How do you keep track?

I keep a trusty word document that includes times, dates and costs of things I'm seeing and shows to book. I don't want to sound dramatic but I'd be a MESSSS without it...

112 plays/shows this year to date, but having checked, I find my average cost so far is £17.27, which is about £3 higher than last year, so I need to see a few more productions really cheaply in the next 6 weeks!

Obviously I'd expect costs to rise but that's a big percentage increase and I'm not sure why it has happened. At least my cinema tix average well under half the above amount.

I don't keep track of costs (frankly I don't care) - went to about 80 things last year, will be around 90 this. I revisit operas and ballets a lot but hardly ever plays or musicals unless it's a different production.

I started recording everything I saw in 2000 -

Access Database that has a list of all,

shows seen
date seen
theatre seen at
seat sat in
did I get an upgrade and if so where to and what was original seat
cost of ticket
type of show
plot synopsis
quick review
list of all actors in the show and the characters they played
list of production staff in the show

And then I have reports set up on that,

number of times I've been to each theatre,
list of shows I've seen at each theatre,
total cost this year
average cost this year
average rating this year
number of times I've seen an actor - as well as a query where I can pick specific actors and have names, roles, dates etc on screen.
number of times I've seen a show that involved a certain production person - so I can search on ALW or Terry King or Susan Blenkinsop if required.

I've currently got around 2800 different actors and 4500 different production personnel on file - of that there are around 200 actors I've seen more than once (never seen anyone in more than 5 different productions, and I never see a show more than once) and about 3000 different production personnel (I've seen 18 different productions where Terry King was fight director).

Keep it simple - I've got three linked tables and that's it.

1. Show information
2. Actor information
3. Production staff information.

I've then got a form for data entry of show information and then that is duplicated so I have one subform for actor input and one subform for staff input.

A couple of reports sorted by location and counts and hey presto. I'm not an expert and managed with the occasional cock up but it didn't take that long.

I'm terrible at keeping track, I do have most of my programmes but ended up throwing away most of my tickets. In the end I went for a lazy way of keeping track and just posting the programme to my pinterest board.
I'm very impressed as to how organised you lot are.

duncan I think you win the theatre geek prize... and I mean that as the most sincere of compliments

Oh my god! That's literally so organised. I never quite got the hang of Gantt charts in A-level Maths so heck do I know what any of that means.

I'm a simple person. I keep a tally chart in the back of my planner and tickets are slid into a photo album of stagey memories which are usually photos of theatres/views or stage door photos against the relevant show. Shows without photos are kept in a pocket in the same album in date order (which is how my photos are organised)

I have a whole other system for Wicked. Including a list on my phone with dates, touring venues and understudies.

I can't bring myself to record price though because as a poor student that is a lor of money that should have been spent on food and books.

I have a spreadsheet in which I keep track of the show, venue, date, seat block (stalls/dress etc), seat number and whether it was a new show and/or venue. I don't actively keep track of the cost of each theatre visit but I do keep all of my tickets so if I wanted to find out I could, the tickets are all stored in photo pockets in a ring binder in chronological order, except for my Kinky Boots and Wicked tickets which have been separated into their own sections. I also have separate spreadsheets for Kinky and Wicked which list what actor I've seen in which role (all roles for Kinky, just the 7 leads for Wicked) as I've seen both shows multiple times
I also have a simple list on my phone that just lists the show and what number it is - both theatre visit in general, theatre visit of the year and number of times I've seen the show.
As for future bookings I have many a list on my phone and then I also write them down in my diary and the main 'family' diary that sits in our kitchen. One list on my phone also states whether the ticket has been delivered or whether it's box office collection or I'm waiting for it to arrive in the post.

^^^^