Story Works Theatre
It started with the director's own Access macros — and I was not there to replace them
It started with the director's Access database
When I came in, ticketing and management data lived in Access, with macros the artistic director had written himself. That is not "no system" — it is a system that grew out of real needs and genuinely carried the company's daily work. It just could not carry the public-facing side.
I was not there to replace it
The easy move would have been to propose migrating all of it and make the project bigger. But the director knew that tool, the data ran fine, and the risk and learning cost of a migration would have landed on the company, not on me. So the scope was drawn clearly: the website handles the outside world, internal work stays where it already works.
Most of this site's weight is in the telling
Theatre sells the answer to "why walk into the theatre for this one". Whether the layout and copy carry that matters more than any feature. Ticketing hands off to an existing platform; venue rental takes an enquiry and the company follows up by hand.
Outcome
Launched in 2016. The company has since had the site redesigned by someone else, so what is online today is not mine — which, for a theatre company ten years on, is both normal and healthy.
FAQ
Something similar in mind?
Tell us the thing that is currently costing you the most time. We will tell you whether it is worth building before we talk about how.
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