Frequently Asked Questions

The database is composed of 5 tables: Companies, People, Productions, Titles and Venues. Each table contains records. When a registered user creates a Title record it is listed in the Title table, a People record goes into the People table, etc. When a user creates a Company record and wants to enter Susan Smith as the Artistic Director in the Current Staff section, they pull the Susan Smith record in from the People table. If Susan Smith isn't in the People table, the user must create the record before adding her to the Company as Artistic Director.
You can see that a Production pulls all 5 tables together. Each Production will have a Company that produced the Production, People that staffed the Production, a Title of the play or musical produced, and a Venue where the Production played.

Every Production listing starts with a Title. If you search for a Title and find it in the database, click the “Create Production” button on the Title detail page and you’ll be led through the steps to list a Production. If your Title is not in the database, you’ll be required to enter it as a new Title. From there you can click the “Create Production” button.

When a registered user creates a Person record, that user "owns" that record. (The same is true for any other record in the database, whoever enters the record has control of it.) Having ownership of a record means that the user has the right to edit that record, as well as the responsibility to keep that record up to date and to respond to other users’ requests for corrections or edits. Ownership can be transferred from the creator to any other registered user. You can request corrections, edits or the transfer of any record by emailing atadbinfo@gmail.com.

In the ATA database:
A Company is a Theatre Company, or, very broadly, any group of people that puts live performers in front of a live audience, telling a story

A Production is the performance of a Title for a live audience

People are people

A Title is the name of a play or musical

A Venue is generally a theater, but, because we know of a Production that performed for 2 audience members at a time in a parked car, you can very broadly think of a Venue as wherever the audience was told to show up.