30 ms·

Show HN: Dress Circle – IMDB for UK Theatre

77 points by thehodge 4y ago

thehodge 4y ago
Hey HN!, My wife and I have created Dress Circle. The idea behind Dress Circle came from a Google Doc I've had for years with every show (Play, Musical, Opera) I've seen in ranked order, eventually we translated it into a webpage (https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/+thehodge https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/+thehodge) so others could view it and then friends wanted their own list. To enable features such as alerts and showcases, we started to build a database Theatres in the UK then we added the shows that were in them and THEN we added the actors (and creative teams). Then we started to add historical productions and.. well here we are, we've accidentally built IMDB for UK Theatre (I thought with the timezone this might be a good time to post)
- jsty 4y ago
  Hi Dom, Enjoyed your pitch at Thinking Digital last week, good to see it popping up on HN too! How do you get all the show data backing this - is it scraped from the individual theatres? (since I'm guessing there's no nice API ...)
  - thehodge 4y ago
    There is no scraping (at the moment) it's all manually input to avoid issues, every theatre website is different (and a lot of them are terrible) but we are getting on a lot of press distribution lists so the next stage it to see if we can automate the parsing of those emails. Thanks for the comments re: pitch, it was a fun day and looking forward to next year
- Zhyl 4y ago
  Design looks really good and is very performant (peak hacker news comment?). I also enjoyed this snippet from the 'About': >After starting the first version and getting a proof of concept working, this soon caught the attention of his wife who was a much better developer and she rewrote elements of the source to make them... well work.
  - thehodge 4y ago
    Haha I can't lie, she is a MUCH better developer than me and typically I build a proof of concept and she gets annoyed with my code and takes over.
- Sholmesy 4y ago
  Looks really neat. I use to work in this space, and it's just a dreadful collection of slow outdated systems cobbled together, so your site is a breath of fresh air. I notice that you are redirecting to 3rd parties when people "book now", do you have affiliate/kickback agreements with these places, or are you just doing it out of the goodness of your heart? The company I use to work for maintains an API for integrating with all these systems for booking tickets etc. It is... interesting...in terms of reliability, but it might help you integrate an "on platform" solution. Given that your website is slick, and that the industry is horrendously technologically backwards, you could probably turn this into a decent biz. API: https://docs.ingresso.co.uk/ https://docs.ingresso.co.uk/ Python Wrapper: https://github.com/ingresso-group/pyticketswitch https://github.com/ingresso-group/pyticketswitch Disclaimer: No current affiliation, use to work there, helped build the current JSON API, learned the hard way about how backwards these systems are. Feel free to reach out if you want a point of contact or something
  - thehodge 4y ago
    Less than 5% of the links we have are affiliate links, a few sites in the industry we noticed will only list venues that give a kickback, but we want to list everything and we've got a few other ideas of monetisation later down the link (the small number of affiliate links we have at the moment are working pretty well). A ticketing solution is certainly one of the options we have, especially for the smaller productions which are in makeshift theatres (a fair few in working mens clubs!)
    - Sholmesy 4y ago
      It's such a gross industry, heavily dependant on who you know. Best of luck out there.
  - allears62 4y ago
    I also work in this space, mostly on websites for theatres, including lots on OP's list. Very cool to see this project Such a backwards industry sometimes, although change is slowly coming at least in Box Office/CRM APIs for individual theatres.
- mpettitt 4y ago
  Nice - although the coverage locally is a bit spotty (I'm not talking missing shows, I'm talking missing theatres!).
  - thehodge 4y ago
    Thanks, let me know what we are missing and I’ll try and get them added (as a two person team we know we have a challenge to try and get everything!)
- billfruit 4y ago
  As some one not familiar with theatrical terms, what does the term "Dress Circle" mean? Is it a class of seating?
  - unculture 4y ago
    Yes, in a sense. The Dress Circle is the first balcony (closest to the ground) in a traditional theatre.
    - thehodge 4y ago
      Thanks for answering that! I went for some lunch :)
adrianl 4y ago
Great site for finding the shows outside the norm (haven't we all seen Les Miserables at least twice by now?) Also the best way to find show dates and times without going through 16 pages of adverts offering me seat upgrades before they even tell me the time.
- thehodge 4y ago
  Thanks, that's exactly what we were going for!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Do you have unique IDs internally that can be linked to wikidata? Helps when you hit those inevitable duplicates: https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16956203 https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16956203 https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2567859 https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2567859 https://www.americantheatre.org/2015/07/16/the-wild-coincidence/ https://www.americantheatre.org/2015/07/16/the-wild-coincide...
- thehodge 4y ago
  We do have unique ID's for each production (and have already had to deal with avoiding duplication of shows with the same name) but linking to Wikidata is a good shout! I've not looked into it fully but since we cover a lot of Fringe and Amateur productions they might not be in Wikidata and those will tend to have a higher duplication factor.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    mix n match is a tool for reconciling such lists: https://mix-n-match.toolforge.org/ https://mix-n-match.toolforge.org/ Looks like they already have a few databases with opera singer and writers as well as actors etc.
youngNed 4y ago
hey thehodge, good to see you and a great looking site. I hate to be that guy, but you might want to rethink putting irish theatres on the UK page: https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/cock-opera-house-cork https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/cock-opera-house-cork
- thehodge 4y ago
  That's a good point we should think about the naming of that page.. as we also have Online only theatres - https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/online https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/online and ones in the sea https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/sea https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/sea ;)
  - drcongo 4y ago
    There appears to be a slightly amusing typo in the slug for the Cork Opera House too.
    - thehodge 4y ago
      /me very quickly updates SQL ...I have NO IDEA what you are talking about ;)
amelius 4y ago
What makes IMDB great, imho, are the user comments.
- thehodge 4y ago
  I agree, and thats one the reasons that each show page has reviews based on the ratings of each show i.e. https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/shows/disney-s-the-lion-king https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/shows/disney-s-the-lion-king and each how has a discussion board. obviously there is still a fair bit to do but we thought about that from the beginning.
Dennip 4y ago
A group of my friends and I maintain a (private) google doc of shows/games/books/movies/etc we have watched/read/etc with ratings and shorts reviews for the others. Even without the review element its nice to keep track of what you have watched. I spent a good while looking to see if there is/was any kind of open source self-hosted IMDB style thing I could throw on AWS we could use instead of a goole doc but doesn't seem like there is anything. Anyone come across anything similar? My next step is to roll my own and maybe hook into a few APIs so we can get thumbs etc.
- hunter321 4y ago
  Why don't you use IMDb?
xenophonf 4y ago
Under what license is the contributed data? I got burned twice by CDDB and then IMDB stealing their community's hard work only to monetize it, and I'll only ever participate in these sorts of things if (1) content is put under CC-BY-SA/GFDL and (2) there's a database export option, like Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
- thehodge 4y ago
  That's a very fair point, honestly not the first thing we thought of when building the website (as the initial intention was only for my wife and I to have lists but certainly something I'm going to look into and work on.
Closi 4y ago
I live in the UK and absolutely adore theatre - this is amazing! Can I have a sneaky feature request? I live in the Midlands and it's a real chore to check the major productions that come nearby (I'm willing to travel, but there are like 10 different theatres near me!) It would be great if you could search by productions within 1 hour of an address or something similar, and get a list of all touring productions travelling through. (At the moment I have to click through each nearby town / city on MusicalsOnTour.co.uk, but a combined view by month would be awesome!)
- thehodge 4y ago
  Hey, I’m on my mobile at the moment but I think we can do that, can you send a message to dom@dresscircle.co.Uk and I’ll see if what we can do will work!
vr46 4y ago
This is very good, although it’s not quite the same use case as IMDB given that once a show has finished its run, it’s gone. I’m not talking about overpriced long-running musicals - which deserve entries for cast changes anyway - but most other productions around the UK. The NT digital/live/at home projects helps preserve a few really big shows, but most productions don’t film well and will only exist in our memories years later. Archiving shows in this way is really important, however, but I doubt discussions would continue once shows are gone. It might be worth comparing and rating different casts and leads - “Was Layton Williams the best Jamie? This revival sucks!” - and perhaps coming up with a UK-wide awards system, as the Oliviers are by their nature, London-only, even if the show originated in Edinburgh or Colchester (disclosure: I was once an Olivier panellist) and the rest of the country could get some publicity.
- thehodge 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! You are right that it’s not “exactly” the same use case but it’s certainly an easy way to pitch it! I really want to highlight smaller and regional productions as well as larger west end ones (that’s why our recommendations system is designed not to focus on budget ;) ) Awards are on the development list but I want to really think about ones which could have an impact to the production rather than quickly throwing some up!
davea37 4y ago
Reminds me of https://theatricalia.com https://theatricalia.com - have you come across that site before?
- thehodge 4y ago
  Oh yes, it's a beautiful website.

77 points by thehodge 4y ago

Hey HN!, My wife and I have created Dress Circle. The idea behind Dress Circle came from a Google Doc I've had for years with every show (Play, Musical, Opera) I've seen in ranked order, eventually we translated it into a webpage (https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/+thehodge https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/+thehodge) so others could view it and then friends wanted their own list. To enable features such as alerts and showcases, we started to build a database Theatres in the UK then we added the shows that were in them and THEN we added the actors (and creative teams). Then we started to add historical productions and.. well here we are, we've accidentally built IMDB for UK Theatre (I thought with the timezone this might be a good time to post)

jsty 4y ago
Hi Dom, Enjoyed your pitch at Thinking Digital last week, good to see it popping up on HN too! How do you get all the show data backing this - is it scraped from the individual theatres? (since I'm guessing there's no nice API ...)
- thehodge 4y ago
  There is no scraping (at the moment) it's all manually input to avoid issues, every theatre website is different (and a lot of them are terrible) but we are getting on a lot of press distribution lists so the next stage it to see if we can automate the parsing of those emails. Thanks for the comments re: pitch, it was a fun day and looking forward to next year
Zhyl 4y ago
Design looks really good and is very performant (peak hacker news comment?). I also enjoyed this snippet from the 'About': >After starting the first version and getting a proof of concept working, this soon caught the attention of his wife who was a much better developer and she rewrote elements of the source to make them... well work.
- thehodge 4y ago
  Haha I can't lie, she is a MUCH better developer than me and typically I build a proof of concept and she gets annoyed with my code and takes over.
Sholmesy 4y ago
Looks really neat. I use to work in this space, and it's just a dreadful collection of slow outdated systems cobbled together, so your site is a breath of fresh air. I notice that you are redirecting to 3rd parties when people "book now", do you have affiliate/kickback agreements with these places, or are you just doing it out of the goodness of your heart? The company I use to work for maintains an API for integrating with all these systems for booking tickets etc. It is... interesting...in terms of reliability, but it might help you integrate an "on platform" solution. Given that your website is slick, and that the industry is horrendously technologically backwards, you could probably turn this into a decent biz. API: https://docs.ingresso.co.uk/ https://docs.ingresso.co.uk/ Python Wrapper: https://github.com/ingresso-group/pyticketswitch https://github.com/ingresso-group/pyticketswitch Disclaimer: No current affiliation, use to work there, helped build the current JSON API, learned the hard way about how backwards these systems are. Feel free to reach out if you want a point of contact or something
- thehodge 4y ago
  Less than 5% of the links we have are affiliate links, a few sites in the industry we noticed will only list venues that give a kickback, but we want to list everything and we've got a few other ideas of monetisation later down the link (the small number of affiliate links we have at the moment are working pretty well). A ticketing solution is certainly one of the options we have, especially for the smaller productions which are in makeshift theatres (a fair few in working mens clubs!)
  - Sholmesy 4y ago
    It's such a gross industry, heavily dependant on who you know. Best of luck out there.
- allears62 4y ago
  I also work in this space, mostly on websites for theatres, including lots on OP's list. Very cool to see this project Such a backwards industry sometimes, although change is slowly coming at least in Box Office/CRM APIs for individual theatres.
mpettitt 4y ago
Nice - although the coverage locally is a bit spotty (I'm not talking missing shows, I'm talking missing theatres!).
- thehodge 4y ago
  Thanks, let me know what we are missing and I’ll try and get them added (as a two person team we know we have a challenge to try and get everything!)
billfruit 4y ago
As some one not familiar with theatrical terms, what does the term "Dress Circle" mean? Is it a class of seating?
- unculture 4y ago
  Yes, in a sense. The Dress Circle is the first balcony (closest to the ground) in a traditional theatre.
  - thehodge 4y ago
    Thanks for answering that! I went for some lunch :)

adrianl 4y ago

Great site for finding the shows outside the norm (haven't we all seen Les Miserables at least twice by now?) Also the best way to find show dates and times without going through 16 pages of adverts offering me seat upgrades before they even tell me the time.

thehodge 4y ago
Thanks, that's exactly what we were going for!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Do you have unique IDs internally that can be linked to wikidata? Helps when you hit those inevitable duplicates: https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16956203 https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16956203 https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2567859 https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2567859 https://www.americantheatre.org/2015/07/16/the-wild-coincidence/ https://www.americantheatre.org/2015/07/16/the-wild-coincide...

thehodge 4y ago
We do have unique ID's for each production (and have already had to deal with avoiding duplication of shows with the same name) but linking to Wikidata is a good shout! I've not looked into it fully but since we cover a lot of Fringe and Amateur productions they might not be in Wikidata and those will tend to have a higher duplication factor.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  mix n match is a tool for reconciling such lists: https://mix-n-match.toolforge.org/ https://mix-n-match.toolforge.org/ Looks like they already have a few databases with opera singer and writers as well as actors etc.

youngNed 4y ago

hey thehodge, good to see you and a great looking site. I hate to be that guy, but you might want to rethink putting irish theatres on the UK page: https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/cock-opera-house-cork https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/cock-opera-house-cork

thehodge 4y ago
That's a good point we should think about the naming of that page.. as we also have Online only theatres - https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/online https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/online and ones in the sea https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/sea https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/theatres/sea ;)
- drcongo 4y ago
  There appears to be a slightly amusing typo in the slug for the Cork Opera House too.
  - thehodge 4y ago
    /me very quickly updates SQL ...I have NO IDEA what you are talking about ;)

amelius 4y ago

What makes IMDB great, imho, are the user comments.

thehodge 4y ago
I agree, and thats one the reasons that each show page has reviews based on the ratings of each show i.e. https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/shows/disney-s-the-lion-king https://www.dresscircle.co.uk/shows/disney-s-the-lion-king and each how has a discussion board. obviously there is still a fair bit to do but we thought about that from the beginning.

Dennip 4y ago

A group of my friends and I maintain a (private) google doc of shows/games/books/movies/etc we have watched/read/etc with ratings and shorts reviews for the others. Even without the review element its nice to keep track of what you have watched. I spent a good while looking to see if there is/was any kind of open source self-hosted IMDB style thing I could throw on AWS we could use instead of a goole doc but doesn't seem like there is anything. Anyone come across anything similar? My next step is to roll my own and maybe hook into a few APIs so we can get thumbs etc.

hunter321 4y ago
Why don't you use IMDb?

xenophonf 4y ago

Under what license is the contributed data? I got burned twice by CDDB and then IMDB stealing their community's hard work only to monetize it, and I'll only ever participate in these sorts of things if (1) content is put under CC-BY-SA/GFDL and (2) there's a database export option, like Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

thehodge 4y ago
That's a very fair point, honestly not the first thing we thought of when building the website (as the initial intention was only for my wife and I to have lists but certainly something I'm going to look into and work on.

Closi 4y ago

I live in the UK and absolutely adore theatre - this is amazing! Can I have a sneaky feature request? I live in the Midlands and it's a real chore to check the major productions that come nearby (I'm willing to travel, but there are like 10 different theatres near me!) It would be great if you could search by productions within 1 hour of an address or something similar, and get a list of all touring productions travelling through. (At the moment I have to click through each nearby town / city on MusicalsOnTour.co.uk, but a combined view by month would be awesome!)

thehodge 4y ago
Hey, I’m on my mobile at the moment but I think we can do that, can you send a message to dom@dresscircle.co.Uk and I’ll see if what we can do will work!

vr46 4y ago

This is very good, although it’s not quite the same use case as IMDB given that once a show has finished its run, it’s gone. I’m not talking about overpriced long-running musicals - which deserve entries for cast changes anyway - but most other productions around the UK. The NT digital/live/at home projects helps preserve a few really big shows, but most productions don’t film well and will only exist in our memories years later. Archiving shows in this way is really important, however, but I doubt discussions would continue once shows are gone. It might be worth comparing and rating different casts and leads - “Was Layton Williams the best Jamie? This revival sucks!” - and perhaps coming up with a UK-wide awards system, as the Oliviers are by their nature, London-only, even if the show originated in Edinburgh or Colchester (disclosure: I was once an Olivier panellist) and the rest of the country could get some publicity.

thehodge 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback! You are right that it’s not “exactly” the same use case but it’s certainly an easy way to pitch it! I really want to highlight smaller and regional productions as well as larger west end ones (that’s why our recommendations system is designed not to focus on budget ;) ) Awards are on the development list but I want to really think about ones which could have an impact to the production rather than quickly throwing some up!

davea37 4y ago

Reminds me of https://theatricalia.com https://theatricalia.com - have you come across that site before?

thehodge 4y ago
Oh yes, it's a beautiful website.