a half-​dozen shows over the past year and most have been worthwhile. I’d say half were things I’d sort of wanted to see and the other half were ‘what the hell, it’s $ 4.’ I have not seen anything horrible.
You are not going to see actors you’ve heard of. Shouldn’t matter– there are tons of very talented actors in NY nobody’s heard of.
On occasion something is listed as sold-​out. For months there was a show that was always listed as sold-​out. It’d be nice if their system just stopped displaying these.
Keep in mind that a ticket purchase is a COMMITMENT– you get charged something like $ 25 if you fail to show up.
Also that the site gets updated frequently and shows sometime do disappear quickly so if you’re particular, plan to check the website a few times.

My wife and I have belonged to Theater Extras for quite a few years. We went to 2 shows last week. Some things you should keep in mind: 1. You should look at their site often. 2. These won’t be the BIG shows and if they are it will be at the end of their run usually or the preview stage 3. I’ll just say the ticket prices are well below what you would pay for a movie. 4. These are often last minute seats so you can’t necessarily get these weeks in advance. Most of the time it’s a few days notice. The shows include a wide range of performances from Jazz to comedy, on and off Broadway, Dance and classical concerts; I guess I’m trying to say everything. Living in New York City there aren’t too many deals. This is a deal. If you love theater you’ll love this. Really I shouldn’t
even tell you about this because it makes more competition for me to get a ticket.

Unfortunately I need to echo the complaints about the owner of this company, Jed. He sent out a threatening email to everyone who got tickets to a particular show because apparently one or more of the people at the show behaved badly. The email was rude, grammatically incorrect and inappropriate. This is the email: «For the live of me, I can’t understand why it is so hard to follow proper common sense etiquette at the theater, but for some people, it seems to be… Please don’t crinkle candy wrappers or wear loud jewelry. Dress Appropriately. Don’t switch seats during a performance. Once we track down the folks responsible, and we will, your memberships will be terminated.»

Very disappointed in this website. I was mislead and given a list of «offered shows» before joining. Once I joined, these were truly not the offered shows. The shows offered are no name off-​Broadway. I contact JED the owner and he was very unprofessional and refused to refund my money. I DO NOT recommend this website. You are better off on TDF or buying regular show tickets.

Generally poor selection of shows for most of the year. Gets some good shows during Broadway preview season in April. Had better shows in 2012 than 2013 which is why we chose to cancel. When we cancelled, my wife found Jed (owner) to be fairly unprofessional. He didn’t cancel out the charge on our card (we cancelled 2 days after he put a charge in for another year) and we had to dispute the charge with the credit card company for weeks.
I recommend Audience Extras or another tickets vendor.